You rarely face situations as mentally taxing as having to solve 9382 x 7491 in your head. Cognitive Biases and Heuristicsĭespite all the complexities of life, notice that you’re rarely stumped. We should aim for a compromise: recognize situations when we’re vulnerable to mistakes, and avoid large mistakes when the stakes are high. Yet it’s also not wise (or energetically possible) to constantly question System 1, and System 2 is too slow to substitute in routine decisions. Therefore, we’re more vulnerable to cognitive biases when we’re stressed.īecause System 1 operates automatically and can’t be turned off, biases are difficult to prevent. Even worse, cognitive strain taxes System 2, making it more willing to accept System 1. You can’t unsee optical illusions, even if you rationally know what’s going on.Ī lazy System 2 accepts what the faulty System 1 gives it, without questioning.

You can’t stop your brain from completing 2 + 2 = ?, or from considering a cheesecake as delicious. If endorsed by System 2, intuitions turn into beliefs, and impulses turn into voluntary actions. System 1 automatically generates suggestions, feelings, and intuitions for System 2.

Examples: Focus attention on a particular person in a crowd exercise faster than is normal for you monitor your behavior in a social situation park in a narrow space multiply 17 x 24.

Often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice and concentration System 2: allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations.

Examples: Detect that one object is farther than another detect sadness in a voice read words on billboards understand simple sentences drive a car on an empty road.

System 1: operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort, and no sense of voluntary control Kahneman defines two systems of the mind. The book covers three areas of Daniel Kahneman’s research: cognitive biases, prospect theory, and happiness. Thinking, Fast and Slow concerns a few major questions: how do we make decisions? And in what ways do we make decisions poorly? 1-Page Summary 1-Page Book Summary of Thinking, Fast and Slow

Thinking fast and slow book summary