Neglect of probability

What it is

Focusing on how big or how dreadful an outcome would be and ignoring how likely it is, which is why tiny chances of huge prizes or disasters dominate decisions.

Related

• Availability heuristic bias
  Dreadful or vivid outcomes are easy to picture, and that ease is mistaken for likelihood.
• Appeal to fear fallacy
  Fear appeals exploit neglect of probability: the size of the threat is stressed and its probability is not mentioned.
• Base-rate neglect bias
  Both disregard how likely something is: one ignores the general frequency, the other ignores probability altogether in favor of magnitude.

Appears in

• The 99 thinking errors in Rolf Dobelli's The Art of Thinking Clearly#26: Neglect of probability

References

• Wikipedia: Neglect of probability 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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