Misleading vividness

Informal fallacies → Other informal

Misleading vividness is when one vivid story or one scary example sticks in your mind, so you ignore the bigger picture or the actual numbers. Anecdotes and dramatic cases are memorable and emotional, but they can mislead when they're not representative. The fallacy is to let a vivid case override the general evidence. The remedy is to ask: what do the data and the full set of cases show? Related: Availability heuristic.

Examples

  • I know the stats say flying is safe, but I saw that crash on the news and I'm never flying again.

  • I know someone who was robbed there, so the area is dangerous.

  • That one success story proves the programme works.

  • I read about that rare side effect and I'm not taking the medicine.

  • The one time we tried it it failed, so we'll never try again.

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