Thinking in detail about an event inflates its estimated likelihood

Evidence

Furthermore, the individual is not an isolated processing unit unaffected by the ways in which certain items of information are emphasized or denied in any particular society. For example, it has been shown that if someone is given cause to think in detail about some event or situation, then he or she will assign a much higher subjective probability to that event occurring or situation arising (Ross et al. 1977). — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 675

Categorization

• XREF: The availability/ease-of-imagination effect has direct relevance to the doctor’s wife’s feared scenarios cascading once imagined, and to Salieri-type paranoia about betrayal.