The availability heuristic with famous names: A replication

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 no nfamous men) for familiarity. Contrary to previous research. subsequent est imates of the perceived number of men's and women's names were not higher w hen the names were famous than nonfamous. When the estimated differences we re compared to the true difference (-1), famous names were judged more nume rous than nonfamous names, but the size of the effect (d=0.14) was smaller than in previous research. Reasons for these findings are discussed.