Base-rate neglect

What it is

Ignoring how common something is in general when judging a specific case, and focusing on the vivid details instead.

Related

• Availability heuristic bias
  A vivid specific case outweighs the dull general statistics.
• Representativeness heuristic bias
  Judging by resemblance leads us to ignore base rates.
• Neglect of probability bias
  Both disregard how likely something is: one ignores the general frequency, the other ignores probability altogether in favor of magnitude.
• Prosecutor's fallacy fallacy
  Both ignore how common something is: the prosecutor's fallacy ignores the prior probability of guilt.

Appears in

• The 99 thinking errors in Rolf Dobelli's The Art of Thinking Clearly#28: Base-rate neglect

References

• Wikipedia: Base-rate neglect en.wikipedia.org
• The 99 thinking errors in Rolf Dobelli's The Art of Thinking Clearly en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia: List of cognitive biases en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia: Cognitive bias codex en.wikipedia.org

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