Quotes from Daniel Kahneman

Loss aversion refers to the relative strength of two motives: we are driven more strongly to avoid losses than to achieve gains. A reference point is sometimes the status quo, but it can also be a goal in the future: not achieving a goal is a loss, exceeding the goal is a gain. As we might expect from negativity dominance, the two motives are not equally powerful. The aversion to the failure of not reaching the goal is much stronger than the desire to exceed it.

The Robust Beauty of Improper Linear Models in Decision Making.

recipe for a dissatisfied adulthood is setting goals that are especially difficult to attain. Measured by life satisfaction 20 years later, the least promising goal that a young person could have was "becoming accomplished in a performing art.

Even in modern humans, System 1 takes over in emergencies and assigns total priority to self-protective actions.

assign a larger role to talent, stupidity, and intentions than to luck; and focus on a few striking events that happened rather than on the countless events that failed

However, when the subjects were placed in a positive mood—induced by watching a five-minute video segment—they became three times more likely to say that they would push the man off the bridge. Whether we regard "Thou shalt not kill" as an absolute principle or are willing to kill one stranger to save five should reflect our deepest values. Yet our choice seems to depend on what video clip we have just watched.

Its cost is "sunk" and the Econ would not care whether he had bought the ticket to the game or got it from a friend (if Econs have friends).

The cycle is sometimes sped along deliberately by "availability entrepreneurs," individuals or organizations who work to ensure a continuous flow of worrying news.

Mental arithmetic is a voluntary activity that requires effort, should not be performed while making a left turn, and is associated with dilated pupils and an accelerated heart rate.

A study of nearly seven hundred thousand primary care visits, for instance, showed that physicians are significantly more likely to prescribe opioids at the end of a long day.

In terms of its consequences for decisions, the optimistic bias may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases. Because optimistic bias can be both a blessing and a risk, you should be both happy and wary if you are temperamentally optimistic.

Walter Mischel and his students exposed four-year-old children to a cruel dilemma. They were given a choice between a small reward (one Oreo), which they could have at any time, or a larger reward (two cookies) for which they had to wait 15 minutes under difficult conditions.

We spend much of our day anticipating, and trying to avoid, the emotional pains we inflict on ourselves. How seriously should we take these intangible outcomes, the self-administered punishments (and occasional rewards) that we experience as we score our lives?

Other studies showed that, toward the end of the day, physicians are more likely to prescribe antibiotics and less likely to prescribe flu shots.

optimistic bias plays a role—sometimes the dominant role—whenever individuals or institutions voluntarily take on significant risks.

Optimists are normally cheerful and happy, and therefore popular; they are resilient in adapting to failures and hardships, their chances of clinical depression are reduced, their immune system is stronger, they take better care of their health, they feel healthier than others and are in fact likely to live longer.

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

Bad weather is associated with improved memory; judicial sentences tend to be more severe when it is hot outside; and stock market performance is affected by sunshine.

Facts that we know do not always come to mind when we need them. People

SPEAKING OF PRIMING "The sight of all these people in uniforms does not prime creativity." "The world makes much less sense than you think. The coherence comes mostly from the way your mind works." "They were primed to find flaws, and this is exactly what they found." "His System 1 constructed a story, and his System 2 believed it. It happens to all of us." "I made myself smile and I'm actually feeling better!

Why are experts inferior to algorithms? One reason, which Meehl suspected, is that experts try to be clever, think outside the box, and consider complex combinations of features in making their predictions. Complexity may work in the odd case, but more often than not it reduces validity. Simple combinations of features are better.

representativeness can block the application of an obvious logical rule is also of some interest.

The impression of familiarity is produced by System 1, and System 2 relies on that impression for a true/false judgment.

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