Tversky and Kahneman's goal in the numerous books and articles on which they have collaborated, which have

received widespread citations, was to describe and discuss how people make decisions when faced with
uncertainty. As a result of this, they designed a series of thought experiments that were intended to uncover the
underlying reasoning processes of individuals (Tversky and Kahneman, 1974, p. 1124; McKenzie, 2005, p.
323). It is helpful to directly participate in some of their more well-known experiments in order to gain a better
understanding of the work that they do. Tversky and Kahneman's now-famous "Linda problem" consisted of
presenting a group of statistically naive subjects with a straightforward personality sketch like the one below:

"Linda is a very bright and outspoken 31-year-old who is currently single." Her area of concentration was
philosophy. She was a student who was very concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and she
also took part in demonstrations against nuclear power (Tversky and Kahneman, 1982, pp. 84–98).

After that, the participants were asked to rank the following statements according to how likely they were:

a) Linda works as a teller at the bank (T)

b) Linda is a member of the labor and feminist (T&F) movements and works as a teller at a bank (Tversky and
Kahneman, 1982, pp. 84–98).

The vast majority of respondents, or 89%, gave a higher rating of probability to the compound target (T&F) than
they did to the simple target (T). This, however, is a clear violation of the conjunction rule, which states that a
conjunction cannot be more probable than either of its conjuncts. This requirement states that a conjunction
cannot be more probable than either of its conjuncts. By definition, all feminist bank tellers are also bank tellers;
a person cannot have a greater likelihood of being a feminist bank teller than they do of being a regular bank
teller (Tversky and Kahneman, 1982, pp. 84–98; McKenzie, 2005, p. 326). Tversky and Kahneman, basing their
theory on these findings, postulated that when people are asked to estimate the probability that A belongs to B
or that B will generate A, they rely on representativeness heuristics. This means that they base their estimates on
the degree to which A is representative of, or resembles, B. (Tversky and Kahneman, 1974, p. 1124; 1982, pp.
84–98). Therefore, due to the fact that the subject's description of Linda was highly consistent with the
stereotype of feminists but not with the stereotype of bank tellers, the subjects abandoned correct probability
judgment in favor of this more readily available heuristic. However, it should be obvious that judgments based
on representativeness are frequently biased. This is because similarity is not a factor that affects the assessment
of probability (Tversky and Kahneman, 1982, pp. 90, 92–93; Newell, 2013, pp. 606–607).