As you walk into your classroom,you see two people standing in the front of the room.One is a 55-year-old man,and the other is a 35-year-old woman.You assume that the man is the professor because most of your professors are men of that age.This is an example of:

A) the representativeness heuristic.
B) the availability heuristic.
C) the halo effect.
D) bottom-up processing.

The representativeness heuristic refers to the tendency to judge the likelihood of an event based on how well it matches our expectations, or prototypes, for that type of event. In this case, the assumption that the older man is the professor is based on the prototype of a professor being an older man. This is a cognitive shortcut that can lead to errors in judgment, as not all professors are older men. The availability heuristic (B) refers to the tendency to judge the likelihood of an event based on how easily examples of that event come to mind. The halo effect (C) is the tendency to attribute positive or negative qualities to a person based on one trait or characteristic. Bottom-up processing (D) refers to a type of information processing in which individual sensory stimuli are combined to form a perception.