Participants judged a mother's parental fitness based on transcripts describing her interactions with her son. Those who read transcripts with vivid details of positive interactions rated the mother as more fit (5.8 out of 10), while those who read transcripts with vivid details of negative interactions rated her as less fit (4.3 out of 10). Though the core facts were the same, the irrelevant vivid details made those particular arguments more available and credible, disproportionately impacting the overall judgments through the availability heuristic.

1. Vividness effect on communication
How concrete and colourful language can influence people’s judgements

2. Participants in this experiment were asked to judge
the fitness (or unfitness) of a parent
They read transcripts of recordings describing a
mother living with her seven year old son
The transcripts contained 8 arguments for and 8
arguments against the mother

3. Please assess the
parental fitness of
this woman

4. Participants were split into two groups
The first group read transcripts that gave extra vivid
details on the positive interactions between the mother
and her son e.g. brushing her son’s teeth at night
They were just given the facts for the negative
arguments e.g. her son visiting the school nurse to tend
to a scratch on his elbow

5. How
sweet they
have matching
t-shirts!
She obviously
takes an interest in
what he’s passionate
about

6. Kids
have bumps
and scrapes all
the time
The school
nurse took good care
of him as you would
expect

7. The second group read transcripts that gave extra
vivid details around the negative events
They were just given the facts for the positive
interactions between the mother and her son
For both groups the extra details were carefully
designed to be irrelevant in terms of judging the
mother’s parental fitness

8. This is a
pretty normal
bedtime
routine
I would
expect all parents to
help brush their
child’s teeth

9. I wonder
how he scraped
his elbow?
The school
nurse spilt
Mercurochrome while
cleaning up his scrape
– his mother should
have taken care of
him first.

10. The facts remained identical in all scenarios however
those who heard vivid details for positive interactions
rated the mother as a fitter parent (5.8 out of 10)
Those who heard vivid details for negative events
rated the mother as a less fit parent (4.3 out of 10)

11. Conclusions
1. The jurors made different judgements based on irrelevant vivid
details given in arguments
2. The extra details made it easier for jurors to recall particular
arguments (either positive or negative) and made these
arguments more credible
3. This is an example of the availability heuristic in action –
immediately available examples having a disproportionate
effect on the jurors overall assessment

12. Reference
Can the availability heuristic explain vividness effects?
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51 (1986) 26—36
Jonathan Shedler and Melvin Manis