Psychology

Chapter 1

1. What are the characters of the story in the book?

2. What does each character do?

3. Are they ever in conflict? If so, how?

4. Explain the Muller-Lyer illusion.

5. Are the two characters (systems) really in the brain, or are there simply a shorthand for the author to explain things?

 

Chapter 2

6. Try the add-1 task under the mental effort section.  How does it feel?

7. What would happen to your pupils as you do difficult tasks?

8. How did Kahneman use that observation in his research in a basement room?

9. What are some of the tasks that demand effort?

10. What is "executive control"?

 

Chapter 3

11.  What is Kahneman's intuition about walking and thinking at the same time?

12. Explain ego-depletion to a non-expert that is very intelligent.  For example, your parents (assuming they are not psychologists)

13. Why does Kahneman call system 2 "lazy"?

14. What is the Oreo experiment about? 

15. Go back to the introduction of the book.  The second paragraph to be precise, and find the definition of a thinking bias. What is it?

Chapter 7

1. System 1 jumps to conclusions, in what situations is that efficient?

2. In what situations is that inefficient?

3. Daniel Gilbert suggests that to understand something, you need to do what first?

4. What is confirmation bias?

5. What is the Halo effect, and how was is demonstrated in the Alan vs Ben example?

6. What is WYSIATI?

7. In the context of WYSIATI what is overconfidence? 

8. What are framing effects? Give an example other than the 90% fat free

 

Chapter 8

 

9. What is the message of troubling research done by Todorov regarding political candidates?

10. In what other situations could you imagine the same phenomenon happening and with what consequences?

11. Figure 8 is used for an explanation of a task that is easy for system 1, and a task that is hard for system 1.  What are they?

12. Why does Kahneman say that there is a mental shotgun?

Chapter 9.

13. Why does Kahneman say that we substitute questions?

14. What are the implications of such substitutions?

15. Think of an example of you substituting a question with negative consequences. Tell me what was the real question, what was the simpler question, and how you substituted one for the other.

16. What is the definition of a heuristic?

17. What are the mood and the affect heuristics?

Chapter 10

 

1. At the beginning of the Chapter, Kahneman gives an example of how we look for causes even when they do not exist.  He calls it the “law of small numbers”, give a similar example translating it into COVID19.  The main thing I am looking for is you understanding the principle, so do not simply copy and paste substituting cancer with COVID.

2. Why does Kahneman say that sustaining doubt is harder that sliding into certainty?

3. In the city of Metropolough mothers give birth in two hospitals: “Large hospital" where about 500 births occur per day, and “tiny clinic", where about 5 births occur per day. Assume that the probability of a baby being boy is .5. Which one of the two hospitals is more likely to have 80% of births being boys in one day and why?

If you are a computer scientist, for fun, you can program a simulation of this problem.

4. What does basketball have to do with this chapter?

Chapter 11

5. What is the anchoring effect?

6. Give an example of anchoring if you wanted to sell me a car.

7. What are the two possible explanations of the anchoring effect?

8. There are a number of really interesting examples of anchoring phenomena in the chapter. Summarize them and explain it to your family as if you were talking to them in the kitchen table.

9. How is it that anchors are another example of WYSIATI?

 

Chapter 12

10. What is the availability heuristic?

11. Recall the principle from the readings last week: often, when we try to answer a difficult question, we substitute it for a simpler one, and we do not notice that substitution.  What is the substitution in play in the availability heuristic?

12. Explain to your family the example in the book about keeping the house tidy.

13. At the end of the chapter, there is a small section on power and intuition.  What is the main message?

Chapter 14.

 

14. In the chapter he uses the term “base rates”. What does that mean?

15. The test that Tom W took in the story is of “uncertain validity”.  How do people judge that part of the story?

16. Going back to the dinner table with your family, how does this chapter inform why it is so hard to fight malicious use of social media that delivers half-truths and lies?

Chapter 13

1. For chapter 13 there is only one question.  It is critical that you first read the chapter, uninterrupted and undistracted. Then, think about how this chapter informs our current situation.     Write two paragraphs about how this chapter relates to our world in this summer of 2020.  I am not asking you to get to a particular conclusion, but to use what you learned in this chapter to question your and other people’s ideas.

Chapter 16

2. Kahneman uses the word stereotype in a related, but not identical, meaning than how the word is typically used.  Explain the similarities and differences. 

3. I have a radical view about stereotyping in a social context.  It is absolutely never ok.   Kahneman says that there are valid stereotypes.  Can the two positions be compatible? If so, how?  

Chapter 17.

4. Explain regression to the mean to your family.

5. How does regression to the mean explain that most Olympic medalist are not children of Olympic medalists?

6. Think of an example from any part of your life in which regression to the mean might explain a phenomenon.

If you haven’t yet, listen to the podcast

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/change-your-mind/

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-is-my-life-so-hard/

Chapter 35

1. According to classic economic theory, for rational agents what two forms of utility are supposed to match?  In your answer explain what the two forms are about?

2.  Do they match? 

3. What is a hedonimeter?

4. Explain Figure 15. What does it show and what are the consequences of what is shown?

5. What are Peak-end rule, and Duration neglect?  Apply them to a positive and a negative experience in your life.

6. What is the difference between experience and memory that Kahneman talks about?

Chapter 36

1. What are the findings of Ed Diener and his students?

2. What is an amnesic vacation in the chapter?