Book review: THINKING FAST AND SLOW
Genres:
- Psychology
- Behavioral Science
- Decision-Making & Problem Solving
Review posted on:
01.07.2017
The number of pages:
512 pages
Book rating:
5/5
Year the book was published:
First edition published 2013
Who should read this book:
- Everyone who is interested in psychology and human nature.
Why did I pick up this book and what did I expect to get out of it:
I picked up Thinking Fast and Slow because I have received many recommendations about it and read many good reviews online. But also I am very interested in what influences me and how. Have you ever asked yourself based on what and how you make your decisions? This is a very important question for each individual and also for businesses. From all I hear and read about Thinking Fast and Slow, I expect that I will learn a great deal about how our mind is influenced consciously and unconsciously as also how to spot those methods. I expect not to only read theory but also to read useful case studies that back up everything that Kahneman has before presented.
My thoughts about the book:
In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman explains how your mind works and how you make split decisions without even consciously being aware of all of the factors that weigh in. Kahneman explains that our mind is always on the lookout and always making decisions even if we are not aware of it consciously. Those decisions are made by two different systems in our minds. System 1 makes quick decisions – thoughts are processed in the amygdala, while System 2 is slow and does deep analysis and it processes thoughts in the prefrontal cortex. When there is a problem System 1 can’t solve System 2 takes over. There is also an important point made in the book that we have limited mental energy, which System 2 “burns through” fast, and that is why if possible our mind will use System 1 as much as it can.
Kahneman shares a lot of examples of how we are sometimes tricked by System 1 (in some cases System 2 should be activated but is not). Kahneman also shares examples of how important framing is, how we tend to over-value things we own, and explains how our brain is lazy (it would rather solve an easy problem than the right one if possible). You should also keep in mind that your brain continuously looks for patterns in everything and if anchors with numbers are set, it is hard to change the set train of thought.
To sum it all up, the book is pretty long but it is filled with actionable knowledge backed up with real-life case studies and it could open your mind to new perspectives. The book has it all, theory and case studies, but it at times can be a bit tedious. Chapters are short from 8 to 16 pages and they always concentrate on some “nugget”. In this manner you build up knowledge “brick by brick”, case study by case study. If you are at least a little bit interested in how your mind works this book should be in your hand. This is one of those books that everyone should read.
My notes from the book:
-
System 1:
- Operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.
- Snap assessments of situations, subconscious thinking, and thoughts processed in the brain’s amygdala.
- Responds to impressions of events of which System 2 is unaware.
- Continuously generates suggestions for System 2: Impressions, Intuitions, Intentions, and Feelings.
- In emergencies, System 1 takes over and assigns total priority to self-protective actions (Imagine yourself at the wheel of a car that unexpectedly skids on a large oil slick. You will find that you have responded to the threat before you became fully conscious of it.)
- Localizes the source of a specific sound. - Completes the phrase “war and …”. - Display disgust when seeing a gruesome image. - Understands simple sentences. - Is prone to substituting a difficult question with a simpler one. -
System 2:
- Allocates attention to mental activities, and is slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, and conscious. - Information is processed in the brain’s prefrontal cortex. - Is normally in a comfortable low-effort mode, in which only a fraction of its capacity is engaged. - Turns Impressions and intuitions into beliefs, and Impulses into voluntary actions. - Its main function is to monitor and control thoughts and actions suggested by System 1. - Is mobilized when a question arises for which System 1 does not offer an answer – when an event is detected that violates the model of the world that System 1 maintains. - A happy mood loosens the control of System 2 over performance: when in a good mood, people become more intuitive and more creative but also less vigilant and more prone to logical errors. - Frowning generally increases the vigilance of system 2 and reduces both overconfidence and reliance on intuition. - Digs into your memory to recognize a sound. - Determines the appropriateness of behavior in a social setting. - Is activated when giving someone your phone number, or parking in a tight parking space. - Determines the price/quality ratio of two similar products. - We have two systems/ways of thinking: System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. System 2 allocates attention to mental activities.
- Intense focusing on a task can make people effectively blind. Anything that occupies your working memory reduces your ability to think.
- As you become skilled in a task, its demand for energy diminishes. studies of the brain have shown that the pattern of activity associated with action changes as skill increases, with fewer brain regions involved.
- The “Law of least effort” asserts that if there are several ways of achieving the same goal, people will eventually gravitate to the least demanding course of action. Laziness is built deep into our nature.
- People who are cognitively busy are also more likely to make selfish choices, use sexist language, and make superficial judgments in social situations. The same effect has a sleepless night.
