Book Review: Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
15th January 2014
Shaped by psychological discoveries of recent decades, Daniel Kahneman presents his current understanding of judgement and decision making in his book ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’. Using his fictitious characters ‘system 1’ and ‘system 2’ to describe our different modes of thinking, Kahneman leads the reader to understand how we are not the creatures of reason that we believe we are. Whilst being embedded in the research that resulted in Daniel Kahneman winning the Nobel Prize, this book is written in an accessible, engaging and thought provoking manner.
In a classic study by Solomon Asch, descriptions of two people were provided and readers were asked to comment on their personality.
What do you think of Alan and Ben?
Alan: intelligent – industrious – impulsive – critical – stubborn – envious
Ben: envious – stubborn – critical – impulsive – industrious – intelligent
If you are like most of us, you viewed Alan more favourably than Ben. This example of the ‘halo effect’ illustrates the superior importance placed on the traits that are initially learnt about an individual, compared to the often ‘worthlessness’ of the subsequent traits. This highlights one of the many ways that we automatically generate a simpler representation of the world which consequently biases our view of people, situations and impacts upon our decision making.
Kahneman discusses a range of scenarios where we do not always reach decisions based on the considered and reasonable process that we perceive we are in control of. The mere act of holding a pencil between your teeth to mimic a smile can radically alter your interpretation of a cartoon whilst the ‘depletion effect’ caused parole judges with lower blood sugar levels to view applicants less favourably. Meanwhile, the ‘anchoring effect’ resulted in judges’ sentencing people to longer prison terms after rolling a higher number on a dice.
The role of chance is hugely underestimated in life. Analysis of fund managers’ performance concludes that their success rate is the same is if their choices had been made by chance. Kahneman continues to explain how the powerful ‘illusion of skill’ sustains managers in their belief that good results are a consequence of their skill.
Where does this leave the reader? Do we not have any control or free will when making our decisions in life? Do we conclude that we don’t know who we are or what we are doing? Maybe this is taking Kahneman’s theory a step too far but we certainly appear to over estimate the contribution of conscious, rational processing to our judgement and decision making.