Psychology › Thinking, memory & biases › Heuristics and biases
Representativeness heuristic (judging by resemblance)
1972; Linda problem 1983· Finding or experiment
Well replicatedStrong, repeated evidence.
We judge how likely something is by how much it resembles a typical case, often ignoring base rates and basic logic.
See it on the Psychology map →What it says
In the 1983 'Linda problem', Linda is described as a bright, outspoken philosophy graduate concerned with social justice. Most people rated 'bank teller and feminist' as more likely than 'bank teller', which is impossible: a combination can never be likelier than one of its parts. People also ignore base rates: a shy, tidy man seems likelier to be a librarian than a farmer, though male farmers vastly outnumber male librarians.
Why it matters
It drives stereotyping, buying a stock because it 'looks like' a past winner, and seeing meaningful patterns in random streaks.
Think of it like
Like assuming a prospective tenant with a sharp suit and a nice car must have strong credit.
The evidence
Well replicated in its core form. The Linda result repeats widely, though wording matters: posing it as frequencies ('of 100 people like Linda') cuts the error sharply.
Open questions
Gerd Gigerenzer and others argue some 'errors' reflect how people reasonably read words like 'probable', not faulty reasoning; the debate continues.
Connections (2)
▸Representativeness heuristic (judging by resemblance) is one of the three classic Heuristics and biasesWell replicated
The connection
Representativeness was the first heuristic Kahneman and Tversky described, in 1972, and anchors the 1974 framework with availability and anchoring. It accounts for several errors: ignoring base rates, the conjunction fallacy, seeing streaks in randomness, and expecting small samples to look like the whole.
Who showed it and when
Kahneman and Tversky, 'Subjective Probability: A Judgment of Representativeness', Cognitive Psychology, 1972; the Linda problem, Psychological Review, 1983.
The evidence
Central in both founding papers, and its key errors, such as base-rate neglect and the Linda problem, replicate in many countries and populations.
Open questions
Critics say the label is vague, explaining errors after the fact without predicting exactly when people will rely on resemblance.
▸Representativeness heuristic (judging by resemblance) drives stereotyped snap judgments in Social cognition: how we judge peopleWell replicated
The connection
When judging people, we often ask how well someone fits a mental prototype, like a typical engineer, and ignore how common that type actually is. That is representativeness applied to people, and it helps explain stereotyping, first impressions and hiring mistakes.
Who showed it and when
Kahneman and Tversky's 1973 'Tom W.' and engineer-lawyer studies used personality sketches; social psychologists such as Susan Fiske extended the idea to stereotyping in the 1980s.
The evidence
Experiments repeatedly show people neglect base rates when given vivid descriptions of individuals, with stereotypes serving as the prototypes.
Open questions
How much stereotyped judgments reflect representativeness versus learned associations or motives is debated, as is how easily training reduces them.