In recent months, national media spent a lot of time on stories about gays and lesbians. Yesterday, you conducted a poll asking people to estimate what percent of Americans are gay and lesbian. They results indicate that people estimated 23% are gay and lesbian but actually only about 4.1% identify as gay or lesbian. Why did people overestimate this percent?

Availability heuristic

Explanation:

Availability heuristic, also known as availability bias, is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision.

because not a lot of people are open about being part of the LGBTQIA+ community

Explanation:

answer; belief perseverance;