Thinking Fast and Slow - Study Notes - Version 2: 09 - Chapter 9: Answering an Easier Question

Chapter 9: Answering an Easier Question

normally we have intuitive feelings & opinions abt almost everything that comes our way —and we often hv answ’s to q’s that we do not completely underst.

how we generate intuitive opinions on complex matters
N.B. substitution — for difficult q’s w. no immed. answ. S1 provides an answ. to an easier, related q. —“target question” = the answ. you want — “heuristic question” = simpler question answered instead — (def’n heuristic = simple procedure, helps find adequate, but imperfect, answ’s to difficult q’s) — derives fr. the mental shotgun

target q’s req. serious thinking, but S2 is lazy, so S1 subst’s heuristic alternative, then uses intensity matching to answ. target q. — lazy S2 often accepts S1 heuristic answ. w/o noticing

Question: "As printed on the page, is the figure on the right larger than the figure on the left?" — S1 thinks fig. on r. is larger — S1 replaced the 2-D q. w. a 3-D q: “How tall are the 3 people?” — this heuristic has a bias (objts that appear to be more distant also appear to be larger on the page) —judg’ts based on subst’n are biased in predictable ways — here, unavoidable ß it happens so deep in perceptual system

students were asked 1. How happy are you these days? 2. How many dates did you have last month? Answ’s showed no correlation — but correlation huge when change seq (1. How many dates last month? 2. How happy these days?) — 1st case shows dating not impt. to stud’s happiness, 2nd case shows substit’n, gave easy answ. — same result w. relations w. parents, finances
WYSIATI

on emotional issues, S1 conclu’s dominate over S2 argu’ts
affect heuristic = likes/dislikes deter. beliefs abt the world — favour argu’ts & assess’ts supporting beliefs — e.g. dislike meat à believe risks are high
with attitudes & emotions, S2 not monitor, not a critic, not active — S2 an apologist for emotions of S1, endorser not enforcer, if search for inform’n & argu’ts mostly for info consistent w. existing beliefs, not to examine them

“Do we still remember the question we are trying to answer? Or have we substituted an easier one?”
“The question we face is whether this candidate can succeed. The question we seem to answer is whether she interviews well. Let’s not substitute.”
“He likes the project, so he thinks its costs are low and its benefits are high. Nice example of the affect heuristic.”
“We are using last year’s performance as a heuristic to predict the value of the firm several years from now. Is this heuristic good enough? What other information do we need?”