Availability Bias (Group 7)

At times people assess the frequency of an event by the ease with which instances and occurrences
can be brought to their mind. This is coined as availability bias or availability heuristic. Availability is a
useful cue for assessing probability of an event because some events are usually recalled better and
faster than some. Due to this, some decisions taken by an individual get significantly influenced. The
reason for availability can be any, say biases due to the retrievability of an event, illusory correlation,
recent occurrences or may be due to effectiveness of a search set. This bias is used by many companies
to sell their products and services. The insurance industry can be a great application where people
buy insurances to cover the consequences of a house burn, car damage or even a loss of life because
of the available information they have regarding a similar experience.
Such sectors prime their customers with the advertisements and schemes to influence them to buy
their offerings. Hence, if the event is more vivid in your mind, you feel it is more likely to happen and
you make some decisions accordingly. To test the aforementioned heuristic, we decided to interview
random people and record their responses to see if the bias is as relevant as it mentioned.

Hypothesis to be tested
When a piece of information is readily available in the minds of people they tend to list things
accordingly.

Methodology Followed
We decided to run two experiments separately to confirm our hypothesis, both of which had a similar
methodology but different priming and treatment given to random people. The steps followed were
as follows:
Experiment 1- It took place in two parts
 The control group for this experiment was interviewed on a regular week day. We asked
random people that if given a chance, which movies they would like to watch that day. The
responses were noted.
 The experiment group for this experiment was asked the same question but with a few
treatments. Firstly, the question was asked on the 15th of August, i.e., the Independence Day
and secondly, we dressed up according with traditional outfits and a tricolor badge and wished
them “Happy Independence Day” before asking the question.
Rationale: when the occasion is put in minds of the people, they may show patriotism in the kind of
answers they give.

Experiment 2- It again took place in two parts

 The control group of random people was asked about the five most important things in their
life and the answers were noted.
 The experiment group was asked the same question but this time instead of wearing
regular outfits, we dressed up in a sporty fashion (gym gears).
Rationale: When people notice our gym attire, they are instantly reminded of health being an
important part of life.

Findings
Upon conducting the two experiments these were our findings and observations:
 Experiment 1: Out of the 15 people in our control group, only 26.67% (4/15) people
mentioned a patriotic movie in their lists, whereas about 83.33% (15/18) people in our
experiment group mentioned atleast one patriotic movie.
  Experiment 2: Out of the 15 people in our control group, only 6.67% (1/15) person mentioned
health, despite it being the most important aspect of life. On the other side, in our experiment
group 80% (12/15) of the people mentioned health in their list.

Research gaps found in experiment

• Self-selection bias: Since the samples were selected by the group itself, the selection process
may have been done so to benefit the outcome of the experiment
• Respondents may not have been honest with their answers: When prefaced with “Happy
Independence Day” certain respondents may have felt consciously compelled to give a
patriotic answer
• Data errors due to non-responses: There may be a discrepancy between the respondents
who chose to respond to the question and those who chose not to, creating bias
• Lack of variety in areas of survey: The responses may have been varied had the areas
chosen to conduct the survey, were vastly different in terms of the attending crowd
• Ease of Recall: Whatever came first to the minds of respondent’s, they mentioned those
answers
• Priming affects the experiment: When we asked the respondents that what movie would
you watch that day, many of them replied with movies which were either currently screened
in theatres or were about to release and that interfered in our experimental process
creating a gap

Experiment to test the gaps

The same experiment was conducted again to test the gaps that were identified in the first round,
with the survey being prefaced with the question “What according to you are the 5 most important
things in our life”. But this time it was conducted in the college premises to target the gaps of ‘Lack
of variety in area of survey’ by changing the location of the study and ‘Self selection bias’ by not
selecting the responders ourselves. The latter was solved by interviewing every student who walked
into a class to avoid any bias in selection.
The results that were observed were similar to the previous set of results, implying the gaps were
already covered in the experiment.

Conclusion
Through the two experiments, it can be concluded that people influence their decisions on the basis
of an information available in their mind, due to the easy recall. When people are given even a simple
treatment and the information is made available to the people, they are influenced by it and hence
their preferences get changed. This confirms the presence of availability bias during decision making
of a consumer.

Cofounding Parameters
 In case of experiment 1, people might have movie favorites that could skew our responses
 There can be a recency bias wherein they might like to watch an upcoming movie of which
they have watched a trailer
 In experiment 2, bias can be due to demographics of people, such as young people being
more conscious about health
 It can also be due to the time of the day as people tend to work out in the morning or evening
Through certain measures, it was taken care of that we do not include any such bias in our
experiments. For example, we randomly identified the people in actual markets, malls and parks who
would not create a demographic bias in our sample.
Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cYQbldMXX4

Stimuli used in both the experiments

 Getting Dressed up for the occasion (i.e. 2nd phase of the experiments)
Experiment 1: White clothes (with flag attached in it)
Experiment 2: Gym wear
 Greeting everyone ‘Happy Independence Day’ before asking questions, hereby creating
biases in their mind.
 Camera for video recording the entire experiment