Microblogs for Why We Make Mistakes

Chapter 3: We Connect the Dots

Summary
This chapter explains how humans naturally make decisions based on subconscious stimuli, such as judging a person's competence based on their facial features; how topless dancers' incomes from male patrons were closely related to their menstrual cycles; how perceived prices affect wine preferences; and how uniform colors affect referees' perception of aggression in hockey teams. Of special mention is also how regret (from actions or inactions) play a role in decision-making. The example used is whether to change answers on a test question.

Discussion
I found this chapter extremely interesting. Since I had yet to read Chapters 1 and 2, I notice now that many of the concepts, especially how price and color affect judgment, are also discussed in works by Malcolm Gladwell, like Blink. I feel the writing style also to be reminiscent of Gladwell's work.

Chapter 4: We Wear Rose-Colored Glasses

Summary
This chapter describes with numerous examples how humans are generally very self-serving; we tend to inflate our past performances and appearances. Young college students typically believe they had better grades in high school than they actually did, for example. Similarly, gamblers claim to have been able to predict their own wins, but remark that their losses were near win--"foresight became better in hindsight".

Discussion
Much of what is discussed here is reminiscent of Leon Festinger's work on cognitive dissonance from Chapter 5 of Opening Skinner's Box, especially the "Hey, I Warned You" Principle section. I found it interesting how disclosing bias, among doctors and pharmaceutical companies, for example, only serves to reinforce the bias behavior.

Chapter 5: We Can Walk and Chew Gum--but Not Much Else

Summary
This chapter focuses on multitasking and its dangers. First, multitasking is a myth, as people actually divide their attention between tasks, diminishing their performance and timing on each task. This can also lead to forgetting when tasks accumulate. Several accidents, both airline and road, are given illustrating this fact. Corporations like Microsoft are mentioned that attempt to mitigate these problems by designing systems to alert users to dangers. These systems sometimes can actually create addition distractions. Other systems, like Ford Sync, try to make multitasking easier and let drivers keep their hands on the wheel. But as Hallinan states, it's the brain that counts when it comes to multitasking, and systems like Sync still distract the brain.

Discussion
The example of taking two steps at a time up stairs was rather interesting. I typically do this, not try to save time, which it apparently doesn't in most cases, but as a different form of exercise; taking two steps, I've found, works different muscles in the legs from taking one step at a time. I also thought Gates' "ambition to give you connected experiences 24 a day" to be extremely silly. This is assumes that people want to have some task to occupy themselves with at all times. In fact, I would think a lot of people, myself included, enjoy having downtime to rest their brains--to just relax.

Chapter 6: We're in the Wrong Frame of Mind

Summary
In this chapter, Hallinan discusses framing, the way we look at or think of problems and tasks, affects our decisions. The first example given was the sale of French and German wines together in a grocery store; when French music is played, the French wine significantly outsold the German wine, and the same with German music. Risk-taking is also affected by whether outcomes are framed as gains or losses. timing in consequences; future gratification in movie and food preferences; Hallinan also introduces anchors as a way to shape decisions.Examples include how the first few digits phone numbers influence peoples' guesses for dates of past events. Anchors also serve as significant yet subtle techniques grocery stores, where consumers choose where to buy certain items based on the perceived worth as seen from ads in newspapers. Listing prices for houses work the same way in how much people are willing to pay for a home. Hallinan ends the chapter with tips on how to cope with these manipulations, which center around reframing.

Discussion
I enjoyed the section on office workers choosing between fruit and junk food when just before and after lunch, when they are very hungry and not hungry at all. This reminded me of how I have made the decision of not going grocery shopping just before a meal, usually dinner, since I'll would end up buying much more than I intended, and often I'll buy foods I would never buy in the first place, simply because I was hungry.

Chapter 7: We Skim

Summary
This chapter explains the importance of context in how we perceive things. One powerful example is a woman committing suicide by hanging herself from a tree in her front yard a few days before Halloween; her suicide went unnoticed for twelve to fourteen hours as people believed it was Halloween-related. Another was an experiment where people were asked to read a short passage and try to determine what it was about. Most were unable to determine its meaning before given the context, when it finally made sense.

Discussion
This was a interesting chapter, especially the experiment about understanding a passage only after revealing the context. I had read about the Halloween suicide before, so I was surprised to see it used for this chapter.

Chapter 8: We Like Things Tidy

Summary
This chapter stresses the fact that the human mind is incapable of, or just does not like to deal with complicated things. This fact is illustrated by the fact that we tend to straighten curved lines, make odd shapes symmetrical and align things that shouldn't be aligned, especially in environments like maps. Hallinan also points out that humans organize information into hierarchies; for example, we don't know the exact location of cities, but instead remember the locations states and the relative locations of every cities within those states. This organizational technique is similarly used as musical melodies act as constraints for remembering lyrics, such as those to The Star-Spangled Banner.

Discussion
I can attest to the section on The Star-Spangled Banner as I definitely have trouble remembering all of the lyrics to songs unless I am listening to the song itself; then, the lyrics typically come to me just before they come. As my knowledge of geography is lacking, I also would have missed the question of whether Reno is west or east of San Diego.

