Pass Your Civil Service Exam With This Comprehensive Preparation Guide! [2024]

Rachel has decided to move to North London and has been deliberating between Hampstead and Regent's Park. Lately she noticed several news reports about car thefts around Hampstead and consequently has decided to move to Regent's Park as she believes that vehicle theft is much more common in Hampstead.

Rachel has made an availability heuristic.

An availability heuristic is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to mind. When you are trying to make a decision, a number of related events or situations might immediately spring to the forefront of your thoughts. As a result, you might judge that those events are more frequent and possible than others. You give greater credence to this information and tend to overestimate the probability and likelihood of similar things happening in the future.

The term was first coined in 1973 by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. They suggested that the availability heuristic occurs unconsciously and operates under the principle that "if you can think of it, it must be important." Things that come to mind more easily are believed to be far more common and more accurate reflections of the real world.

Availability heuristics can be helpful and important in decision-making. When faced with a choice, we often lack the time or resources to investigate in greater depth. Faced with the need for an immediate decision, the availability heuristic allows people to quickly arrive at a conclusion.

 According to the passage, it is helpful to use availability heuristics in decision making when:

This part consists of several sentences, each followed by four possible ways of restating the main idea of that sentence in different words. For each question, choose the one restatement which best expresses the meaning of the original sentence:

The black widow spider's name comes from the female's habit of eating the male after mating.

You will be presented with multiple-choice questions usually offering 4 answer options, of which only one is correct. Your task is to choose the best answer to each question from the options given.

Read the text, and answer the following question:

Officer Noah interviewed four witnesses to shoplifting. They each described the suspect as follows:

Witness 1: “She was a White, elderly female woman, probably in her seventies. She was walking with a cane, was around five feet tall, maybe 120 pounds, and had very short grey hair. She had glasses strung around her neck and was wearing a red shirt with a dark green sweater and brown pants.”

Witness 2: “She was a short, White woman, no taller than five feet. She had very short grey hair, bright blue eyes and was around 130 pounds. She was wearing a red shirt with a green sweater and dark pants. Her grey hair, big glasses strung around her neck, and cane made her look old, but her face looked very young.”

Witness 3: “She was a White woman, no older than sixty, slightly under five feet tall and under 130 pounds. She had very short grey hair, was wearing a red shirt with a green sweater and black or brown pants, and walked with a cane.”

Witness 4: “She was a White female, who looked to be around seventy with grey hair. She was about five and a half feet tall and 115 pounds. She walked with a cane, had glasses around her neck, and was wearing a green sweater and black pants.”

Given this information, there is a problem with the description given by witness number-

Compare the names given and determine how many are exactly the same.

Peter R. Daniels
Peter R. Daniels
Peret R. Daniels
Peter R. Daneils