In the example above Blue encounters Red-1 and sees that he is skipping work. At work Blue must select a partner from among two individuals he has no knowledge of. He draws on the information most readily available to him to make the decision. Based on examples he can most readily draw from his mind, he believes the likelihood that a Red person will be lazy is high. As a result he chooses Yellow over Red-2.
The availability heuristic is a cognitive shortcut that allows us to make a quick judgment about the likelihood of an event based on information and examples that most easily come to our minds (Tversky, 1973). By relying on examples that are the most readily available we can make more errors than if we carefully examined other alternatives (Tversky, 1973).
An example of the availability heuristic.
Availability Heuristic
Tversky, A., Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5 (1): 207–233.
Social Beliefs and Judgments