Thinking Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman

Summary by Surendra Tanwar

Thinking Fast And Slow
Introduction

The Book deals with Systemic Errors, also know as Bias

Thinking Fast And Slow
Introduction

An individual has been described by a neighbor as follows:

“Steve is very shy and withdrawn, invariably helpful but with little interest in people or in the world of
reality. A meek and tidy soul, he has a need for order and structure, and a passion for detail.”

Is Steve more likely to be a librarian or a farmer?”

Thinking Fast And Slow
Introduction

An individual has been described by a neighbor as follows:

“Steve is very shy and withdrawn, invariably helpful but with little interest in people or in the world of
reality. A meek and tidy soul, he has a need for order and structure, and a passion for detail.”

Is Steve more likely to be a librarian or a farmer?”

Thinking Fast And Slow
Introduction

While answering people used resemblance as a simplifying heuristic (roughly, a rule

of thumb) to make a difficult judgment.
The reliance on the heuristic caused predictable biases (systematic errors) in their
predictions.
While in actual there are 20 more male farmers for each male librarian in the US, so
participants ignored the relevant statistical fact and relied exclusively on resemblance.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Introduction

Availability Heuristics
“Is K more likely to appear as the first letter in a word OR as the third letter?”
“ K, L, N, R, V” - occur more frequently in third position than in first position
Thinking Fast And Slow
Introduction

Affect Heuristics
“where judgments and decisions are guided directly by feelings of liking and
disliking, with little deliberation or reasoning.”
“Boy, do they know how to make a car!”
Thinking Fast And Slow
Introduction

Intuition
The psychology of accurate intuition involves no magic.
Herbert Simon, who studied chess masters and showed that after thousands of hours
of practice they come to see the pieces on the board differently from the rest of us.
“The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information
stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more
and nothing less than recognition.”
Unfortunately, professionals’ intuitions do not all arise from true expertise.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Introduction

Intuition
When the question is difficult and a skilled solution is not available, intuition still
has a shot.
The question that the executive faced (should I invest in Ford stock?) was
difficult, but the answer to an easier and related question (do I like Ford cars?)
came readily to his mind and determined his choice.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Introduction

The spontaneous search for an intuitive solution sometimes fails—neither an

expert solution nor a heuristic answer comes to mind. In such cases we often find
ourselves switching to a slower, more deliberate and effortful form of thinking.
Fast thinking includes both variants of intuitive thought—the expert and the
heuristic—as well as the entirely automatic mental activities of perception and
memory, the operations that enable you to know there is a lamp on your desk or
retrieve the name of the capital of Russia.
Fast & Slow thinking: System 1 and System 2
Thinking Fast And Slow
Introduction

The book is divided into five parts

Part 1:
Presents the basic elements of a two-systems approach to judgment and choice.
Distinction between the automatic operations of System 1 and the controlled operations of System 2”
How associative memory, the core of System 1, continually constructs a coherent interpretation of
what is going on in our world at any instant
Complexity and richness of the automatic and often unconscious: Processes that underlie intuitive
thinking
How these automatic processes explain the heuristics of judgment.
Goal : Introduce a language for thinking and talking about the mind.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Introduction

Part 2
Updates the study of judgment heuristics and explores a major puzzle:
Why is it so difficult for us to think statistically?
We easily think associatively, we think metaphorically, we think causally,
but statistics requires thinking about many things at once, which is
something that System 1 is not designed to do.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Introduction

Part 3
The difficulties of statistical thinking contribute to the main theme of Part
3
It describes a puzzling limitation of our mind: our excessive confidence in
what we believe we know, and our apparent inability to acknowledge the
full extent of our ignorance and the uncertainty of the world we live in.
We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world
and to underestimate the role of chance in events. Overconfidence is fed by
the illusory certainty of hindsight
Thinking Fast And Slow
Introduction

Part 4
The focus of here is conversation with the discipline of economics on the
nature of decision making.
Key concepts of prospect theory.
Several ways human choices deviate from the rules of rationality.
Tendency to treat problems in isolation, and with framing effects, where
decisions are shaped by inconsequential features of choice problems.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Introduction

Part 5
The experiencing self and the remembering self.
The distinction between two selves is applied to the measurement of well-
being, where we find again that what makes the experiencing self happy is
not quite the same as what satisfies the remembering self.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: Characters of the Story
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: Characters of the Story

17 X 24
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: Characters of the Story


System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no
sense of voluntary control.
17 X 24
System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it,
including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often
associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and
concentration.

