Thinking, Fast and Slow [Hardcover]

Daniel Kahneman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 25, 2011

Selected by the New York Times Book Review as one of the best books of 2011

A Globe and Mail Best Books of the Year 2011 Title

One of The Economist’s 2011 Books of the Year

One of The Wall Steet Journal's Best Nonfiction Books of the Year 2011

Daniel Kahneman, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his seminal work in psychology that challenged the rational model of judgment and decision making, is one of our most important thinkers. His ideas have had a profound and widely regarded impact on many fields—including economics, medicine, and politics—but until now, he has never brought together his many years of research and thinking in one book.

In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities—and also the faults and biases—of fast thinking, and reveals the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and behavior. The impact of loss aversion and overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the challenges of properly framing risks at work and at home, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning the next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decisions.

Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Thinking, Fast and Slow will transform the way you think about thinking.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2011: Drawing on decades of research in psychology that resulted in a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, Daniel Kahneman takes readers on an exploration of what influences thought example by example, sometimes with unlikely word pairs like "vomit and banana." System 1 and System 2, the fast and slow types of thinking, become characters that illustrate the psychology behind things we think we understand but really don't, such as intuition. Kahneman's transparent and careful treatment of his subject has the potential to change how we think, not just about thinking, but about how we live our lives. Thinking, Fast and Slow gives deep--and sometimes frightening--insight about what goes on inside our heads: the psychological basis for reactions, judgments, recognition, choices, conclusions, and much more.  --JoVon Sotak

Review

“A tour de force. . . Kahneman’s book is a must read for anyone interested in either human behavior or investing. He clearly shows that while we like to think of ourselves as rational in our decision making, the truth is we are subject to many biases. At least being aware of them will give you a better chance of avoiding them, or at least making fewer of them.”—Larry Swedroe, CBS News

“Daniel Kahneman demonstrates forcefully in his new book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, how easy it is for humans to swerve away from rationality.”—Christopher Shea, The Washington Post

 

“An outstanding book, distinguished by beauty and clarity of detail, precision of presentation and gentleness of manner. Its truths are open to all those whose System 2 is not completely defunct. I have hardly touched on its richness.”— Galen Strawson, The Guardian

 

“Brilliant . . . It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of Daniel Kahneman’s contribution to the understanding of the way we think and choose. He stands among the giants, a weaver of the threads of Charles Darwin, Adam Smith and Sigmund Freud. Arguably the most important psychologist in history, Kahneman has reshaped cognitive psychology, the analysis of rationality and reason, the understanding of risk and the study of happiness and well-being . . . A magisterial work, stunning in its ambition, infused with knowledge, laced with wisdom, informed by modesty and deeply humane. If you can read only one book this year, read this one.”— Janice Gross Stein, The Globe and Mail 
 

“A sweeping, compelling tale of just how easily our brains are bamboozled, bringing in both his own research and that of numerous psychologists, economists, and other experts...Kahneman has a remarkable ability to take decades worth of research and distill from it what would be important and interesting for a lay audience...Thinking, Fast and Slow is an immensely important book. Many science books are uneven, with a useful or interesting chapter too often followed by a dull one. Not so here. With rare exceptions, the entire span of this weighty book is fascinating and applicable to day-to-day life. Everyone should read Thinking, Fast and Slow.” —Jesse Singal, Boston Globe

 

“We must be grateful to Kahneman for giving us in this book a joyful understanding of the practical side of our personalities.” —Freeman Dyson, The New York Review of Books

 

“Brilliant . . . It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of Daniel Kahneman’s contribution to the understanding of the way we think and choose. He stands among the giants, a weaver of the threads of Charles Darwin, Adam Smith and Sigmund Freud. Arguably the most important psychologist in history, Kahneman has reshaped cognitive psychology, the analysis of rationality and reason, the understanding of risk and the study of happiness and well-being . . . A magisterial work, stunning in its ambition, infused with knowledge, laced with wisdom, informed by modesty and deeply humane. If you can read only one book this year, read this one.” — Janice Gross Stein, The Globe and Mail

