"I don't know, I just get the feeling that she's a bitch..."

So, before Lauren (my partner) and I were together, we were best friends.  I was also in love with her, but that's for another blog... So, of course, whenever she was dating someone, I was extra critical of that person.

She dated this one person, we'll call her Michelle...  I remember that when I first met Michelle, I immediately disapproved of her.  I thought she was weird, and somehow I knew that it wouldn't work out between Lauren and Michelle.  Some might attribute this distaste for Michelle to my feelings for Lauren, but I have another theory.  Michelle reminded me, in both appearance and mannerism, of one of my ex-girlfriends whose name is Katie.  Now, Katie was not only a crazy, annoying, neurotic vegan, but she also dumped me for a girl who lived in Kentucky that she met on Myspace.  That being said, I don't remember my time with Katie very fondly.

Because Michelle reminded me so much of Katie, the bitchy vegan, I designated Michelle's probability of being a keeper as very low.  In other words, I used the representativeness heuristic, which states that we as social beings tend to overuse similarities between past events and new events in order to make probability judgments (D. Kahneman & A. Tversky, 1972).  Because Katie and Michelle shared numerous characteristics, and because Katie was a douche, I assumed that Michelle was a bitchy freak, too.

Let's just say in the end I was right about Michelle...

D. Kahneman & A. Tversky (1972).  Subjective probability: A judgment of representativeness.  Cognitive Psychology, 3, 430-454.