Paper Example. About This Book

The book is relevant to any individual interested in learning psychology and the usual human process of thoughts. It was written to analyse two modes of thinking. The modes are divided into two systems, namely; system one, which is composed of emotions, and instinctiveness, and the second system, which is slower in comparison to the first system and is composed of logic and deliberate. It focuses more on general and critical thoughts to change people's nature of thinking.

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Main ideas

In his research, Daniel considered system one to be fast thinking. He described the thinking as being automatic or within microseconds while system two was perceived as mentally draining and demands total human concentration to make a solid judgment. The author mentioned that it was difficult to avoid biases. He condemned the issues and encouraged the use of the second system of thinking to avoid mistakes.

Chapter 1

System 1 is the automatic, non-rational set of thought processes by which people often make decisions. System 2 is deliberate and rational, but it is also lazy. It endorses whatever visceral judgment System 1 comes up with. The use of System 2 involves a focal point, so there is undivided attention. As System 2 is acting on a problem, one is less aware of anything not immediately relevant to solving the problem. The systems conflict whenever one is faced with a counterintuitive task.

Chapter 2

Kahneman says that System 1 is the main character, while System two is just a supporting character. System 2 shuns effort. It gets involved in decision making only when needed. Kahneman's introduction begins with a somewhat negative tone. It is expected that a psychological book of this calibre might have a motivational, rhetoric tone. He suggests that people are not exactly shrewd self-critics, especially against their own processes of reasoning. They are, however, good at criticizing others. Thus, Kahneman hopes that readers of his work can become more skilled at this kind of criticism, being able to detect the blind spots in other people's decision making. In line with this thinking, his work is not as pessimistic as it may look like at first.

The two "systems" are actually aliases for different ways of thinking. They are not as concrete as a distinct physical region of the brain. Kahneman chooses System 1 and System 2 as names because these terms have been used in other psychological publications. He treats System 1 and System 2 as characters in a story since a story with characters is much more easily understood and assimilated than a plain expounding of dry facts.

Chapter 3

System 2 thinking demands self-control, especially if it is under pressure by time. Kahneman notes some exceptions to this general trend: in a pleasant and well-studied psychological state called flow, all one's attention goes into the activity at hand, and no effort is needed to stick to the task. This state of diminished self-control is known as ego depletion. Keen to avoid such an expenditure of willpower, System 2 seldom contradicts the intuitions of System 1 unless an obvious discrepancy prompts further investigation.

Chapter 4

System 1 works largely by association. Once an idea has been "activated"—for instance, by reading a word—System 1 spontaneously searches for related and compatible ideas. Much of this associative work happens unconsciously, as can be observed in studies of so-called priming effects, patterns of behaviour and cognition that appear when a subject is primed with a particular stimulus.

Chapter 5

In deciding whether System 2 should be tapped to evaluate a decision, System 1 relies on a perception of cognitive ease or it’s opposite, cognitive strain. The more strained System 1 is, the less effective its intuitions are, and the more likely System 2 is to be called in to consciously address the problem at hand. However, problems presented in small, difficult-to-read font activated System 2 and led more participants to reject the incorrect intuitive answer suggested by System 1 and to arrive at a correct answer by using System 2.

Chapters 6

Kahneman explains that System 1 is constantly engaged in "maintaining and updating a model" of the world, and of "what is normal in it." Against the backdrop of these mental norms, some events stand out as surprising, but the mind quickly adapts to surprises and fits them into the overarching pattern. Thus, an event System 2 knows to be rare can seem familiar and expected to System 1 simply because it matches up with a past experience. Faced with two consecutive surprises, System 1 works to weave them together into a pattern that makes neither event surprising. In doing so, System 1 often comes up with causal explanations, in which agency, blame, and intention are imputed even to inanimate objects. Such causal reasoning works adequately much of the time, but it works against the grain of any attempt to reason statistically. When phenomena have no clear single cause, or must be considered in aggregate, statistical reasoning (a System 2 specialty) is necessary.

Chapter 7

The net effect of many System 1 intuitions is a tendency to jump to conclusions. "Conscious doubt" and the toleration of uncertainty require the deliberate, effortful engagement of System 2. Without such conscious scrutiny, people are prone to confirmation bias, in which evidence that fits into pre-existing beliefs is given more weight than contradictory evidence (which may be dismissed entirely). This bias can take the form of a halo effect, a "tendency to like (or dislike) everything about a person."

