Psychology

The undoing project: A friendship that changed our minds

On estimating, people would judge more frequent phenomenon with higher “representativeness,” or the similarity between whatever people were judging and some model they had in their mind of that thing, easier to be thought for them rather than the rationality behind the event.

The distance the mind needed to travel from the usual way of doing things to some less ordinary way of doing things felt further than the trip made from the other direction.

Happiness depends on perspective.

The nearer you came to achieving a thing, the greater the regret you experienced if you failed to achieve it. A second rule: Regret was closely linked to feelings of responsibility. The more control you felt you had over the outcome of a gamble, the greater the regret you experienced if the gamble turned out badly.

The pain that is experienced when the loss is caused by an act that modified the status quo is significantly greater than the pain that is experienced when the decision led to the retention of the status quo.

When one fails to take action that could have avoided a disaster, one does not accept responsibility for the occurrence of the disaster.

There is a definite sense that one comes closer to winning the lottery when one’s ticket number is similar to the number that won.

The general point is that the same state of affairs (objectively) can be experienced with very different degrees of misery.

An event A is judged to be more probable than an event B whenever A appears more representative than B.

In treating individual patients, doctors behaved differently than they did when they designed ideal treatments for groups of patients with the same symptoms.

To make decisions try to foresee regrets afterward and focus on less regret option.

Small choices might tell more about an individual than big ones, given that the later ones would be consequences of randomness and circumstances.

When you told people that they had a 90 percent chance of surviving surgery, 82 percent of patients opted for surgery. But when you told them that they had a 10 percent chance of dying from the surgery—which was of course just a different way of putting the same odds—only 54 percent chose the surgery.

if you wanted two people to think of themselves as more similar to each other than they otherwise might, you might put them in a context that stressed the features they shared.

anchoring and adjustment: When asking for estimation, 8 × 7 × 6 × 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 seems larger than 1 × 2 × 3 × 4 × 5 × 6 × 7 × 8 by far. Idea: Does this means that when presenting data decreasing order can cause more impact?

Sample size and statistical significance is important!

When an event is presented people could assume that is random, and when asked by estimation they might pick the choice that looks more random even when choices have the same probability.

People preferred to endure more total pain so long as the experience ended on a more pleasant note.

No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.