Sj. Mckelvie, THE AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC - EFFECTS OF FAME AND GENDER ON THE ESTIMATED FREQUENCY OF MALE AND FEMALE NAMES, The Journal of social psychology, 137(1), 1997, pp. 63-78
In two experiments, Canadian undergraduates heard a list of 13 male na
mes and 13 female names; then they estimated how many male and female
names there seemed to be. In Experiment 1, the list consisted of 26 fa
mous names or 26 nonfamous names. Both male and female participants ga
ve similar estimates for the number of male and female names, contradi
cting hypotheses of a bias toward males or toward one's own gender. In
Experiment 2, where the list contained names of famous men and nonfam
ous women or names of famous women and nonfamous men, participants gav
e higher estimates for the gender that was famous (effect size d = 0.7
8). This result confirmed Tversky and Kahneman's (1973) fame availabil
ity effect and showed it to be moderate to large in size.