Chapter 8

Kahneman asserts, understands the world in terms of basic assessments—simple, approximate, intuitive readings of the current situation. These assessments tend to sort events and objects into crude categories: aversive or attractive, threat or opportunity. System 1 is good at estimating averages, for instance, but very poor at estimating sums, or what Kahneman calls sum-like variables. Unfortunately, statistical and probabilistic reasoning rely on the ability to compare such variables.

Chapter 10

Because System 1 tends to reason causally about events, it is easily fooled by small samples reporting extreme results. It is a basic statistical truth that small samples are more likely to display extreme outcomes: one is much more likely to see "all heads, no tails" when flipping four coins at once than when flipping eight. System 1's inability to account for this fact is what Kahneman and Tversky wryly termed "the law of small numbers."

Chapter 11

Next, Kahneman introduces the anchoring effect, in which people are found to be extremely suggestible in making numerical estimates. The discovery of such an effect is one of Kahneman and Tversky's most important joint contributions to psychological literature. In the anchor and adjust heuristic, an anchor is chosen early in the reasoning process.

Chapter 12

The availability heuristic is one well-studied means by which System 1 estimates frequencies. To decide how frequent or likely something is, people often rely instead on how easy it is to think of examples.

Chapter 13

In this chapter, the judgment of availability is discussed with key indications of the key ways that these judgments exist within the society. The aspect of exaggeration has helped people to learn more about the tendencies that they have come to fear while they do not provide much consideration to the incidences that get less media attention. In this instance, it is notable that the events that get much media attention are taken as key factors that affect the population. This sets the course of bias and makes contrary opinions than those depicted on the media to be heard.

Chapter 14

This chapter deals with the representativeness heuristic and base rates. The chapter depicts the nature of people to have less trust for the statistical factors while they consider the representatives to have a higher outcome for their activities as indicated. The use of a proper channel to work with the representative models in the community makes people to form perceptions based on the representations than the base rates from statistical factors.

Chapter 15

This chapter depicts the nature of representativeness heuristic to distort statistics and makes people have diverse illogical guesses. The example is depicted of a description of Linda who is indicated as a lady who is single and brilliant and a philosophy major. Linda is also indicated to have a great interest in matters pertaining to the issues of social justice and discrimination. Most students selected information that described Linda in a particular manner, which did not describe her activities; this was due to the aspect of relating her activities with feminism an aspect that she did not participate in. Therefore, the instance here depicts the nature of relating with the information within the audience where they make illogical guesses that strays someone away from the point.

Chapter 16

This chapter depicts the differences between statistical base rates and causal base rates. The statistical base rates help in identifying the variables in broad terms that help in forging a proper description of the elements as they are conducted. Nonetheless, the causal rates have a specific aspect that relates the rates to a particular activity that they are referring to. In this instance, it is notable that it is easier to leave out the statistics and work with information that does not depict the actual nature of activities. This indicates the tendency of people to exempt from using statistics to ensure they have a greater self-image.

Chapter 17

Regression to the mean, a phenomenon occurring in the daily lives of an individual is used in this case to depict different situations in the community. A jinx is expected in any form of performance to help in explaining the first performance and its difference from the second performance. In most fields, this helps to push towards the mean and ensure that an average performance can be sought to help in distinguishing a greater channel to impart value on every item as depicted in the series of information. Handling the key variables in this case makes it simpler to have a generalized perspective of looking at items that take place within the community. All of these factors are substantial to relating with the community to depict their ways of catering for value in series of ways that depict the less extreme nature of the second performance.

Chapter 18

Notably, the understanding of regression to the mean helps in providing one with the capacity to look into different predictions that do not take the regression into account and offer a correct insight into the events that take place. This helps to avoid the concept of extreme predictions by looking into the realistic turn of events that can be statistically favorable for both situations. In this case, an instance of depicting the example of an extremely tall child becoming a tall adult but not extremely tall.

Chapter 19

The illusion of understanding makes people to have various ways of looking at items that take place to them and seek to form a cogent and coherent narrative. In this case, one might change their perspective after an event and depict that they had known the outcomes in the earlier case. This makes one seek to form an understanding of the events that takes place despite holding contrary opinions to the results.

Chapter 20

The illusion of validity affects the capacity of predicting the future where non- applicable tools are considered to have a great influence. In this case, the tools are indicated to have massive value to the individuals and influence their chance to encourage the development of their opinions.