Final answer:
People think serial killers and terrorists are more common than they actually are due to the representativeness heuristic.
Step-by-step explanation:
The answer to the question is a) representativeness heuristic.
People think serial killers and terrorists are more common than they actually are due to the representativeness heuristic. The representativeness heuristic refers to the tendency to evaluate new information based on the most recent or most easily recalled examples. In the case of crime, stories of violent crime and terrorism are prominent in the news media and fiction, making them easily remembered. This leads to an overestimation of the frequency of these events.