AP Psychology Error & Bias Paper

The paper can be found here.

            In “What’s the Trouble?” by Jerome Groopman, we are introduced to two main concepts of medical bias present in the modern doctoral community. Starting off on availability heuristic bias, the article presents it as referring new medical opinions based on most recent events. The best in-text example is that of a flu or epidemic, where doctors are exposed to frequent cases with similar symptoms. By seeing the same symptoms over and over, this reinforces the doctor’s bias towards diagnosing the same way. The American Psychological Association defines an availability heuristic as “…a common strategy for making judgments about likelihood of occurrence in which the individual bases such judgments on the salience of the information held in his or her memory about the particular type of event.”[1] The more common or available the information is at the time of decision-making, the more influential it is. There are many impacts to availability heuristics, many of them negative. By misdiagnosing a patient, the tendency to misjudge a patient with ‘relevant’ examples in mind can stop them from receiving lifesaving medical treatment.

[1] https://dictionary.apa.org/availability-heuristic