“It is an astonishingly rich book: lucid, profound, full of intellectual surprises and self-help value. It is consistently entertaining and frequently touching, especially when Kahneman is recounting his collaboration with Tversky . . . So impressive is its vision of flawed human reason that the New York Times columnist David Brooks recently declared that Kahneman and Tversky’s work ‘will be remembered hundreds of years from now,’ and that it is ‘a crucial pivot point in the way we see ourselves.’ They are, Brooks said, ‘like the Lewis and Clark of the mind’ . . . By the time I got to the end of Thinking, Fast and Slow, my skeptical frown had long since given way to a grin of intellectual satisfaction. Appraising the book by the peak-end rule, I overconfidently urge everyone to buy and read it. But for those who are merely interested in Kahenman’s takeaway on the Malcolm Gladwell question it is this: If you've had 10,000 hours of training in a predictable, rapid-feedback environment—chess, firefighting, anesthesiology—then blink. In all other cases, think.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Ask around and you hear pretty much the same thing. 'Kahneman is the most influential psychologist since Sigmund Freud,' says Christopher Chabris, a professor of psychology at Union College, in New York. 'No one else has had such a broad impact on so many fields' . . . It now seems inevitable that Kah­neman, who made his reputation by ignoring or defying conventional wisdom, is about to be anointed the intellectual guru of our economically irrational times.”— Evan R. Goldstein, The Chronicle of Higher Education

“There have been many good books on human rationality and irrationality, but only one masterpiece. That masterpiece is Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow . . . This is one of the greatest and most engaging collections of insights into the human mind I have read.”—William Easterly, Financial Times

“[Thinking, Fast and Slow] is wonderful, of course. To anyone with the slightest interest in the workings of his own mind, it is so rich and fascinating that any summary would seem absurd.”— Michael Lewis, Vanity Fair

“Absorbingly articulate and infinitely intelligent . . . What's most enjoyable and compelling about Thinking, Fast and Slow is that it's so utterly, refreshingly anti-Gladwellian. There is nothing pop about Kahneman's psychology, no formulaic story arc, no beating you over the head with an artificial, buzzword-encrusted Big Idea. It's just the wisdom that comes from five decades of honest, rigorous scientific work, delivered humbly yet brilliantly, in a way that will forever change the way you think about thinking.”—Maria Popova, The Atlantic

“I will never think about thinking quite the same. [Thinking, Fast and Slow] is a monumental achievement.”—Roger Lowenstein, Bloomberg/Businessweek

“Profound . . . As Copernicus removed the Earth from the centre of the universe and Darwin knocked humans off their biological perch, Mr. Kahneman has shown that we are not the paragons of reason we assume ourselves to be.” —The Economist

 

“[Kahneman’s] disarmingly simple experiments have profoundly changed the way that we think about thinking . . . We like to see ourselves as a Promethean species, uniquely endowed with the gift of reason. But Mr. Kahneman’s simple experiments reveal a very different mind, stuffed full of habits that, in most situations, lead us astray.” —Jonah Lehrer, The Wall Street Journal

 

“[A] tour de force of psychological insight, research explication and compelling narrative that brings together in one volume the high points of Mr. Kahneman's notable contributions, over five decades, to the study of human judgment, decision-making and choice . . . Thanks to the elegance and force of his ideas, and the robustness of the evidence he offers for them, he has helped us to a new understanding of our divided minds—and our whole selves.” —Christoper F. Chabris, The Wall Street Journal

 

“The ramifications of Kahenman’s work are wide, extending into education, business, marketing, politics . . . and even happiness research. Call his field “psychonomics,” the hidden reasoning behind our choices. Thinking, Fast and Slow is essential reading for anyone with a mind.” —Kyle Smith, The New York Post

 

“A major intellectual event . . . The work of Kahneman and Tversky was a crucial pivot point in the way we see ourselves.” —David Brooks, The New York Times

 

“Kahneman provides a detailed, yet accessible, description of the psychological mechanisms involved in making decisions.” —Jacek Debiec, Nature

 

