Why Do We Remember Rare and Dramatic Events More Than Common Ones? — Here’s How the Availability Heuristic Once Kept Our Ancestors Alive

Think about a recent event that you have lived or heard about. Chances are, dramatic and rare events may have popped up faster in your head than the common ones that we experience every single day. For most people, this would be the case too. Our minds just could easily remember the rare phenomenon better and more vividly.

Scientists actually have a name for it: the availability heuristic. This is a thinking habit that judges how common an event is by how easily it comes to mind. Those more dramatic happenings in our lives or what we have read in the news are more easily available for us to mentally access, causing us to have a cognitive bias that assumes they happen more often than they actually do. But why do humans have this habit? Let’s find out more!

What Is the Availability Heuristic?

The availability heuristic is our mind’s way of saving energy and time. Instead of evaluating every single piece of information, the examples that come to our heads when thinking about a certain topic are assumed to be the common or a likely event. In other words, the easier something is to remember, the more often people think it happens, even if that is not the case in reality.

The human memory is not a perfect record of everything that ever happened to you or what you have heard about. Instead, it is greatly shaped by what we see, our background knowledge and biases, and our own state of mind. When we recall an event, we do not have an exact record of it, but instead, the brain does a reconstructive process on the experiences using pieces of information that are easily available and then fills in the gaps with existing knowledge or beliefs.

What we are trying to say is not all events or memories are stored in our brains the same way. The more dramatic and rare events could make the reconstructive processes more accessible because they often have more emotional and vivid sensory details that our brains could use to remember the memory. Let’s discuss some examples to make it easier to understand.

Read more: SimplyPsychology

Why Dramatic Stories Crowd Out Everyday Risks

The Availability Heuristic

Since our brains remember an event by reconstructing it, but at the same time have the availability heuristic that aims to save energy and time when thinking, the events that trigger more emotions and sensory features are easier to recall than everyday occurrences.

Some great examples of this are that we are more likely to remember a plane crash or even a shark attack than a more common car crash. These are also the type of stories and posts that get engagements on social media and news because they trigger emotions and are easier to recall.

This could result in two phenomena: where we overestimate the frequency of the dramatic events happening in the world, and the other one is where we underestimate the number the common events that actually occur, even if they pose some risks or danger.

How the Availability Heuristic Shapes Our Fears and Choices

So, how could the availability heuristics affect or impact the daily lives of people? First of all, and probably one of the most important is that we might end up worrying a lot more about the wrong things. Let’s say a person may have heard both about a plane crash and a car crash recently. The chances are this person may worry more about a plane crashing, even if car crashes are more common occurrences.

The same could happen if we hear more about dramatic events in different aspects of our lives, such as the place we live in or the food we eat. Even random things like where we go on vacations or how we buy groceries. Our decisions could be affected by a more memorable event, overestimating its risk and chances of happening. Instead of accounting for the more likely events to happen, we may end up completely ignoring those.

Moreover, these dramatic events make the perfect headlines in news outlets and social media platforms. So, not only are they more memorable and impressionable to our brains later on, but we may also be more exposed to a lot more of these rare events than what is normal. The brain’s capacity to remember is limited, and it wants to be as efficient as possible, saving time and energy. So, these emotional happenings are what we may end up recalling in our minds, and we may completely forget the more common things. Thus, reinforcing the availability heuristics.

Read more: StatisticsByJim

Possible Evolutionary Explanation: How This Bias May Have Helped Our Ancestors Survive

What is the Availability Heuristic? (Easy Explanation)

A long time ago, early humans did not have news websites, social media, and constant sources of information. Instead, they relied heavily on their memories and the existing beliefs of their group. So, remembering sudden, rare, and dramatic events like being attacked by a specific animal, or a food being poisonous, could be much more important than the mundane and common daily tasks that they do. It may very well have meant survival or not.

Additionally, they do not have as much access to good and nutritious food as we do now. Brains are very metabolically expensive organ to maintain, and it functions to try to be as efficient as possible to conserve energy. So, before, a normal day without any risks may not have been necessary to store in memory and make it easily accessible.

However, a rare event that may have caused their deaths is worth remembering, even if it is not as common or as risky as originally thought. This is so that next time, that person or group could react much faster, avoiding the risk completely, by being able to easily recall the dramatic event. Over time, this may have rewired or shaped our brains to be able to remember the emotionally triggering moments quicker, because it is a way for our ancestors to increase their chance of survival.

Author's Final Thoughts

We remember the rare and dramatic events because our brains are wired to notice the memories that triggered our emotions and that have provided more vivid pictures. Evolutionarily, this trait may have helped our ancestors react faster to a clear or present danger that poses a more extreme risk than normal ones.

However, in the modern world, the availability heuristics may trick us into believing we have to worry more about the rare phenomenon than the everyday risks and happenings in our lives. This could be why it is important to understand that we have this cognitive bias, and that it may just be our brains trying to do a mental shortcut.

Read next: Why the First Piece of Information We Hear Influences All Our Future Decisions? — Here’s What Researchers Discovered About the Anchoring Effect

References & Further Reading

Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(73)90033-9

Lichtenstein, S., Slovic, P., Fischhoff, B., Layman, M., & Combs, B. (1978). Judged frequency of lethal events. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.4.6.551

Pachur, T., Hertwig, R., & Steinmann, F. (2012). How do people judge risks: Availability heuristic, affect heuristic, or both? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028279

Efendić, E. (2021). How do people judge risk? Availability may upstage affect in the construction of risk judgments. Risk Analysis. https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.13729

Sunstein, C. R. (2006). The availability heuristic, intuitive cost–benefit analysis, and climate change. Climatic Change. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-006-9073-y