The availability heuristic with famous names: a replication.

Abstract

In two experiments, 195 Canadian undergraduates initially judged a list of 25 names (12 famous men and 13 nonfamous women or 12 famous women and 13 nonfamous men) for familiarity. Contrary to previous research, subsequent estimates of the perceived number of men's and women's names were not higher when the names were famous than nonfamous. When the estimated differences were compared to the true difference (-1), famous names were judged more numerous than nonfamous names, but the size of the effect (d = 0.34) was smaller than in previous research. Reasons for these findings are discussed.