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Reviews the book,
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (see record
2011-26535-000). Kahneman provides a comprehensive review of what we have learned about thinking during the last 50 years and gives a personal account of his own role in that research. He describes groundbreaking studies on heuristics and biases that he conducted with his colleague Amos Tversky and describes a dual process theory to explain their findings. He proposes that there are two different ways in which people think: One is rapid, largely automatic, and prone to error; the other is slow, deliberate, and more accurate. Kahneman uses the catch phrase WYSIATI (what you see is all there is) to explain our inability to think about possibilities beyond those that are immediately obvious. He offers a fuller description of the mechanisms that underlie heuristics than has previously been available. Dual process theory still does not provide a complete answer to the question of when and why human thinking is error prone. The reviewer suggests that
Thinking, Fast and Slow will be an invaluable statement of what we know now and will be used as the foundation for further development of the theory. Kahneman does not offer much encouragement to those who seek to improve people's reasoning. Perhaps the most important contribution of
Thinking, Fast and Slow is that it offers a language in which we can discuss the reasoning of other people. (PsycINFO Database Record (c)
2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Sent from Kevin McGrew's iPad
Kevin McGrew, PhD
Educational Psychologist
2 comments:
If I get a chance to rename this book; I'll call it as "Why We Do; What We Do". I loved the concept, presentation and detailed discussion with nice examples for almost all concepts in this book. For me this book is a handbook to try to find out about the reasons behind my past decisions and to understand behaviors and day to day events.
A must read for all.
This is a very well written report and discussion of a huge number of scientific observations and personal stories. Unfortunately, it is also misleading about issues at the heart of psychology. I will discuss one in detail to illustrate the need for readers to make careful distinctions.
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