Donte purchased a new car, a Ford Mustang, less than a month ago. While sitting in traffic, Donte says to his girlfriend, "Mustangs must be the best-selling car now. I can't remember seeing as many on the road as I have recently." Donte's judgment is most likely biased by a(n)

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BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

Donte’s statement reflects a bias that arises from relying on information that is most readily recalled from memory rather than on objective statistics. 
Option 1: illusory correlation. This would involve perceiving a relationship between two things that are actually not related, such as thinking a particular color of car predicts reliability. The scenario does not describe linking two variables or seeing a false association, just recent exposure influencing judgment. 
Option 2: availability heuristic. This is the tendency to judge the frequency or probability of an event based on how easily examples come to mind. Donte recently noticed many Mustangs on the road, so he concludes they must be the best-selling model, which fits the classic pattern of availability influencing judgment. 
Option 3: permission schema. This term is not a standard cognitive bias used to describe judgments about product popularity or sales; it would generally refer to a rule about granting access or approval, not about estimating market data. The example doesn’t involve granting permission or a social script about approval. 
Option 4: representativeness heuristic. This bias involves judging something by how much it resembles a typical case or prototype, often leading to ignoring base rates. While it could apply in some car-choosing scenarios, the described error stems from recent exposure rather than comparing a new Mustang to a stereotypical “car buyer” prototype. The situation more directly illustrates ease of recall than the match-to-prototype error. 
In summary, the core misjudgment here arises from relying on readily recalled instances—the cars seen in traffic recently—which points to the availability heuristic as the underlying bias influencing Donte’s perception of Mustang popularity.

Donte purchased a new car, a Ford Mustang, less than a month ago. While sitting in traffic, Donte says to his girlfriend, "Mustangs must be the best-selling car now. I can't remember seeing as many on the road as I have recently." Donte's judgment is most likely biased by a(n)

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