The Psychology of the Availability Heristic

A group of german psychologists raised an intriguing question, how will people's impressions of the frequency of a category be affected by a requirement to list a specified number of instances? People who had just listed 12 instances rated themselves as less assertive. The experience of fluent retrieval of instances trumped the number retrieved. If you cannot easily come up with instances of meek behaviour, you are likely to conclude that you are not meek at all.