Thinking, Fast and Slow

by Daniel Kahneman

This remarkable priming phenomenon—the influencing of an action by the idea—is known as the ideomotor effect.

College students were asked to rate the humor of cartoons from Gary Larson’s The Far Side while holding a pencil in their mouth. Those who were “smiling” (without any awareness of doing so) found the cartoons funnier than did those who were “frowning.”

Cognitive strain, whatever its source, mobilizes System 2, which is more likely to reject the intuitive answer suggested by System 1.

“She knows nothing about this person’s management skills. All she is going by is the halo effect from a good presentation.”