“With Kahneman’s expert help, readers may understand this mix of psychology and economics better than most accountants, therapists, or elected representatives. VERDICT A stellar accomplishment, a book for everyone who likes to think and wants to do it better.” —Library Journal

 

“The mind is a hilariously muddled compromise between incompatible modes of thought in this fascinating treatise by a giant in the field of decision research. Nobel-winning psychologist Kahneman (Attention and Effort) posits a brain governed by two clashing decision-making processes. The largely unconscious System 1, he contends, makes intuitive snap judgments based on emotion, memory, and hard-wired rules of thumb; the painfully conscious System 2 laboriously checks the facts and does the math, but is so "lazy" and distractible that it usually defers to System 1. Kahneman uses this scheme to frame a scintillating discussion of his findings in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, and of the ingenious experiments that tease out the irrational, self-contradictory logics that underlie our choices. We learn why we mistake statistical noise for cohere...

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1 edition (October 25, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374275637
• ISBN-13: 978-0374275631
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (122 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #2 in Books > Business & Investing > Management & Leadership > Decision-Making & Problem Solving
  • #2 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Behavioral Sciences > Cognitive Psychology
  • #3 in Books > Professional & Technical > Business Management

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

492 of 540 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is how you think, October 25, 2011

By 

Monica Andrews - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Thinking, Fast and Slow (Hardcover)

Daniel Kahneman may have won his Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, but his work was psychological in nature as it challenged the rational model of judgment and decision-making. He's considered one of the most important psychologists alive today, and this book doesn't disappoint with its breakthrough approach to understanding the "machinery of the mind."

Kahneman introduces two mental systems, one that is fast and the other slow. Together they shape our impressions of the world around us and help us make choices. System 1 is largely unconscious and it makes snap judgments based upon our memory of similar events and our emotions. System 2 is painfully slow, and is the process by which we consciously check the facts and think carefully and rationally. Problem is, System 2 is easily distracted and hard to engage, and System 1 is wrong as often as it is right. System 1 is easily swayed by our emotions. Examples he cites include the fact that pro golfers are more accurate when putting for par than they are for birdie (regardless of distance), and people buy more cans of soup when there's a sign on the display that says "Limit 12 per customer."

There are lots of interesting anecdotes as well as layman's summaries of psychological research that will leave you feeling fascinated by the brain. The book has 38 chapters broken into five sections. I've listed some of the chapter titles for each section to give you a feel for what it's about:

PART ONE - TWO SYSTEMS
1. The Characters of the Story
2. Attention and Effort
3. The Lazy Controller
4. A Machine for Jumping to Conclusions
5. How Judgments Happen

PART TWO - HEURISTICS AND BIASES
6. The Law of Small Numbers
7. Availability, Emotion, and Risk
8. Tom W's Specialty
9. Linda: Less is More
10. Causes Trump Statistics
11. Taming Intuitive Predictions

PART THREE - OVERCONFIDENCE
12. The Illusion of Understanding
13. The Illusion of Vanity
14. Intuitions Vs. Formulas
15. Expert Intuition: When Can We Trust It?

PART FOUR - CHOICES
16. Prospect Theory
17. Bad Events
18. Risk Policies
19. Keeping Score

PART FIVE - TWO SELVES
20. Life as a Story
21. Experienced Well-Being

942 of 1,041 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Buy the real book, not the ebook, November 20, 2011

By 

Arden R. Hall - See all my reviews

This review is from: Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kindle Edition)

The kindle version of this excellent book is disappointing. Several features of the book are confusing in the ebook because the formatting is so poor. Tables with two columns run together because they are not boxed and the columns are only separated by one space. There are questions at the end of each chapter whose purpose is unclear until you see them in the real book, where they are set off in a box with a different type face. Most disappointing is the handling of the footnotes - they are relegated to the back of the book with no page number reference. There is few word phrase in the notes that corresponds to the place in the text to which the note refers, but it is up to the reader to scan the chapter to find the reference. The book reads like a mechanical translation of the physical book into a new format, with no effort taken to edit and format appropriately. So the reader loses. With the price of the ebook almost as much as the real book, you will be happier if you buy the real thing.

