You know that Stan works at a television station. When you find out that Stan played college football, you automatically assume that Stan works as a sportscaster for the television station. In actuality, Stan works in the news department, as there are many more jobs in the news department than in the sports department. In this example, your judgment was influenced by the heuristic.

In this example, your judgment was influenced by the representativeness heuristic.

Explanation:

The representativeness heuristic is a type of mental shortcut we take while making judgments. Based on a prototype already existent in our minds, we assess the likelihood of something happening. In the example given in the passage, you assessed the probability of Stan working as a sportscaster based on your knowledge that he used to play college football. You allowed that information to influence your judgment, finding Stan more likely to be a sportscaster than anything else, which turned out to be wrong. Heuristics usually allow us to spend less time and energy making a decision or a judgment, which might come in handy sometimes. However, as shown in the example, they may also mislead us.

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