Which Happens More Frequently: Death by Asthma or Death by Tornadoes

Multiple Choice

Which happens more frequently: death by asthma or death by tornadoes? People typically believe that tornadoes cause more deaths, but statistics reveal that asthma actually causes significantly more deaths. Some researchers argue that we make this error because TV news dramatically publicizes deaths due to tornadoes, which presumably makes it much easier for us to call up these examples. This particular finding is best considered as an example of a judgment error caused by ________.

A) a mental set
B) a confirmation bias
C) the availability heuristic
D) the representativeness heuristic