The tendency to ignore general probability information (base rates) when making judgments about specific cases. People focus on specific details while overlooking the underlying statistical reality of how common or rare something is in the general population.
Developed in the 1970s by Kahneman and Tversky as part of their heuristics and biases research program. 'Base rate' comes from statistics, referring to the underlying frequency of occurrence, while 'neglect' indicates the systematic ignoring of this crucial information.
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