Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.

WHICH IS MORE LIKELY?

a. Linda is a bank teller.

b. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist

movement.

The above question was asked by Kahneman & Tversky to group of subjects in a psychological experiment. Most of them came up with option (b) as the answer. And if you too thought the answer was option (b) then I’m sorry to say but you are wrong too.

Answer (a) is actually the right answer. The answer lies in Bayes Theorem or law you might have studied in the 10th Std. “A conjunction of two events is always less probable than any one of the events”. Or the classic probability theory which states A subset cannot be bigger than the set itself.

In simpler terms, Linda being a bank teller is more probable than Linda being a bank teller and a feminist. So why did you go wrong? This error in your thinking is termed as Cognitive Fallacy.

Cognitive fallacy occurs when our mind tries to take a shortcut to the problems for making quicker decisions. These shortcuts in psychological terms are called Heuristics.

In the Linda problem , Availability heuristic made you overestimate the probability of Linda being an active feminist because of the stereotype your mind created from the information about her character provided beforehand. It’s also the same reason why you believe people are more likely to die in a road accident than by a heart attack. Data suggests otherwise!

I hope this article makes you more aware of how subconsciously your mind makes certain decisions and judgments. So the next time you make an important decision be aware of the Cognitive Fallacy effect.

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