342 of 375 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Gold Mine of Behavioral Research., October 25, 2011

By 

AdamSmythe - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Thinking, Fast and Slow (Hardcover)

Daniel Kahneman, the author of this exceptional book, and Amos Tversky (who died in 1996) made economics and other disciplines a lot more realistic--and tougher--for economists, researchers and students. Prior to their work, economists and others maintained classical theories and explanations that relied on certain seemingly logical assumptions about human behavior. However, people don't always behave the way logic might suggest, for a variety of reasons that Kahneman (and Tversky) explained, starting in the 1970s. Today, the subject of behavioral decision-making is one of the more exciting ones in fields like economics, finance, medicine and even law, thanks to their pioneering work. In recognition of the impact of his work in economics, Kahneman, a cognitive psychologist and professor emeritus at Princeton, won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002, specifically for his work on prospect theory.

The title of this book comes from Kahneman's discussion of two simple models of how people think. "System 1" thinking corresponds to fast, intuitive, emotional and almost automatic decisions, though it sometimes leaves us at the mercy of our human biases. "System 2" thinking is more slow-going and requires more intellectual effort. To nobody's surprise, we humans are more likely to rely on System 1 thinking, because it saves us effort, even if it can lead to flawed thinking. Here is a quick way Kahneman uses to illustrate System 1 and System 2 thinking. Suppose that a bat and ball together cost $1.10 and that the bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? Many people, relying mainly on System 1 thinking, will quickly say $0.10, but the correct answer is five cents. Think about it.

One of the book's main themes is the author's description of how little control we actually have over our own System 1 responses and the degree to which our subconscious intuition and biases affect System 1 choices. It's amazinging to me how much of our lives seems to run on System 1 autopilot. Of course, forewarned is forearmed, which another important theme. Basically, this book provides the reader an impressive overview of many key concepts in behavioral research, with lots of illuminating stories from Kahneman's work and experiences. Before you know it, you may find "heuristic" (a rule of thumb) working its way into your conversations.

I will expand on one of the book's chapters ("The Law of Small Numbers") to illustrate some of Kaneman's analysis. Suppose you learn that out of more than 3,000 counties in the United States, the incidence of kidney cancer is lowest in mostly rural, sparsely populated counties in the Midwest, the South, and the West. Before you are tempted to try to explain the lower cancer rates on some elements of rural living, you should realize that the highest rates of kidney cancer are also found in (other) rural, sparsely populated counties in those same states. The reason for these seemingly contradictory results is that the small sample sizes of kidney cancer in sparsely populated counties allow for widely varying cancer rates. Put differently, if the Law of Large Numbers says the average results obtained from a large number of trials should be close to the expected value (of cancer rates, or whatever), then the Law of Small Numbers says that the smaller the sample size you deal with, the greater the chance of obtaining results that are further from the overall expected value. The low cancer rates in some counties turn out to be artifacts, not statistically systematic results.

Here is one final example from Kahneman's work of some of the concepts the reader will encounter in this book. Suppose that Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. In college, she majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with the issues of discrimination and social justice, and she also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations. Which is more probable?

1. Linda is a bank teller.
2. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

According to Kahneman, about 85% - 90% of undergraduates at several major universities chose the second option, that Linda was a bank teller and active in the feminist movement. However, this is an example of the "conjunction fallacy," since the probability of two events occurring together (in conjunction) must necessarily be less than the probability of either event occurring alone. Put simpler, the probability that Linda is a bank teller must be greater than the probability that she is a bank teller and active in feminist causes. (To be complete, Kahneman points out that there are critics of the Linda experiment who, for example, question whether it is reasonable for test subjects to understand the word "probability" as if it meant "plausibility.")

Okay, you hopefully have an idea about some of the ground covered in this book. If behavioral research interests you, this book merits your attention. I should also mention that there is blessedly little technical jargon in the book, so if you are new to the field of behavioral research you should be able to enjoy the book. Indeed, I think most people will get a lot from it.