Misleading vividness

Misleading vividness (also known as anecdotal fallacy)^[1] is anecdotal evidence describing an occurrence with sufficient detail to permit hasty generalizations about the occurrence.^[2] It may be used, for example, to convince someone that the occurrence is a widespread problem. Although misleading vividness does little to support an argument logically, it can have a very strong psychological effect because of a cognitive heuristic called the availability heuristic.

Examples:

Anne: "I am giving up extreme sports now that I have children. I think I will take up golf."

Bill: "I wouldn't do that. Do you remember Charles? He was playing golf when he got hit by a golf-cart. It broke his leg, and he fell over, giving himself a concussion. He was in hospital for a week and still walks with a limp. I would stick to paragliding!"

Person A: "Seat belts reduce the possibility to get hurt in a car accident"

Person B: "My uncle drove his old car way too fast, the car rolled 5 times in a field, he fell out of the side window and miraculously had no injuries. If he had worn a seat belt, he might have been hurt more!"

This rhetoric permits a kind of hasty generalization when an inductive generalization is a necessary premise and a single (albeit vivid) example is not sufficient to support such a generalization. See faulty generalization.

See also

• Parade of horribles
• Perfect solution fallacy
• Texas sharpshooter fallacy

References