Book Summary: Thinking Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow is an examination of years of work that culminated in a Nobel prize in the field of psychology and behavioral economics. Gain a better understanding of your own decisions, biases and heuristics. Get a little deeper on how we think, what subconsciously influences us and learn about the mental shortcuts we unconsciously take.
Related Book Summaries:
7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey – Book Summary
Zen Mind, Beginners Mind – Shunryu Suzuki – Book Summary
Quotes:
Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while your thinking about it.
Book Summary Notes: Thinking Fast and Slow
- Our brains operate 2 systems. System 1 operates intuitively and without our control, this system is a relic from our evolutionary past. System 2 is responsible for our conscious decision making processes, as well as self control and deliberate decision making.
- We are considered ‘primed’ when exposure to a word, concept or event causes us to summon related words and concepts. We are constantly primed by certain social and cultural factors.
- The halo effect occurs when you like an aspect of someone, you are much more likely to view everything about them in a more positive way.
- Confirmation bias is our tendency to agree with anything that confirms our previously held beliefs.
- Both of these biases are the results of our first system trying to make fast easy decisions. Like priming these biases occur without us being consciously aware.
- To help us make quick decisions our brain has developed Shortcuts, these shortcuts are called heuristics.
- Our minds tend to remember events from 2 points of view. The first is our experiences during the event and how we felt and the second is how we remember the whole event in general.
- The remembering self will generally override the experiencing self for two reasons; duration neglect, that is we flavour the feelings from one particular part of an event and not the whole. The second is the peak end rule where we tend to remember the end of an event much more strongly.
- Our mind has 2 cognitive states cognitive ease and cognitive strain, these have connections with our 2 different brain operating systems and can also affect our behavior.
