Representativeness-heuristic is a cognitive model of judgment-by-similarity in which people assess the likelihood of an event or category membership by how much it resembles a prototype or typical case, while neglecting statistically relevant information such as base rates and sample sizes. Its parameters are: (1) similarity metric — perceptual, categorical, or causal resemblance to a prototype; (2) base-rate neglect — systematic underweighting of prior probabilities; (3) sample-size insensitivity — failure to account for the reliability of small samples. It persists through psychological theory (Kahneman and Tversky), behavioral economics, and decision-making training programs. [formal: representativeness | substrate: mind | horizon: a moment | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]
Accepted ontology entry
representativeness-heuristic
Representativeness-heuristic is a cognitive model of judgment-by-similarity in which people assess the likelihood of an event or category membership by how much it resembles a prototype or typical case, while neglecting statistically relev…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A human-made cognitive model describing the tendency to judge the probability of an event by how much it resembles (resembles) a typical case, ignoring base rates and sample size. Built to persist through behavioral economics, psychological theory, and decision research.
Names and aliases
- representativeness-heuristicen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmrmwufxy01pxd1nllvxs1o1sINSTANCE_OF →
Representativeness-heuristic is a specific kind of cognitive bias (the tendency to judge probability by resemblance, ignoring base rates). A competent speaker would call it 'a cognitive bias.' This is the nearest kind.
- cmrmg7e5w006ed1nl34thcxdmDEPENDS_ON →
Representativeness-heuristic judges probability by how much an instance resembles a category prototype. The mechanism requires forming and comparing against category representatives — remove categorization and the prototype-matching process that constitutes the heuristic stops operating. This passes the removal test (Law 8): not merely sayable without categorization, it ceases to FUNCTION.
Relations to this entry
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Record identity
- Created
- Jul 23, 2026, 10:32 PM UTC
- Content hash
- 9544e51013647b9ede40d3b3f594b557dced828fbca821b22aee2280f4e0d892