Summary of Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman - 1st edition
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How does your thinking affect your experience of happiness? – Chapter 38
The decision to marry someone reflects a huge error of ‘affection forecasting’. On their big day, the groom and bride know that the divorce rate is high, but they believe that these numbers do not apply to them.
A study on the level of life satisfaction from the day people get married shows a gradual drop. It is argued that the honey moon phase fades and married life becomes a routine. Another example is plausible: heuristics of judgment. A mood heuristic is one way of answering questions about life-satisfaction. In addition to the current mood, people are likely to think about significant events in the recent past. Only a few relevant ideas come to mind, but most do not. The rating of life-satisfaction is heavily influenced by a small amount of highly available ideas, not by carefully weighting all life domains. People who recently got married will retrieve that happy event when asked a general question about life. As time passes, the salience of the thought will diminish. This explains the remarkably high level of life satisfaction in the first years after marriage. On average, experienced well-being is not affected by marriage, not because marriage does not makes us happy, but because it changes some aspects of life for the worse and others for the better.
A reason for the low correlations between life-satisfaction and the circumstances of individuals, is that life-satisfaction and experienced happiness are significantly determined by the genetics of temperament. A disposition for well-being is heritable. In other cases, like marriage, the correlations with well-being are low due to balancing effects. Setting (financial) goals also proved to have lifelong effects.
People tend to respond fairly quick to life questions. This speed of answering and the effects of current mood on the answers demonstrate that they skip a careful assessment. They probably use heuristics, which are examples of WYSIATI and substitution. When attention is directed to a specific aspect of life, it greatly affects the overall evaluation. This is known as the ‘focusing illusion’. The most important thing in life seems the thing you are thinking about. The essence of this illusion is WYSIATI. The focusing illusion results into a bias in favor of experiences and goods that are initially appealing, but will eventually lose their charm.
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Summary of Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman - 1st edition
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Summary of Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman - 1st edition
- What is the book 'Thinking, fast and slow' by Kahneman about?
- What distinguishes fast and slow thinking? - Chapter 1
- How do fast and slow thinking deal with effortful tasks? - Chapter 2
- How does the 'lazy control' of slow thinking work? - Chapter 3
- How does the 'associative machinery' of fast thinking work? - Chapter 4
- When is your mind at ease? - Chapter 5
- How does your mind deal with surprises? - Chapter 6
- Why do people so often jump to conclusions? - Chapter 7
- How are your judgments formed? – Chapter 8
- How do you generate an intuitive opinion on a complex problem? – Chapter 9
- When should researchers be more suspicious of their statistical intuitions? – Chapter 10
- How do unknown quantities enhance bias in your mind? – Chapter 11
- How do unknown frequencies enhance bias in your mind? – Chapter 12
- How do risk and availability enhance bias in your mind? - Chapter 13
- How do you prevent false intuitive judgement? - Chapter 14
- How is fallacy formed in you mind? - Chapter 15
- How does causally connected storytelling enhance bias in you mind? - Chapter 16
- How does causal interpretation enhance bias in you mind? - Chapter 17
- How can you tame and correct your intuitive predictions? - Chapter 18
- Why is every success story you read or hear often wrong? - Chapter 19
- How does the illusion of validity make you overconfident in your ability to predict the future? - Chapter 20
- How can you use statistics to correct intuitions? - Chapter 21
- When do your judgments reflect true expertise? – Chapter 22
- What is the importance of the 'outside view' versus the 'inside view' for your judgements? – Chapter 23
- What is the best remedy for overconfident optimism? – Chapter 24
- How does your valuing relate with actual value? – Chapter 25
- Why is 'Prospect theory' better than 'Utility theory' in understanding the evaluation of financial outcomes? – Chapter 26
- Why is 'Prospect theory' better than 'Utility theory' in understanding the endowment effect of valuing valuables? – Chapter 27
- How is your decision-making affected by avoiding a loss and achieving a gain? – Chapter 28
- How is your decision-making affected by the value you attribute to losses, gains and wealth? – Chapter 29
- How is your decision-making affected by rare events? – Chapter 30
- How can you remedy the exaggerated caution evoked by loss aversion and the exaggerated optimism of the planning fallacy? – Chapter 31
- How do you keep mental account of gains, losses and regret? – Chapter 32
- When do preference reversals occur? - Chapter 33
- How is your decision-making affected by words that induce emotion? - Chapter 34
- How can our memory affect our judgments of experiences? - Chapter 35
- How does our memory affect our choices? - Chapter 36
- What does research about experienced well-being learn us? – Chapter 37
- How does your thinking affect your experience of happiness? – Chapter 38
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Summary of Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman - 1st edition
Summary per chapter with the 1st edition of Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman
- What is the book about?
- Part 1: How do fast thinking and slow thinking work? Chapters 1-9
- Part 2:
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