Most research, starting with the original paper by Tversky and Kahneman (1974), appears to suggest that the representativeness heuristic is the primary bias underpinning randomness misconceptions.
The representativeness heuristic is where people judge the likelihood of an outcome based on how representative it is of the broader population or event.
Consider a sequence of ten coin-flips with only one outcome of tails – it may be judged that this sequence of outcomes is unlikely as a 50:50 ratio of heads to tails is more consistent with what we may expect from a fair coin.
Other examples include an insensitivity of prior probability of outcomes (where base-rate frequencies are overlooked), and an insensitivity to sample size (where the effect of sample size is ignored).
Randomness is prone to judgment using the representativeness heuristic. In judging uncertain probabilities or random sequences of events, intuitive responses can lead to misconceptions about how probability and randomness work in the world.
This site has been created as part of my PhD thesis on perceptions of randomness. I am always keen for feedback, so please email me any thoughts you have via amy.renelle@auckland.ac.nz. Thank you to my supervisors, Dr. Stephanie Budgett and Dr. Rhys Jones, for their guidance throughout my project. I would also like to thank Anna Fergusson for her help inspiring and creating this website. You can find the references for this site here.