Availability Heuristic

The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut: you estimate how common or likely something is based on how easily examples come to mind—not on base rates or data.

Vivid news, recent failures and emotionally loaded stories feel more probable than they are. That skews prioritization, confirmation bias and anxiety about the wrong risks.

Countermeasures: seek disconfirming evidence, write simple base rates or historical notes for recurring decisions and slow down big calls when your evidence is mostly "I can think of a case". Pair intuition with a short written pre-mortem or checklist so analysis paralysis does not replace judgment—structure does.