- When you are actively involved in difficult cognitive reasoning or engaged in a task that requires self-control, your blood glucose level drops. You can undo this effect by ingesting glucose.
- You also think with your body, not only with your mind/brain.
- Your actions and your emotions can be primed by events of which you are not even aware.
- Common gestures (such as nodding) can also influence our thoughts and feelings.
- Money-primed people become more independent than they would be without the associative trigger. They are also more selfish, less willing to help others, and prefer being alone.
- Reminding people of their mortality increases the appeal of authoritarian ideas, which may become reassuring in the context of the terror of death.
- Whenever you are conscious multiple computations are going on in your brain, which maintain and update current answers to some key questions: Is Anything new going on? Is there a threat? Are things going well? Should my attention be redirected? Is more effort needed for this task?
- When you are in a state of cognitive ease, you are probably in a good mood, you like what you see, believe what you hear, trust your intuitions, and feel that the current ssituationis comfortably familiar. You are also likely to be relatively casual and superficial in your thinking. When you are in a state of cognitive strain you are more likely to be vigilant and suspicious, invest more effort in what you are doing, feel less comfortable, and make fewer errors, but you are also less intuitive and less creative than usual.
- A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. You do not have to repeat the entire statement of a fact or idea to make it appear true. The familiarity of one phrase in the statement sufficed to make the whole statement feel familiar, and therefore true.
- The effect of repetition has a profound impact on liking something.
- When we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition.
- A large event is supposed to have consequences, and consequences need a cause to explain them. When we have limited information System 1 is adept at finding a coherent casual story that links the fragments of knowledge at its disposal.
- The sequence in which we observe the characteristics of a person matters because the halo effect increases the weight of first impressions.
- Before an issue is discussed, all members of the discussion should be asked to write a very brief summary of their position. By doing so you can eliminate the “weight” of the opinions of those who speak early and assertively.
- Keep in mind the framing effect: Different ways of presenting the same information often evoke different emotions (90% fat-free or 10% fat).
- The order of questions you ask someone is very important. If questions are on the same topic, the first question fixes the mood of that person, and the following answers are influenced by that mood.
- The illusion of pattern affects our lives. We are programmed to seek patterns. We reject the belief that much of what we see in life is random.
- People stay closer to the anchor when their mental resources are depleted.
- The world in our heads is not a precise replacement of reality; our expectations about the frequency of events are distorted by the prevalence and emotional intensity of the messages to which we are exposed.
- Even compelling causal statistics will not change long-held beliefs rooted in personal experience.
- A general limitation of the human mind is its imperfect ability to reconstruct past states of knowledge, or beliefs that have chaned once you adopt a new view of the world, you immediately lose much of your ability to recall what you used to believe before your mind changed.
- The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by the ease with which the past is explained. We cannot suppress the powerful intuition that what makes sense in hindsight today was predictable yesterday. The illusion that we understand the past fosters overconfidence in our ability to predict the future.
- Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition. The situation provides a cue, this cue gives the person access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer.
- The proper way to elicit information from a group is not by starting with a public discussion but by confidentially collecting each person’s judgment.
- Most of us view the world as more benign than it really is, our own attributes as more favorable than they truly are, and the goals we adopt as more achievable than they are likely to be.
- Many times we focus on what we know and neglect what we do not know, which makes us overly confident in our beliefs.
- When directly compared against each other, losses loom larger than gains. This asymmetry between the power of positive and negative expectations or experiences has an evolutionary history. Organisms that treat threats as more urgent than opportunities have a better chance to survive and reproduce. The response to losses is stronger than the response to corresponding gains.
- The brains of humans and other animals contain a mechanism that is designed to give priority to bad news. Experimenters have reported that an angry face “pops out” in a crowd of happy faces, but a single happy face does not stand out in an angry crowd.
- Bad information is processed more thoroughly than good.
- Not achieving a goal is a loss, exceeding the goal is a gain. The aversion to the failure of not reaching the goal is much stronger than the desire to exceed it.
- Low-probability events are much more heavily weighted when described in terms of 1 of 100.000 than a 0,001% risk. The 99.999 people fade into the background. The more vivid description produces a higher decision weight for the same probability.
- People expect to have stronger emotional reactions to an outcome that is produced by action than to the same outcome when it is produced by inaction.
- A discount or a surcharge to the same value may be economically equivalent, but they are not emotionally equivalent. People will more readily forego a discount than pay a surcharge.
- Memories are all we get to keep from our experiences of living. Tastes and decisions are shaped by memories, and the memories can be wrong. We can have a great experience that lasts a long time, but with a bad ending and the whole experience will be remembered as not pleasant. – important to keep in mind with customer service.