Suppose That a Doctor Decides That a Patient Has a Cold

question 24

Multiple Choice

Suppose that a doctor decides that a patient has a cold, rather than a much rarer disease, Disease X. She decides the disease is a cold, even though one symptom is fairly typical of Disease X and fairly atypical of a cold. This doctor is

• A) paying attention to the base rate of the diseases.
• B) showing the confirmation bias.
• C) demonstrating the small-sample fallacy.
• D) combining the availability heuristic with the representativeness heuristic.