Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2015 June 18

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June 18

Opposite of a Black Swan?

Is there a term for the cognitive bias that's effectively the opposite of the black swan theory? That is, the black swan theory expresses the concept that humans underestimate the frequency of rare events that don't have existing precedent (i.e. that haven't happened yet). I'm looking for the name for a cognitive bias where humans overestimate the frequency of rare events which have happened. For example, hearing about someone winning the lottery makes it so you believe winning the lottery is much more likely than it actually may be. Or learning about a shooting or a terrorism attack makes it seem like shootings/terrorism attacks happen more frequently than they actually do. -- 160.129.138.186 (talk) 23:07, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

The general term would seem to be Cognitive bias. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:35, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Specifically List_of_cognitive_biases#Frequency_illusion is probably most appropriate, though the term "salience bias" is also used, especially if it's not something that is especially recent that makes the item stand out. SemanticMantis (talk) 01:49, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

The frequency illusion is not quite what I'm after - with it you don't necessarily believe that encountering the term in the future will be anymore likely than it was before, just that you've coincidentally encountered a current increase in mentions. "Saliency bias" seems much closer, with [1] actually mentioning increased perception of violence due to hearing about it on TV, and this New Yorker article uses it in connection with the 9/11 terrorism attacks. Neutrality's fallacy of dramatic instance also sounds like it could work, though I'm unclear what distinction, if any, there is between the saliency bias and the fallacy of dramatic instance. -- 160.129.138.186 (talk) 20:07, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

See "Woozle effect".—Wavelength (talk) 02:06, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

An argumentum ad populum relies on that effect to convince people that more people think something than actually do, but isn't the effect itself. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:21, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

This sounds like the fallacy of dramatic instance - we have no article on it, but see here. Neutrality^talk 05:19, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Note that overestimating rare events is almost exclusively due to excessive media coverage of those events. Take the recent shark attacks. Before mass media, only those on the beach involved would have heard of such attacks, by word of mouth or witnessing the events in persons. Those people might avoid that beach for a period of time, which is probably a sensible precaution. But now, with mass media, we hear about those attacks all over the world, and people who live far away are afraid of beaches, too, even though that particular shark isn't a threat there. StuRat (talk) 14:13, 19 June 2015 (UTC)