People tend to assess the relative importance of issues by the ease with which they are retrieved from memory — and this is largely determined by the… - Daniel Kahneman

when people believe a conclusion is true, they are also very likely to believe arguments that appear to support it, even when these arguments are unsound.

"If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language will do. My Princeton colleague Danny Oppenheimer refuted a myth prevalent among undergraduates about the vocabulary that professors find most impressive. In an article titled "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly," he showed that couching familiar ideas in pretentious language is taken as a sign of poor intelligence and low credibility."

This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.