Thinking, Fast And Slow

Question 1

Why do humans love gossip?

Answer 1

Because it’s easier and more enjoyable to identify and recognise the mistakes of others than to recognise our own

Question 2

What is the halo effect?

Answer 2

When we give a more generous / favourable reading to someone’s opinions because they look good and are confident

Question 3

What is the availability heuristic?

Answer 3

It’s a rule of thumb that we use to make judgments. We judge and make decisions based on the information we have recently seen or been given, we don’t think from first principles.

Question 4

What is system 1 and 2?

Answer 4

System 1 = fast, reactive, gut

System 2 = slow, rational, considered

Question 5

What is system 1 and 2?

Answer 5

System 1 = fast, reactive, gut

System 2 = slow, rational, considered

Question 6

Why is the phrase ‘pay attention’ apt?

Answer 6

Because you only have so much that you can allocate to activities. It’s a system 2 weapon and not unlimited. System 2 cannot focus on more than one thing and will tire out

Question 7

What are system 2’s defining characteristics?

Answer 7

It’s operations are effortful
It is lazy and reluctant to invest more effort than is necessary

Question 8

What are cognitive illusions?

Answer 8

System 1 has biases and systematic errors that it is prone to make.

Cognitive illusions are when we think something that is wrong based off a wrong assumption made by system 1

E.g., feeling sympathy for someone who is being manipulative

Question 9

What are we prone to overestimate and underestimate?

Answer 9

Overestimate how much we understand about the world.

Underestimate the role of chance in events

Question 10

What are the most effortful forms of slow / system 2 thinking?

Answer 10

When system 2 is forced to think fast

Question 11

What is the law of least effort?

Answer 11

Cognitively, people will tend to gratitude to the least demanding course of action. Laziness is built deep into our nature.

Question 12

When does system 1 have an overt influence on system 2?

Answer 12

When system 2 is busy or when system 2 is tired.

People who are cognitively busy/tired are more likely to make selfish choices, be rude + make superficial judgments

Question 13

What is the consequence of activities that impose high demands on system 2?

Answer 13

They require self control and this exertion of self control is depleting and unpleasant

Question 14

How does system 2 ‘endorse’ ideas?

Answer 14

System 2 gets fed ideas from system 1, that, when engaged, it will endorse or disapprove.

E.g. bat and ball £1.10 experiment. Your system 1 thinks it’s 10p, but your system 2 overrides and calculates 5p

Question 15

How can the use of system 2 make you more intelligent?

Answer 15

When you are faced with a problem, deliberately slow down and be conscious of your intuitive answer. Then scrutinise it with system 2

Question 16

How does our body (posture/gestures/facial expressions) affect our thoughts?

Answer 16

How positive your gestures, facial expeditions and postures are, the more positive you will be.

E.g. Smiling will prime you for laughing + feeling positive, frowning will do the opposite

Walking/acting slowly will prime you to be more calm and kind

Question 17

How does money-priming (being exposed to money/ideas about it) affect your behaviour?

Answer 17

You are more selfish, independent and unhelpful

Question 18

What’s the link between guilt and cleanliness?

Answer 18

There is a clear link between thinking about or actually doing something wrong and a desire to cleanse one’s body

Question 19

What does priming show you about the two systems?

Answer 19

Priming affects arise in system 1 and cannot be controlled by system 2

If you were primed to dollar bills floating on a screen, you will be less likely to help someone pick stuff up off the floor

Question 20

What is the British university office experiment with tea and coffee?

Answer 20

Above the drinks station there’s an honesty box to pay for tea / coffee

Experimenters put a piece of paper above the honesty box with a pair of eyes staring one week and flowers the next.

Average payment for eyes weeks = £0.7

Average payment for flowers = £0.2

Question 21

How much does system 2 scrutinise system 1?

Answer 21

Most of the time, not very much. Mostly system 2 is too lazy. It will adopt the suggestions of system 1 and March on.

Then, when tested, it will justify system 1 and its decisions post-judgment.

Question 22

How can making things hard for someone improve performance?

Answer 22

Making things more difficult than they need to be will engage system 2.

E.g. difficult problems like the bat and ball example was answered better when presented to students in a bad font

Question 23

How does mood affect our system 1?

Answer 23

Being in a bad mood makes us lose touch even with our intuitions from system 1

E.g. test with intuitively linked words (rocket, dive, light) went down when participants were in bad mood

Question 24

When will you be more influenced by persuasive messages?

Answer 24

When you’re tired. Your system 2 will be shut down and your system 1 is gullible and easy to persuade.

Works the same for dieting

Question 25

What is the positive test strategy our brains use?

Answer 25

We will go through a deliberate search for confirming evidence to a question, rather than trying to disprove. E.g., asking ‘is sam friendly?’ = looking for examples of friendly behaviour ‘Is same unfriendly?’ = looking for bad behaviour

Question 26

How should you discuss things in a group to ensure equitable views and combat halo effect?

Answer 26

Everyone should write a short overview of their position on a piece of paper before people start talking. Otherwise the most talkative people take over.

Question 27

What is WYSIATI?

Answer 27

What you see is all there is = even if we know about other evidence, the evidence we have most recently seen will be what we make our minds up with.

Question 28

How does WYSIATI affect confidence?

Answer 28

We become overconfident based off the very limited evidence we have seen. Neither quality nor quantity of evidence counts for much in our confidence

Question 29

How does WYSIATI affect framing?

