Familiarity Heuristic

In psychology, a heuristic is an easy-to-compute procedure or "rule of thumb" that people use when forming beliefs, judgments or decisions. The familiarity heuristic was developed based on the discovery of the availability heuristic by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. It can be applied to various situations that individuals experience in real life when these situations appear similar to previous situations, especially if the individuals are experiencing a high cognitive load. This heuristic is useful in most situations and can be applied to many fields of knowledge including medicine, psychology, sports, marketing, outdoor activities, and consumer choices.