Jonathan Cutrell

Availability bias

Also known as the availability heuristic. Whatever is most recently remembered, within reach of our cognition or spatial awareness, is likely to influence our cognition. This also has the effect of causing us to weigh our judgments most heavily based on that availability.

Interesting research has been done on this topic, specifically as it relates to memory science. For example, studies show that someone will remember encountering something they are familiar with far more often than something they are not familiar with.

Additionally, availability heuristic might overlap with framing biases. For example, wording a question like "how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other" has been shown to affect the respondent's recall and resulting answer. When the question is worded differently, i.e. "how fast were the cards going when they bumped into each other", the reported speed was lower, despite the same information being provided about the event.