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Base Rate Neglect

The tendency to ignore how common something is in the general population, called the base rate, and instead judge probability from specific, vivid details of the case at hand. Produces overconfident, case-specific predictions that ignore what usually happens in similar situations. Used to explain why planners trust a detailed step-by-step plan over the track record of similar past plans.

Chief Galen Tyrol Video

University Lecture on the Representativeness Heuristic and Base-Rate Neglect

A judgment-and-decision-making course lecture covering how the representativeness heuristic causes people to ignore base rates, grounded in the Kahneman & Tversky tradition.