Why use vivid cases?
It is commonly believed that people use vivid cases because they are more likely to produce arousal, grab attention, and provide memorable images (Zillman and Brosius, 2000). So, for example, people are much more likely to remember a story about a family farmer being evicted from his land than they are to recall a story focusing on trends in farm foreclosures. In other words, the narrative makes people more likely to think about, remember and use it in inferential judgments about the issue (Taylor and Thompson, 1982). The intuitive rationale for the influence of exemplars is best understood in light of what we know about how people process information. The basic idea is that people rely on mental shortcuts to make sense of their world (Tversky and Kahneman, 1981). Because vivid examples stick out in people’s minds, they are thought to be more readily accessible, thus more available to use for information processing (Nisbett and Ross, 1980). To the contrary, “pallid” information is thou
