Some Reasons People Aren’t Rational

System 1 and System 2

Cognitive ease is a state where you won’t need System 2 much. However, this might make you sloppy as you get overconfident.

A study of new diagnoses of kidney cancer in the 3,141 counties of the United States reveals a remarkable pattern. The counties in which the incidence of kidney cancer is lowest are mostly rural, sparsely populated, and located in traditionally Republican states in the Midwest, the South, and the West. What do you make of this? (p. 110)

When people see a birdie covered in sad gloopy oil, they are willing to forego reason and freak out. Really, birds covered in oil are not a big part of the damage of an oil spill. But, look at this freaking bird! Don’t you want to worry about it! Not very rational, Kahneman would say.

Which alternative is more probable:
Linda is a bank teller.
Linda is a bank teller in the feminist movement.

Quote from 2015 diss piece on Donald Trump
Psychological value does not quite equal dollar value (p. 283). Does this mean we “should” experience psychological value equal to dollars? Or does it mean we should never assume humans equate dollars with psychological value? Idk, it’s still a good chart and a peculiar kind of humanthinking.
See how those first eyes command your attention? Even if they are not more important?

Experiencing versus Remembering

Who had a worse time during their medical procedure? Patient A actually reported it to be much worse than Patient B. This is because Patient A had a very high peak of pain, and a peak right at the end. Patient B had a much longer procedure, but the remembering self doesn’t seem to care much about duration, so the gentler ending made this procedure less painful, in memory (p. 379).
People will rate how satisfied they are with their life more and more highly right around a wedding, but a few years later, marriage doesn’t help life satisfaction scores at all (p. 398).

Some Conclusions

--

--

Essayist.

Get the Medium app

A button that says 'Download on the App Store', and if clicked it will lead you to the iOS App store
A button that says 'Get it on, Google Play', and if clicked it will lead you to the Google Play store