The World's Best Book Summaries
What is the history of male dominance in society? Since the Agricultural Revolution, most cultures have valued males over females, regardless of how each culture defined men and women. Why? Is there a biological basis for this preference? We’ll cover the history of male dominance in society and why there’s not a clear explanation for its origins.
What is the status quo bias? What are some examples of the status quo bias? The status quo bias is the tendency to compare outcomes to the baseline of your experiences. This bias affects how you perceive gains and losses. We’ll cover two status quo bias examples and how it affects your expectations and emotional response when outcomes meet, or fail to meet, your expectations.
In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari uses concepts from physics, chemistry, biology, and history to tell the story of us, Homo sapiens history. Homo Sapiens history is punctuated by four major revolutions: The Cognitive Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution, the Scientific Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution. Each revolution ushered in a new era of innovation (and, often, suffering) for humans. In this brief history of Homo sapiens, we’ll look at each revolution and how it dramatically redirected the course of the history of Sapiens.
What is price anchoring? How does it affect sales, and how does it affect what you pay for your purchases or how much you donate to charity? Price anchoring is the practice of giving a price point for a sales item or donation to influence consumer or donor decisions. Price anchoring is based on the psychological principle that, when shown an initial piece of information, you bias toward that information, even if it’s irrelevant to the decision at hand. We’ll cover how price anchoring works and how you can keep it from overinfluencing your decisions if you’re the customer.
What is the halo effect? What is a good halo-effect example? The halo effect is a bias that says that if you think positively about something, it extends to everything else you can think about that thing. This is a cognitive bias that may lead to bad decisions. Learn the meaning of the halo effect in psychology, why we’re vulnerable to it, and how it works in a halo effect example.
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.
Clearly, ignorance played a role in Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of America: He thought he had landed at what would later be known as the Indonesian archipelago, for one, and he also thought he was the first European to land there (the first was probably Viking Leif Eriksson). But how did Christopher Columbus’s voyages exemplify the ignorance of his time? And how did his voyages spark the Scientific Revolution? We’ll cover some of the sources of ignorance of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of America and look at how his voyages marked a turn to science.
What were early hunter-gatherers’ food choices? What did they eat? How did their food affect their health? Hunter-gatherers ate broadly: termites, berries, roots, rabbits, bison, and mammoth, among other foods. Their varied diet likely contributed to their health and lack of disease. We’ll cover why hunter-gatherers’ food choices were healthy and how hunter-gatherers lived.
What is social stratification? What are social stratification examples that make clear how class and ethnic divides create and foster inequality? How is social stratification based on mythmaking and accident? Social stratification is the ranking of people into imagined hierarchies. These rankings have no basis in reality–they’re created to maintain the status quo, allowing the most powerful to retain power. We’ll cover a social stratification example that looks at how imaginary hierarchies and random events created the race divide in America.
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.