If it's difficult to pronounce, it must be risky
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 26, 2026

Point-of-Care Ultrasound: A Review of Ultrasound Parameters for Predicting Difficult Airways
Published on: April 7, 2023
Hyunjin Song1, Norbert Schwarz
1Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1043, USA.
Abstract:
Low processing fluency fosters the impression that a stimulus is unfamiliar, which in turn results in perceptions of higher risk, independent of whether the risk is desirable or undesirable. In Studies 1 and 2, ostensible food additives were rated as more harmful when their names were difficult to pronounce than when their names were easy to pronounce; mediation analyses indicated that this effect was mediated by the perceived novelty of the substance. In Study 3, amusement-park rides were rated as more likely to make one sick (an undesirable risk) and also as more exciting and adventurous (a desirable risk) when their names were difficult to pronounce than when their names were easy to pronounce.
Related Concept Videos
Relative Risk
RNA Stability
RNA Stability
Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon
Routh-Hurwitz Criterion II
The first scenario occurs when a singular zero appears in the first column of the Routh table. This situation creates a division by zero issues. To resolve this, a small positive or negative number, denoted as epsilon (∈), is substituted for the zero. The stability analysis proceeds by assuming a sign for ∈. If ∈ is positive, any sign change in the first column of the Routh...
The Availability Heuristic
