Salient cues dominate perception and decision-making.
Judgement research. It is why crime coverage drives fear of crime independently of crime rates, and why a single vivid anecdote outweighs a table of frequencies in most decisions.
In practice
- A neighbourhood is judged dangerous from one reported incident on a local group and not from the crime figures.
- A candidate with one memorable anecdote outweighs four with better records, because the anecdote is what the panel can retrieve.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Communication & Media
- Essay
- What happens to a message after it is sent