Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average

by Joseph T. Hallinan

Book Overview

We forget our passwords. We pay too much to go to the gym. We think we'd be happier if we lived in California (we wouldn't), and we think we should stick with our first answer on tests (we shouldn't). Why do we make mistakes? And could we do a little better? We human beings have design flaws. Our eyes play tricks on us, our stories change in the retelling, and most of us are fairly sure we're way above average. In Why We Make Mistakes , journalist...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0767928067
• ISBN13: 9780767928069
• Release Date: February 2010
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Great Sequel To Gladwell's Best Selling "Blink"

Joseph T. Hallinan has written the perfect complement to Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink." with his "Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average." Gladwell's "Blink" is a book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye, and reaching instant conclusions that are really powerful and really important and, occasionally, really good. But, as Hallinan writes, we must use caution as "we are all afflicted with systemic biases in the way we see, remember, and perceive the world around us, and these biases make us prone to commit certain kinds of errors." In addition, one's expectations can shape the way we see the world and our actions. "Why We Make Mistakes" provides an inventory of biases and expectations that contribute to errors we make day-to-day. These include our personal life experience, hindsight bias, analytical bias, expert bias, systemic bias; sleep deprivation bias, context bias, age bias, a bias towards "meaning," habit, hubris and a poor understanding of our own limitations. Hallinan provides multiple examples of how these biases and expectations play out in life - the diagnosis "miss" rate for radiologists' is in the 30% range (we see a fraction of what we see), people's names are recalled only 30% of the time (meaning matters, details don't, traits are more memorable), people preferred wine when it was in the more expensive bottles regardless of its quality (connecting the dots superficially), many are getting rich off fat people (it is a business built on hope and plays on overestimating self-control), men shoot first (overconfidence), and the recalling of stories incorrectly (our need to fit the story into our own existing ways of understanding the world). Hallinan points out that our biggest obstacle is we just don't know (or accept) we are biased. "And some of these tendencies are so strong that even when we do know about them, we find it hard to correct for them." To help us, he provides an action plan at the end of the book which includes: think small as the tiniest change in circumstance can have big impacts on our behavior; incorporate the use of probability into our thinking, as weather forecasters do (90% chance of rain); keep tabs on our dry holes and write down decisions we made and the reasons we made them the way we did; track our success noting what was done right and what was done wrong; think negatively and ask `what could go wrong?'; let your spouse proofread; beware of the anecdote, get the facts; get adequate sleep as clears our thinking and positively affects our mood; and...work on being happy as happy people tend to be more creative and less prone to the errors induced by habit. Hallinan's "Why We Make Mistakes" is a great read with something for everyone. It will serve as a guide when we make mistakes and will help us to understand others when they make a mistake. Purchasing this book will not

A rollicking good tale about human foibles.

A rollicking good tale about human foibles. Like a beaten boxer I was assaulted by page after page of my potential shortcomings. Yes, I admit that my memory reconstructs events. Yes, I have the male tendency to be over-confident in my judgements. Yes, I have been lost and not asked for directions (it's more difficult for Australians to locate north in the northern hemisphere!). Yes, I subscribe to belief that attack is the best form of defence. Yes, I have been distracted with gadgets while driving. This book is a gigantic smorgasbord about how we make decisions and mistakes, and it is never boring.

Quirks in decision making

A series of books has come out recently on how humans make decisions--and how quirky that decision making can be. From Gladwell's "Blink" to Fine's "A Mind of Its Own" to Lehrer's "How We Decide" to Tavris and Aronson's "Mistakes Were Made (But not by Me)." This book adds to this developing body of work. Hallinan begins by noting that mistake has a specific dictionary meaning (Page 8): "1. a misunderstanding of the meaning or implication of something; 2. a wrong action or statement proceeding from faulty judgment, inadequate knowledge or inattention." The thrust of the book is to explain why people make mistakes. Chapter 1 is scary, to be sure. Its title is "We look but don't always see." There is the illusion on page 20 which is almost impossible to accept. Most alarmingly, though, is the tendency to quit picking things up visually after a lot of times when one doesn't see what one is looking for. Our eyes and brain just quit seriously looking for something. Key example *(showing that much is at stake here): For instance, .7% of routine mammograms are interpreted by radiologists as tumors; 99.3% of the time, radiologists don't see any sign of tumor. However, evidence suggests that radiologists are missing a lot of tumors, because their eyes and brains quit because of so many non-findings. There are psychological processes at work, too. Framing is one of these. This is a situation in which how an issue is framed affects how we decide and behave. In situations where we stand to lose, people tend to be risk-takers; when the situation is framed as a gain, those same people become risk-averse. So, how a problem is framed (loss versus gain) fundamentally affects our decision making. Many other types of mistakes are described as well. The book ends by laying out some ways of enhancing the quality of our decisions. One is to "think small." Identify small errors that have consequences and can be corrected. For example, about 7,000 people die each year from doctor's sloppy handwriting that is interpreted by others inaccurately. A bit of work to enhance legibility would save lives--at very small cost. Also, we need to be more self aware. People often think they're behaving rationally when, in fact, nonconscious decisions are being made. And vice versa. As the Greeks put it, "Know thyself." Finally, as one more illustration, before carrying out s decisions, ask what could go wrong (what Klein refers to as a "pre-mortem"). In the final analysis, this is a very readable book on an important subject. Well worth taking a look at.