Updated: Smoking and the Representativeness Heuristic
A great example of the representativeness heuristic at work:The more a high school student overestimates the percentage of people in the general population who smoke cigarettes, the more likely he or she will be to smoke, according to a recent study. And, nine out of ten (93 percent) high school students overestimate the percentage of people who smoke in the United States.[Update] A few people have asked for more data on where the data came from. It was apparently a Pittsburgh suburban high school. Here is the distribution of responses. Click for larger version.
... On average, they believe over half (56 percent) of Americans are smokers, while the actual figure is less than half that.
[via ScienceDaily] 1
