The representativeness heuristic is a heuristic in which commonality
between objects of similar appearance
is assumed. For instance, if I meet someone with a laid back attitude and long hair, I might assume they are Californian,
whereas someone who is very polite but rigid may be assumed to be English. Another
example is that people will often assume that a random sequence in a lottery is more likely than an arithmetic sequence of
numbers.
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Furthermore, base rate information is imperative
to the representative heuristic. It is typically information concerned with the frequency of members of different categories
in society.
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