Joel Roberts / Psychology / Faculty Mentor: Jared Kenworthy
This thesis explored the impact of extreme information on availability heuristics, specifically focusing on the differences between extreme negative and extreme positive information. Previous research has only used negative information to test extremes in availability heuristics. This project replicated and expanded upon a study by Rothbart et al. (1978) which only used extreme negative information. These studies replicated the extreme negative information experiment as well as having conditions with mildly positive and extreme positive information, and a condition with both extreme negative and extreme positive information. Results from these studies indicate that only extreme negative information has an effect on the availability heuristic. Extreme positive information did not produce any effect.
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