Although System 2 believes itself to be where the action is, the automatic System 1 is the hero of the book
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: Characters of the Story

System 1:
Detect that one object is more distant than another.
Orient to the source of a sudden sound.
Complete the phrase “bread and…”
Make a “disgust face” when shown a horrible picture.
Detect hostility in a voice.
Answer to 2 + 2 = ?
Read words on large billboards.
Drive a car on an empty road.
Find a strong move in chess (if you are a chess master).
Understand simple sentences.
Recognize that a “meek and tidy soul with a passion for detail” resembles an occupational stereotype.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: Characters of the Story

System 2:
Brace for the starter gun in a race.
Focus attention on the clowns in the circus.
Focus on the voice of a particular person in a crowded and noisy room.
Look for a woman with white hair.
Search memory to identify a surprising sound.
Maintain a faster walking speed than is natural for you.
Monitor the appropriateness of your behavior in a social situation.
Count the occurrences of the letter a in a page of text.
Tell someone your phone number.
Park in a narrow space (for most people except garage attendants).
Compare two washing machines for overall value.
The often-used phrase “pay attention” is apt: you dispose of a limited budget of attention that
you can allocate to activities
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: Characters of the Story

System 1 and System 2 are both active

System1 runs Automatically - System 2 is in comfortable low effort mode
System 1 continuously generates suggestions for System 2: impressions, intuitions, intentions, and feelings. If
endorsed by System 2, impressions and intuitions turn into beliefs, and impulses turn into voluntary actions.
When all goes smoothly, which is most of the time, System 2 adopts the suggestions of System 1 with little or
no modification. You generally believe your impressions and act on your desires, and that is fine—usually.
When System 1 runs into difficulty, it calls on System 2 to support more detailed and specific processing that
may solve the problem of the moment. System 2 is mobilized when a question arises for which System 1 does
not offer an answer, as probably happened to you when you encountered the multiplication problem 17 × 24.
You can also feel a surge of conscious attention whenever you are surprised. System 2 is activated when an
event is detected that violates the model of the world that System 1 maintains.
System 2 is also credited with the continuous monitoring of your own behavior—the control that keeps you
polite when you are angry, and alert when you are driving at night. System 2 is mobilized to increased effort
when it detects an error about to be made.

M
os
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: Characters of the Story

Limitations of System 1
It Answers easier questions than it is asked

Little understanding of logic and stats

It cannot be turned off.

If you are shown a word on the screen in a language you know, you will read it—unless your
attention is totally focused elsewhere.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: Characters of the Story

Limitations of System 1
It Answers easier questions than it is asked

Little understanding of logic and stats

It cannot be turned off.

If you are shown a word on the screen in a language you know, you will read it—unless your
attention is totally focused elsewhere.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: Characters of the Story

Conflict between an automatic run and an intention to control it.

Trying not to stare at the oddly dressed couple at the neighboring table in a restaurant.

Task of sys 2 to overcome impulses of sys 1 - Sys 2 is in charge of Self Control

Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: Characters of the Story

Conflict between an automatic run and an intention to control it.

Trying not to stare at the oddly dressed couple at the neighboring table in a restaurant.

Task of sys 2 to overcome impulses of sys 1 - Sys 2 is in charge of Self Control

Müller-
Lyer
illusion
To resist the illusion, there is only one thing you can do: you must learn to mistrust your
impressions of the length of lines when fins are attached to them.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: Characters of the Story

There are illusions of thought - Cognitive Illusions

Difficult to avoid, as sys 1 operates automatically and can’t be turned off. System 2 has no clue to
error.

Can be prevented with enhanced monitoring and effortful activity of Sys 2 - impractical.

The best we can do is a compromise: learn to recognize situations in which mistakes are likely and
try harder to avoid.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: Attention and Effort

Add 1

Make several strings of 4 digit Nos and write them down on index cards.