Answer 29

If you’re told the odds of surviving surgery are 90% or the chances you will die are 10%, this will drastically affect how you perceive the risk of this operation. WYSIATI

Question 30

Why don’t we answer difficult questions?

Answer 30

Because system 2 can’t quite get the right answer so system 1 offers up an easier question with an easier answer which we can then retrospectively justify E.g. how happy are you? How many dates did you have last month? = pretty happy, dates not affecting happiness How many dates did you have last month? How happy are you? = happiness depends on dates

Question 31

Why is repetition of a message important / as important as the content?

Answer 31

Because it’s hard for humans to tell the difference between familiarity and truth. The familiar is seen as accepted.

Question 32

Anchoring example of redwoods?

Answer 32

Asked the following two questions: 1) Is the height of the tallest redwood more or less than 1,200 (or 180) feet? 2) What is your best guess about the height of the tallest redwood? If you got given 1200 anchor you guessed 844 on average. If you got 180 anchor you guessed 282 feet on average. Also shown with real estate professionals in valuing a house for sale.

Question 33

Anchoring example with Ghandi’s age?

Answer 33

1) Was ghandi older then 9 when he died? Yes. Okay how old? = LOW ANCHOR 2) Was Ghandi older than 144 when he died? No. Okay how old? = HIGH ANCHOR

Question 34

How does WYSIATI affect anchoring?

Answer 34

Because what we see is all there is, it doesn’t matter where the anchor comes from or what it’s related to. It is the only information we have to go off, so we use it and CANT HELP but anchor off of it.

Question 35

What is the availability heuristic?

Answer 35

We value events that we witness first hand as much more significant than they actually are. E.g., if you are personally screwed over by the courts, you will lose a lot of faith in the justice system AS A WHOLE, even though you are a tiny tiny case point.

Question 36

Availability bias in marriages?

Answer 36

If you ask what % each person contributes in terms of house work to a marriage, it always adds up to more than 100%. This is because we witness and live the chores we do but take for granted the other persons work.

Question 37

How does smiling whilst working compared to frowning affect your mind?

Answer 37

Frowning increases cognitive strain, no matter what you’re doing. It forces you to try harder and activate system 2. Whereas smiling eases cognitive strain and makes things easier, but will be less likely to activate system 2.

Question 38

What is representativeness?

Answer 38

It is when we use stereotypes and ignore statistics to answer easier questions than the one posed. E.g., which subject does Tom W study? Computer science, engineering, social studies or social work. Hard to say. We will go off the base rate probabilities of each subject. Social studies is more subscribed than the others so go for that. Now: Tom W is reclusive, intelligent, corny and not good at sport. What does he study? Computer science. We ignore the base rate

Question 39

What is are the sins of representativeness?

Answer 39

1 - Excessive willingness to predict unlikely events based off stereotypes (e.g., someone on the NY subway reading the NYTimes is likely to have a PhD than no degree. Very few people have a PhD, so it’s unlikely she has one) 2 - Not caring about the quality of evidence given. (WYSIATI - system 1 will register the info even if it’s wrong. Tom W example, we use the info and ignore the base rate when the info was given to us was knowingly untrustworthy. We struggle to determine truth from familiarity)

Question 40

Best example showcasing the clash in our minds between the intuition of representativeness and the logic of probability?

Answer 40

Rank these outcomes in most likely order: A) Djokovic wins the match B) Djokovic loses the first set C) Djokovic loses the first set but wins the match D) Djokovic to win the first set but lose the match People will put C as more likely than B because it is more plausible, but it has to be less likely than. However the probability gets lowered if we introduce a specificity. It CANNOT be more likely that he wins the game on top of losing the first set and yet, it feels more likely because a good story is attached to it.

Question 41

What is success?

Answer 41

Success = talent + luck

Question 42

How does regression to the mean affect success? Golf example.

Answer 42

If a golfer does very well on day 1, he will likely do average on day 2. He was lucky on day 1 and luck is fickle. Mathematically he will revert to the mean on day 2 and perform worse. It’s not really a matter of mindset, We can try and use causal explanations (he’s nervous, he has a lead to protect, he can’t handle pressure etc.) but really it’s just regression to mean.

Question 43

What does the human mind have an incredibly strong pull towards?

Answer 43

Causal explanations. We always seek stories to explain things even if they are just statistical events.

Question 44

Controversial statement showing regression to the mean?

Answer 44

High intelligence women will tend to get with men of lower intelligence. People justify this for several reasons. But this is just a fact of statistics. If you have higher than average intelligence, the chances are you will be with someone of lower intelligence.

Question 45

How do you account for regression to mean when making predictions?

Answer 45

Always start with the base probability. What is the average? Start here and then adjust accordingly using the information you have about the specific case. Try not to move too much in one direction from the mean.

Question 46

What message do people tell in business and self help books that we lap up?

Answer 46

They tell us that we have more control over events in the world than we actually do. The best CEOs (who study all the books and make the best decisions) only have a .30 variance effect on business performance. So, if business performance was 50/50, this variance pushes the number to 60/40. It’s good, but 40% of businesses with bad CEOs are still doing well. We need a message to tell us that the things we learn and bring into the world have a big impact. But they often don’t. Luck and regression to the mean plays an enormous role but this isn’t a good story

Question 47

What do declarations of high confidence tell you?

Answer 47

That an individual has constructed a coherent story in his mind, not necessarily that the story is true.