The ambiguity effect is a tendency to avoid choices that involve uncertainty. It can be described as a rule-of-thumb that simply discards possibilities that involve unknown information.
A customer is considering purchasing three different cars but she eliminates one from the list because she can't find information about the car's warranty on the manufacturer's website.
Impact
Assigning an unrealistic level of risk to uncertainty can lead to poor quality decisions.Avoiding uncertainty may be the hallmark of weak strategies that rely on the known, comfortable and the familiar. Avoidance of unknown factors can interfere with problem solving.
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Cognitive Biases
This is the complete list of articles we have written about cognitive biases.
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