Economists have long favored Describing people According to a standard of highly rational, financially maximizing thought. Those with a little more imagination Realized That Money is not everything and allowed for personal preferences to play a role in assigning value. Behavioral psychologists, search as Professor Kahneman, havebeen poking big holes in the economic models in recent Decades so did the rational economic person perspective increasingly looks more like tattered cheesecloth than anything you would want to wear in public.
In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Professor Kahneman presents the results of many decision-making experiments to shed light on how decisions are made Typically, what influences Those decisions, and how the decisions Could be improved. If you have not read about thesis experiment, I'm sure you'll be fascinated. Most are presented in a way That Allows you to test your own mental processes and to see how your reactions compare to what most people DO. That adds to the fun.
Some of the more interesting findings are indeed we are more heavily affected by peak experiences, memories of how things ended, and Whether we "won" or "lost" than we are by the economics or hedonic pleasure of something. Further, we're likely to be so overly optimistic, indeed we will not see the cliff until we are launched head over heels over it.
I'm surethat Somewhere in this book you'll find a chapter or two thatwill highlight Something That bothers you about your own decision making, and you'll come away with some good ideas for how to do better next time.
The book's main drawback Is that Professor Kahneman is Perhaps a little more offended by peoples' inability to appreciate statistics and to do math in the right context than he might be. That section was a bit too long and precious.
Especially I enjoyed the conclusions where a lot of standard assumptions about how to accomplish things are politely, but Firmly, challenged.
Bravo, Professor Kahneman!
