Thinking, Fast and Slow

by Daniel Kahneman

We were sufficiently similar to understand each other easily, and sufficiently different to surprise each other.

Social scientists in the 1970s broadly accepted two ideas about human nature. First, people are generally rational, and their thinking is normally sound. Second, emotions such as fear, affection, and hatred explain most of the occasions on which people depart from rationality. Our article challenged both assumptions without discussing them directly. We documented systematic errors in the thinking of normal people, and we traced these errors to the design of the machinery of cognition rather than to the corruption of thought by emotion.

the availability heuristic helps explain why some issues are highly salient in the public’s mind while others are neglected.

The gorilla study illustrates two important facts about our minds: we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.