The World's Best Book Summaries
What is intensity matching? How does Daniel Kahneman’s intensity-matching approach help fight bias? Intensity matching is translating values in a comparison across dimensions. Comparing values in different dimensions can help you make better judgments, but it can also lead to illogical thinking. We’ll cover examples of intensity matching and how it’s involved in the process of evaluation.
What is the certainty effect? How does it blind us to options that are less than optimal, but still pretty good? The certainty effect is the tendency of people to feel disproportionately better about outcomes that are certain compared to outcomes that are probable or possible. This leads people to overweight certainty when making judgments. We’ll cover how the certainty effect works and its role in Daniel Kahneman’s prospect theory.
What is duration neglect? What does it have to do with our overall happiness? Duration neglect is the psychological principle that the length of an experience has little effect on the memory of that event. This factor affects how remember pain and joy. We’ll cover the concept of duration neglect, how it affects overall happiness, and the experiments that demonstrate its power.
What is the meaning of the pygmalion effect? How do our expectations affect results? The pygmalion effect is a phenomenon in which a person’s expectation of a target person affects the target person’s performance. If you have higher expectations of a person, he or she will tend to do better. Learn what the pygmalion effect means in everyday life and how bias plays a part in whether the pygmalion effect is positive or negative.
What is the “mere exposure effect”? How does it work? What’s a good mere exposure effect example? The mere exposure effect is the idea that exposing someone to an input repeatedly makes them like it more. For example, having a memory of a word, phrase, or idea makes it easier to see again. We’ll cover mere exposure effect examples that demonstrate its power, and how you can use the mere exposure effect to create cognitive ease.
What is the focusing illusion? How does it affect your memory of an event? The focusing illusion is a cognitive bias that happens when you focus too much on one aspect of an experience. This keeps you from holding an accurate memory of the experience as a whole and leads to bad predictions about future experiences. We’ll cover what the focusing illusion is, how it affects what we predict will make us happy, and how to counter it.
What’s an indifference curve? How does it explain how much I value my belongings? Where is it inaccurate? An indifference curve is a graph that demonstrates goods are quantities that a person sees as equal in value. Indifference curves don’t always accurately describe reality–for instance, they can’t explain why we tend to overvalue our belongings. We’ll cover the indifference curve definition and the properties of indifference curves.
What is the law of small numbers? How does ignoring it lead to biased decision-making? The law of small numbers is the bias of making generalizations from a small sample size. In truth, the smaller your sample size, the more likely you are to have extreme results. If you’re not aware of this principle, when you have small sample sizes, you may be misled by outliers. We’ll cover two examples of the law of small numbers in action and how to use your awareness of it to make better decisions.
What is the meaning of “priming” in psychology? How does priming work? When is it useful? Why is it controversial? Priming is a technique based on the theory that when an idea is triggered, its associations can cause you to behave in a meaningfully different way without your consciously realizing it. The concept of priming takes the idea of association beyond mere thought, to the functional level. We’ll cover what priming is, how it’s used, and why it’s controversial.
What is narrow framing? Does it help or hinder our decision-making process? Narrow framing is when you focus on the details at the expense of the big picture. Narrow framing can hurt your decision-making skills because it keeps you from seeing your choices in context. We’ll cover what narrow framing is, how it differs from broad framing, and how to counter narrow framing in your everyday life.