Set metronome to 1/sec.

Remove the blank card and read the four digits aloud. Wait for two beats, then report a string
in which each of the original digits is incremented by 1. If the digits on the card are 5294, the
correct response is 6305. Keeping the rhythm is important.

Changing size of pupil - proof of hard work.

Belladonna - Cosmetic

Bazaar shoppers, who wear eye glasses to hide their interest from merchants.

Pupil - window to
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: Attention and Effort

Mental life - Life of System 2

Is normally conducted at the pace of a comfortable walk, sometimes interrupted by episodes of

jogging and on rare occasions by a frantic sprint.

The Add-1 and Add-3 exercises are sprints, and casual chatting is a stroll.

People, when engaged in a mental sprint, may become effectively blind - Invisible Gorilla
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: Attention and Effort

System 2 adapts to task sets

Switching from one task to another is effortful.

Time pressure is a driver for effort.

Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: The Lazy Controller

Walk and think at the same time, at the extremes of these activities compete for the limited
resources of System 2.

While walking comfortably with a friend, ask him to compute 23 × 78 in his head, and to do so
immediately. He will almost certainly stop in his tracks.

Mental effort of self-control is needed to resist the urge to slow down.

Self-control and deliberate thought apparently draw on the same limited budget of effort.

Self control and cognitive efforts are both forms of mental effort.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: The Lazy Controller

Fortunately, cognitive work is not always aversive, and people sometimes expend considerable
effort for long periods of time without having to exert willpower.

Csikszent Mihalyi - Flow: “state of effortless attending”

People who experience flow describe it as “a state of effortless concentration so deep that they lose
their sense of time, of themselves, of their problems,”
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: The Lazy Controller
The Busy and Depleted System 2

Self control and cognitive efforts are both forms of mental effort.

People who are simultaneously challenged by a demanding cognitive task and by a temptation are more likely
to yield to the temptation.

People who are cognitively busy are also more likely to make selfish choices, use sexist language, and make
superficial judgments in social situations.

Roy Baumiester - All variants of voluntary effort—cognitive, emotional, or physical—draw at least partly on a
shared pool of mental energy.

Effort of will or self-control is tiring; if you have had to force yourself to do something, you are less willing or
less able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes around - Ego Depletion

People are first depleted by a task in which they eat virtuous foods : resisting the temptation to indulge in
chocolate etc. Later, these people will give up earlier than normal when faced with a difficult cognitive task.

Mental Energy is more than a metaphor - Body consumes more Glucose, when engaged in cognitive task.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: The Lazy Controller
The Lazy System 2

Solve the problem below:

A bat and ball cost $1.10. The bat costs one dollar more than the ball.How much does the ball
cost?

Many people are overconfident, prone to place too much faith in their intuitions. They apparently
find cognitive effort at least mildly unpleasant and avoid it as much as possible.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: The Lazy Controller
Intelligence, Control, Rationality

University of Oregon explored the link between cognitive control and intelligence in several ways,
including an attempt to raise intelligence by improving the control of attention.

System 1 is impulsive and intuitive; System 2 is capable of reasoning, and it is cautious, but at least for
some people it is also lazy.

Stanovich

Rationality and the Reflective Mind.

Two parts of System 2

Arithmetic

Rationality

Rationality different from Intelligence

Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: The Associative Machine

Associative Activation
Ideas that have been evoked trigger many other ideas, in a spreading cascade of activity in your brain.
The essential feature of this complex set of mental events is its coherence.

Each element is connected, and each supports and strengthens the others.

The word evokes memories, which evoke emotions, which in turn evoke facial expressions and other
reactions, such as a general tensing up and an avoidance tendency.

Cognition is embodied; you think with your body, not only with your brain.

