Explain how the concepts in this chapter account for each of the following scenarios:
a. Most people rate death by shark attacks to be much more likely than death by falling airplane parts, yet the chances of dying from the latter are actually 30 times greater (Plous, 1993, p. 121).
b. You are a juror on a case at your school involving an accusation that a student cheated on an exam. The jury is asked to assess the likelihood of the statement, “Even though he knew it was wrong, the student copied from the person sitting next to him because he desperately wants to get into medical school.” The other jurors give the statement a high probability assessment although they know nothing about the accused student.
c. Research by Tversky and Kahneman (1982b) has shown that people think that words beginning with the letter k are more likely to appear in a typical segment of text in English than words with k as the third letter. In fact, there are about twice as many words with k as the third letter than words that begin with k.
d. A 45-year-old man dies of a heart attack and does not leave a will.