Review by: Dr. Jacob Bryan

Daniel Kahneman introduces two different modes of thinking. System 1 thinking is fast, intuitive, automatic, subconscious, and emotional. It’s driven by instinct and experience. System 2 thinking is slow, deliberate, conscious, and logical. This dual mode of thinking is somewhat similar to Jonathan Haidt’s Elephant and the Rider division seen in The Happiness Hypothesis.

In this book, Kahneman explores many different types of cognitive errors and biases that human intuition is prone to making. He helps us understand how System 1 provides automatic, quick suggestions for System 2 to either reject or accept. He also explains how judgments are an evolutionary mechanism for survival.

From amazon:

System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation―each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems 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. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic.