Editing Simulation heuristic (section)

== Applications ==
This heuristic has shown to be a salient feature of [[clinical anxiety]] and its disorders, which are marked by heighted expectations of future negative events. A study done by David Raune and Andrew Macleod tried to tie the cognitive mechanisms that underlie this type of judgment to the simulation heuristic.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Raune|first1=David|last2=MacLeod|first2=Andrew|last3=Holmes|first3=Emily A.|title=The simulation heuristic and visual imagery in pessimism for future negative events in anxiety|doi=10.1002/cpp.455|journal=Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy|year=2005|volume=12|issue=4 |pages= 313–25}}</ref>

Their findings showed that anxious patient's simulation heuristic scores were correlated with the subjective probability. Such that, the more reasons anxious patients could think of why negative events would happen, relative to the number why they would not happen, the higher their subjective probability judgment that the events would happen to them. Further it was found that anxious patients displayed increase access to the simulation compared to control patients.

They also found support for the [[hypothesis]] that the easier it was for anxious patients to form the visual image, the greater the subjective probability that the event would happen to them. Through this work they purposed that the main clinical implication of the simulation heuristic results is that, in order to lower elevated subjective probability in clinical anxiety, patients should be encouraged to think of more reasons why the negative events will not occur then why they will occur .