Question

Gabrielle is blonde, extremely attractive, and lives in an expensive condo. If we judge the probability of Gabrielle's being a model quite high because she resembles our stereotype of a model, we are using:________

a. the representative heuristic.
b. the availability heuristic.
c. framing.
d. the law of small numbers.

Answer 1

In the example of Gabrielle, we are using the representative heuristic.

Explanation:

• A heuristic is basically the application of already acquired knowledge in order to investigate or discover new things.
• The traits or attributes that are visible to the eyes are often processed by the brain by associating them with the representative knowledge that we possess about the attributes.
• In Gabrielle's case, because it is evident from the attributes exhibited by her that she is a model, we used the representative heuristic.