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<1% of women in the US have a home birth. If you’re high risk (breech, twins, gestational diabetes), you’ll probably need a hospital birth, as it’ll be hard to find a midwife to attend a risky birth. But if you can have a home birth, should you have one? Learn the advantages and disadvantages of home birth here.
What is overconfidence bias? How do you avoid it? Overconfidence bias is when a person feels more confident in the accuracy of his or her judgment than objective standards would indicate. Overconfidence bias can lead to bad decisions and faulty predictions. Learn what overconfidence bias is, see examples of different types of overconfidence bias, and learn how to avoid the overconfidence effect.
What is “System 2 thinking?” When should you use it? And why can it be more effective than System 1 thinking? System 2 thinking is thinking that allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. It’s often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice and concentration. We’ll cover the properties of System 2 thinking and how to use it to make better decisions.
Birth plans are short documents that describe what you want to happen during your birth and what treatments you’re willing to accept in which situations. OBs and nurses have a slight aversion to them because they may signal some inflexibility to do what they think is best in critical situations. But Oster argues it’s far better to think about hard decisions and articulate your preferences beforehand than to come up with them on the fly. Here are the elements of Emily Oster’s birth plan:
Pregnant women are commonly recommended to avoid a long list of foods – raw eggs, raw fish, cheeses, deli meats, to name a few. The general fear is that food illnesses can bear a risk to the fetus. Are these real threats and foods you avoid when pregnant? Or are these overblown? Emily Oster argues that many food illnesses are actually no riskier than when you’re not pregnant. But two forms are, and are worth avoiding. Foods Commonly Avoided that are Actually Fine Typical food poisoning is caused by Salmonella, E.coli, and Campylobacter. These pathogens cause diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting,
What are framing effects in psychology? How do framing effects affect decision making? The framing effect is a cognitive bias in which people make decisions based on whether the options are “framed,” or presented, as losses or gains. An outcome presented as a gain is much more favorable as the same outcome framed as a loss. We’ll cover how framing effects impact your decision making and look at framing effect examples.
What is narrative fallacy? When and why do you make this fallacy, and how can you avoid it? The narrative fallacy is the tendency to create a story with cause-and-effect explanations out of random details and events. We fall victim to the narrative fallacy because our brains want to make sense of a random world. Learn why your brain is so prone to falling for the narrative fallacy and how to counter it.
What is “System 1 Thinking,” from Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow? When should I use it, and when shouldn’t I? System 1 thinking is thinking that operates automatically and quickly. It takes little or no effort, and no sense of voluntary control. We’ll cover how Kahneman’s System 1 thinking is involved in making judgments and what biases System 1 thinking leaves you susceptible to.
Which fish are best for you to eat during pregnancy? In Expecting Better, Emily Oster covers the best fish while pregnant, from best to worst.
How easy is it to get pregnant at age 30? Age 35? Age 40 or 45? We’ve got the data here on your chances of conception at each age, along with charts showing the data. Contrary to what you learned in high school health class, it’s not that easy to get pregnant. Female fertility peaks in your teens, then decreases gradually from then on, until falling off a cliff around age 45.