The logical fallacy of misleading vividness involves describing some occurrence in vivid detail, even if it is an exceptional occurrence, to convince someone that it is a problem. Though misleading vividness does nothing to support an argument logically, it can have a very strong psychological effect because of a cognitive heuristic called the availability heuristic.
Examples:
Anne: "I am giving up extreme sports now that I have children. I think I will take up golf".
Bill: "I wouldn't do that. Do you remember Charles? He was playing golf when he got hit by a golf-cart. It broke his leg, and he fell over, giving himself a concussion. He was in hospital for a week and still walks with a limp. I would stick to paragliding!"
Bill: "Police marksmen should use tasers instead of guns when it's safe to do so.".
Anne: "Can you imagine what would happen if those darts from the taser went into your eyes, piercing your eyeballs, and then if they sent the high voltage through your eyes and brain! It would probably kill you and be much worse than being shot."
MisleadingVividness is a fallacy in which a very small number of particularly dramatic events are taken to outweigh a significant amount of statistical evidence.
This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because the mere fact that an event is particularly vivid or dramatic does not make the event more likely to occur, especially in the face of significant statistical evidence.
People often accept this sort of "reasoning" because particularly vivid or dramatic cases tend to make a very strong impression on the human mind.
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