An idea that has been activated does not merely evoke one other idea. It activates many ideas, which in
turn activate others. Furthermore, only a few of the activated ideas will register in consciousness;

Most of the work of associative thinking is silent, hidden from our conscious selves.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: The Associative Machine
The Marvels of Priming

Exposure to a word causes immediate and measurable changes in the ease with
which many related words can be evoked.
Priming not restricted to words and concepts - Florida Effect: Old age action, by
priming to old age related words.
Influencing action by words - Ideomotor effect.
Ideomotor also works in a reverse manner.
“Acting Calm and Kind regardless” of how you feel is a Good Advice
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: The Associative Machine
Primes That Guide Us

Studies of priming effects threaten our self-image as conscious and autonomous

authors of our judgments and our choices.
Money Priming
Money-primed people become more independent than they would be without
the associative trigger.
Persevered almost twice as long in trying to solve a very difficult problem,
before asking help.
Show preference to be alone
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: The Associative Machine
Primes That Guide Us

Studies of priming effects threaten our self-image as conscious and autonomous

authors of our judgments and our choices.
Money Priming
Money-primed people become more independent than they would be without
the associative trigger.
Persevered almost twice as long in trying to solve a very difficult problem,
before asking help.
Show preference to be alone
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: The Associative Machine
Primes That Guide Us

Speaking of Priming

“The sight of all these people in uniforms does not prime creativity.”

“The world makes much less sense than you think. The coherence comes mostly from the way your mind
works.”

“They were primed to find flaws, and this is exactly what they found.”

“His System 1 constructed a story, and his System 2 believed it. It happens to all.”

“I made myself smile and I’m actually feeling better!”

Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: The Associative Machine
Cognitive Ease

Cognitive Ease: Easy and Strained

Easy: All going well
Strain: Current level of effort and presence of unmet demands
Dial of Cognitive Ease connected to large No of Inputs and Outputs
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: The Associative Machine
Illusions of Remembering

The experience of familiarity has a simple but powerful quality of ‘pastness’ that
seems to indicate that it is a direct reflection of prior experience.
A new word is more likely to be recognized as familiar if it is unconsciously
primed by
Showing it for a few milliseconds
Or showing it in sharper contrast
This link also operates in the other direction
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: The Associative Machine
Illusions of Truth

Illusions inevitably occur if a judgment is based on an impression of cognitive

ease or strain.
Anything that makes it easier for the associative machine to run smoothly will
also bias beliefs.
A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition,
because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: The Associative Machine
How to write a Persuasive message

General principle - Anything you can do to reduce cognitive load.

First maximize legibility.
Adolf Hitler was born in 1892.
Adolf Hitler was born in 1887.

Don’t use complex language, where simple language will do.

Make your message memorable.
If you quote a source: Easy to pronounce.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: The Associative Machine
Strain and Effort

On the one hand, cognitive strain is experienced when the effortful operations of
System 2 are engaged.
On the other hand, the experience of cognitive strain, whatever its source, tends
to mobilize System 2, shifting people’s approach to problems from a casual
intuitive mode to a more engaged and analytic mode.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: The Associative Machine
Pleasures of Cognitive Ease

Feature of System 1 that cognitive ease is associated with good feelings.

Mere Exposure Effect - Repetition of an arbitrary stimulus and the mild
affection that people eventually have for it.
The mere exposure effect occurs - because the repeated exposure of a stimulus is
followed by nothing bad. Such a stimulus will eventually become a safety signal,
and safety is good.
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: The Associative Machine
Ease, mood and Intuition

A very faint signal from the associative machine - generates a sense of Cognitive
ease.
Manipulations that increase cognitive ease (priming, a clear font, pre-exposing
words) all increase the tendency to see the words as linked.
Happy mood increases accuracy, when we are uncomfortable, we lose touch with
our intuition.
Good mood, intuition, creativity, gullibility, and increased reliance on System 1
form a cluster.
Sadness, vigilance, suspicion, an analytic approach, and increased effort also go
together.
When in a good mood, people become more intuitive and more creative but also less vigilant and more
Thinking Fast And Slow
Part 1 - Two Systems: The Associative Machine
Ease, mood and Intuition

Speaking of Cognitive Ease

“Let’s not dismiss their business plan just because the font makes it hard to read.”

“We must be inclined to believe it because it has been repeated so often, but let’s think it through
again.”

“Familiarity breeds liking. This is a mere exposure effect.”

“I’m in a very good mood today, and my System 2 is weaker than usual. I should be extra careful.”
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