Question

Question: A televised image of a starving polar bear surrounded by melting icebergs had a greater impact on Mr. Young’s perception of the extensiveness of climate change than did a statistical chart summarizing the earth’s temperature over the last two hundred years. This suggests that Mr. Young’s assessment of the climate change issue is influenced by:

a. the representativeness heuristic
b. confirmation bias
c. fixation
d. the availability,

Answer 1

D is the most correct answer. With the availability heuristic, the most recent example of a situation is the one that will stick in a person's mind most readily. With the example of the starving polar bear, Mr. Young is most easily swayed to the extensiveness of climate change than through any information that might have come to him less recently.