Think Twice: Review of Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (2011)

Numeracy, Jul 2017

Daniel Kahneman. Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 499 pp. ISBN 978-0374275631.In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman significantly sharpens our understanding of human decision-making and the systems of thinking that underlie it. He offers a compelling critique of the rational-agent model, arguing that, while we can and do use reason, we often fall back on a type of thinking that operates quickly and requires less cognitive effort but is vulnerable to faulty belief.

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Think Twice: Review of Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (2011)

Kelly, Anne. "Think Twice: Review of Th inking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman ( inking , Fast and Slow by Anne Kelly 0 0 Dakota Wesleyan University Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/numeracy Part of the Cognitive Psychology Commons Recommended Citation - Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License Cover Page Footnote Anne Kelly is a professor of behavioral sciences and chair of the psychology department at Dakota Wesleyan University. Her research focuses on the causes, treatment and prevention of suicide, the psychological mechanisms underlying suicide ideation, and the cognitive and social factors that influence detection of suicide risk in others. This book review is available in Numeracy: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/numeracy/vol10/iss2/art15 In his 2011 book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman significantly sharpens our understanding of human decisionmaking and the systems of thinking that underlie it. He offers a compelling critique of the belief that we are, generally, rational decision makers, and, in its place, presents a much fuller theory that, while acknowledging our ability to think rationally, emphasizes our vulnerability to cognitive processes that lead to lazy thinking and faulty belief. The theory that Kahneman presents had its origin in research he undertook and published with Amos Tversky and others in the 1970s. Having first noticed that people’s decisions were prone to mistakes, the researchers sought to isolate and analyze the participants’ intuitive thinking and often-incorrect judgments. This research changed widely held assumptions about human nature, according to which behavior normally and usually proceeded from reason, except for those occasions on which reason was overcome by emotion. People used slow and deliberate thinking to evaluate possible solutions before making decisions, so said the near-consensus view. Tversky and Kahneman argued, however, that, while we can and do use reason, we often fall back on a type of thinking that is quick, requires less effort than rational thought, and is prone to error. Although these intuitive judgments were the focus of their research and its findings, they did not deny that rational thinking has a place, but, instead, argued that depending on intrinsic and extrinsic factors, both thought processes influenced decision-making. In Thinking Fast and Slow, Kahneman described these dual modes, or processes, as System 1 and System 2. System 2 will here be considered first, because it is the very model of reasoned deliberation Kahneman and colleagues challenged and then refined. It is the familiar model and, as it is the loftiest, it is the one with which most people self-identify. This kind of thinking attempts objectivity, and, in it, we take our time to weigh explicitly known evidence and consider alternatives before choosing a solution. When we use System 2, we are less likely to make mistakes. Unfortunately, it requires selective and sustained attention, which can be depleted by difficult cognitive reasoning as well as changes in motivation and self-control. Sometimes, people are too lazy to use System 2 thinking. It is at these moments, and when circumstances do not allow for deliberation, that we fall back on System 1. System 1 thinking is associated with intuition. It operates quickly and requires less cognitive effort, thus providing certain advantages. It is efficient in that it speeds up the decision-making process, often necessary, Kahneman argues, considering the many decisions we have to make every day in a world that bombards us with information. This type of intuitive thinking is governed by heuristics, or mental shortcuts, that we use to think and act quickly. Judgments and decisions we make with heuristics can be good—or good enough—but heuristics can also lead to incorrect judgments. Kahneman cites examples of these heuristics. Among those he cites are the representativeness heuristic and the availability heuristic. The representativeness heuristic is used when making judgments about the probability of an event. It allows us automatically and easily, but sometimes erroneously, to identify causal connections between events. We prefer an ordered existence of causation and pattern to one of chance and random sequence, and, when such order is not present, we will intuitively impose it. With this distortion, subsequent mistakes are more likely. Kahneman illustrates his point using the example of the sex of six babies born in sequence at a hospital, which is, of course, random. The events are independent of each other, and the sex of one baby does not determine and cannot predict the sex of another. When asked to consider the possible birth gender sequences of BBBGGG, GGGGGG, and BGBBGB, we intuitively do not think that these three are equally likely. People tend to judge the last sequ (...truncated)


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Anne Kelly. Think Twice: Review of Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (2011), Numeracy, 2017, Volume 10, Issue 2,