Review of the book "Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow" by Daniel Kahneman

A best-seller about human cognition, have you read it yet?

Think Fast, Think Slow is a book published in 2011 by psychologist Daniel Kahneman (Tel Aviv, 1934). He is currently a professor of psychology at Princeton University.

A specialist in cognitive psychology, Kahneman's main contribution to economics consists in the development, together with Amos Tversky, of the so-called prospect theory, according to which individuals make decisions, in environments of uncertainty, that deviate from the basic principles of probability.. These types of decisions were called heuristic shortcuts.

Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for... Economics!

In 2002, together with Vernon Smith, was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. for having integrated aspects of psychological research into economic science, especially with regard to human judgment and decision making under uncertainty.

We recently included Daniel Kahneman in our ranking of the 12 most influential psychologists today. Being the only psychologist to have managed to win a Nobel Prize, his inclusion is more than deserved.

Think fast, think slowA compilation of his main ideas

In the book Think Fast, Think SlowKahneman synthesizes his research on the way human beings think.. The author maintains the thesis widely accepted in current psychology about the two modes of thinking: the System 1fast, intuitive and emotional, and System 2. System 2slower, reflective and rational.

The former provides conclusions automatically, and the latter, conscious responses. The peculiar thing is that, on most occasions, we do not reflect on which of the two has taken the reins of our behavior.

A book divided into five thematic sections

The book is divided into five parts. In the first part, it presents how the two systems work and how judgments and decision making are produced by both. The second part elaborates on the heuristics of judgments and places special emphasis on the difficulties of System 1 to think statistically. The third part focuses on the inability to recognize uncertainty and our own ignorance and overestimation of what we think we understand about the world around us.

The fourth part delves deeper into the nature of economic decisions and raises the theory of perspectives under the two-system hypothesis. In the fifth part of the book Kahneman makes a distinction between what he calls "the experiencing self" (related to System 2) and "the remembering self" (related to System 1). Sometimes the goal of happiness of both selves leads to clearly contrasting situations.

Finally, and in a sort of conclusion, the implications of the three distinctions made in the book are examined: the I that remembers vs. the self experiencing self, decision making in classical economics versus decision making in behavioral economics, and System 1 versus System 2.

Several considerations and reflections on this book.

We can consider Kahneman's starting assumptions to be highly original and attractive. In my opinion, he extends the concepts of System 1 and System 2 to the totality of thought processes. This view perfectly models "first thing that popped into my head" decision making versus those decisions we make after careful thought. We can see an example of this in a simple problem that Kahneman himself poses:

A bat and a ball together cost $1.10.

The bat costs $1.10 more than the ball

How much does the ball cost?

The immediate answer is given by System 1:

The ball costs $0.10

Only an invocation of System 2 will give us the correct answer.

The System 1 and System 2a simple way of conceptualizing thought

Physiologically speaking, we could even postulate that the responses of System 1 emerge directly from the limbic system, naturally transformed and processed by the neocortical areas, while those of System 2, which involve a more elaborate processing (the intellectual-cognitive-reflexive), could only be carried out in the more modern cortical areas located in the frontal prefrontal cortical area.

This consideration would situate System 2 as a structure exclusively proper to higher animals, evolutionarily emerged as a complement to System 1.

Possible criticisms of Kahneman's work

Kahneman's hypotheses could be considered as excessively simplistic and somewhat anthropocentric.However, on reflection, the analysis of behavior under this point of view allows us to explain a large number of reactions observed in human behavior in general and, in particular, in the decision-making process, which to a greater or lesser extent must always be taken in environments of uncertainty.

The descriptions of the different hypotheses put forward in the book are, in my opinion, excessively repetitive and not very synthetic (they could really be described in a few paragraphs) and the author intends to demonstrate their validity with the somewhat disorderly exposition of the results of a considerable number of experiments, which do not always seem to be the most appropriate and some of which do not provide very consistent arguments..

Unfortunately, Kahneman does not go too deeply into the processes of gestation and birth of the different hypotheses he presents, processes that would probably facilitate their assimilation by the readers.

Between the academic and the commercial...

The book seems to be conceived more as a book of popularization for the general public (along the lines of a best-seller or a self-help book) than as a scientific work. The examples, experiments and particular cases are profusely described, sometimes in a somewhat chaotic and disorderly manner and without a well-defined thread, illustrating various aspects of the dualities presented.

In spite of its informative character, the book is not exempt from scientific rigor. All the statements made and each of the experiments are adequately referenced. All bibliographical references, the author's notes and conclusions are included at the end.

Most interesting: the study on the anchor effect

After reading it, one cannot help but feel both identified and surprised by identified with and surprised by some of the mental processes described in the book.. Particularly interesting are loss aversion and the anchor effect. In the former, we are shown the natural tendency of people to avoid losing rather than gaining profits. This leads to risk aversion when assessing a possible gain, since one then prefers to avoid a loss rather than receive a profit.

The so-called anchor effect (or 'anchor effect') tends to make us take as a reference the first offer (first piece of information) we have been given, mainly when we do not have complete and accurate information. It is also worth highlighting the effort made by Kahneman to quantify numerically the intensity of the anchor effect, a quantification that is not easy to perform in most psychological processes. The anchor effect is widely used in economic environments of negotiation or marketing.

A book recommended to professionals and the curious

In summary, I would recommend reading this book not only to professionals in the psychological sciences, but also in general anyone interested in getting to know themselves a little better, deepening their knowledge of the processes that determine the way they work.to deepen in the processes that determine their decisions and to equip themselves with mechanisms that allow them to advance one step further on the road to their happiness.