The Effect of Imagining an Event on Expectations for the Event: An Interpretation in Terms of the Availability Heuristic.

Previous studies have indicated that explaining a hypothetical event makes the event seem more likely through the creation of causal connections. However, such effects could arise through the use of the availability heuristic; that is, subjective likelihood is increased by an event becoming easier to imagine. Two experiments were designed to demonstrate this principle. In Exp I, 97 undergraduates asked to imagine Jimmy Carter winning the presidential election (prior to the election) predicted that he was more likely to win than Ss asked to imagine Gerald Ford winning. In Exp II, 93 undergraduates asked to imagine a good college football season for the previous championship team were more likely to predict a major bowl bid than Ss asked to imagine a bad season, although the effect did not appear in predictions of the season record. In both studies, Ss who were also asked to explain the imaginary event were no different from Ss who only imagined. Several other attributional distortions are interpreted in terms of the availability heuristic. (19 ref)