The Value Heuristic in Judgements of Relative Frequency

Estimating the relative frequency of a class of objects or events is fundamental in subjective probability assessments and decision making (Estes, 1976), and research has long shown that people rely on heuristics for making these judgments (Gilovich, Griffin, & Kahneman, 2002). In this report, we identify a novel heuristic for making these judgments, the value heuristic: People judge the frequency of a class of objects on the basis of the subjective value of the objects.