Chapter 9: Men Shoot First

Summary
This chapter points out several differences between males and females. The chief of these is how men tend to be much more confident than women. The source of this overconfidence comes from the difference of perceived risk between genders: women tend to think taking certain risks is not worth the trouble in situations related to finance, health and safety, recreation and ethics. An experiment to demonstrate this involved letting men and women find errors within spreadsheets. The men were far more likely to use the automated debugging tools found in the spreadsheet application, but women believed it would take too long to learn to use those tools correctly, and opted to correct errors by hand. When it comes to navigation, males tend to be more spatially aware than females, as they seem to be allowed to roam and explore more freely than females at a young age. This also somewhat explains why men don't stop to ask for or accept directions, as they don't often feel like they're lost.

Discussion
This chapter confirmed some things about gender differences that I had already read about elsewhere, such as how men have more spatial awareness than women.

Chapter 10: We All Think We're Above Average

Summary
This chapter continues discussing overconfidence, but this time to all humans. More specifically, overconfidence comes from the fact that few people know their own limitations, which social scientists have termed as "calibration": so if you're as good as you think you are, then you are well calibrated. This explains why gym members lose money--they only actually go to the gym half as often as they expect. Many of us also overestimate our skills, like soldiers at Fort Benning who predicted shooting far fewer targets than they actually did. The reason for poor calibration is feedback. For gym goers, feedback is weak, telling them that they are lazy, and they attribute that to some other reason. Weak feedback makes it easy to make up excuses to ignore or distort the feedback, allowing us to continue feeling proud.

Discussion
The first "quotation box" of the chapter reads: "Almost everyone is overconfident--except the people who are depressed, and they tend to be realists." I can relate pretty well to this sentiment, as I have been depressed to various degrees at many times in my life so far, and it has caused me to have a rather negative or pessimistic view on my own abilities. This chapter was a pleasure to read, as it covers things that affect everyone in many ways, small or big.

Chapter 11: We'd Rather Wing It

Summary
This chapter centers around how true experts in any skill gain their expertise with many hours of controlled and concentrated practice. This practice forms a "big library" with specialized knowledge, which allows them to develop pattern recognition, so they can anticipate events and respond quickly. This gift is what separates  masters from experts and experts from novices. Similarly, cognitive maps are people's perceived way of doing things or how things work, which explains why we tend not to read or follow instructions. These cognitive maps also tend to stick or get burned into memory, so that we find it difficult to "think outside the box" and consider alternate, and often simpler and more efficient methods.

Discussion
This chapter covered a variety of things, which gave it little focus, particularly in regard to the title "We'd Rather Wing It"; this point was made towards the end, but the rest of the chapter had a loose tie-in. The experiment towards the end involving filling jars with certain amounts of water reminded me a lot of a comment made during class last Thursday about how many casual computer users are not aware of simple yet useful shortcuts or keystrokes. But even when presented with these shortcuts, they typically stick to their old ways of doing things. The discussion on cognitive maps was very similar to Dr. Norman's concepts of mental models working against design models.

Chapter 12: We Don't Constrain Ourselves

Summary
This chapter explores constraints and affordances and how they influence our knowledge of how to do things. Specifically, improper use of constraints can lead to errors and mistakes. One well-cited example is the administration of ten thousand units of heparin per milliliter instead of the standard dose of ten units per milliliter. This has occurred because both vials are largely similar in size, shape and color (one was dark blue, the other light blue). After a highly publicized occurrence of this, the label on the stronger dose was changed from blue to red, introducing constraints to separate them. Hallinan briefly discusses how adding too many features can lead to mistakes, using BMW's iDrive system as an example, which featured a single knob to provide over seven hundred separate functions. The rest of the chapter explains how an important reason errors persist is overconfidence (we don't acknowledge them) and we don't find the root cause of them.

Discussion
This was interesting chapter, even though we've read a lot about it from Norman. Hallinan provided a lot of good examples and related concepts that it felt new and not just more of the same material.

Chapter 13: The Grass Does Look Greener

Summary
In this chapter, Hallinan explains that people often view alternatives or things they don't have in a brighter light than they should because they focus on things that don't matter, like the weather and glamor in California, as opposed to living costs and neighborhood safety. Once they obtain or experience whatever it is they're pining, they are exposed to the things that do matter and may regret their decision. Many people who move to California to start a new life eventually move back out.

Discussion
This chapter was fairly eye-opening, though I can't say I've been able to cite many examples personally to illustrate the concept. One recent example was actually moving into an apartment off-campus. I'd be living on-campus all of undergrad and had wanted to move a couple of years prior. Some things about off-campus living I wanted was independence, a personal bathroom and kitchen. Some things I didn't really notice until moving were having to take the bus or drive to campus, as opposed to just walking.

Conclusion

Summary
This chapter sums up many of the important concepts described in previous chapters. One is to think small; that is, "the tiniest little change in circumstance can have big impacts on people's behavior." This ties in with our propensity towards first impressions, and how a lot of our decisions are visceral, not rational. Regarding overconfidence, Hallinan advises that we "keep tabs on our dry holes" to better calibrate ourselves, or to follow-up on things we decide against, like stocks. Similarly, we should play the devil's advocate with ourselves to mitigate our overconfidence.

Discussion
I enjoyed the conclusion, as it brought together everything from previous chapters and tied them together very effectively, while also providing a lot of good advice. I especially like everything related to how small things have big impacts, such as how a happy mood can accelerate our decision-making. I know I fall victim to this, as I have recently taken far too long making small decisions like whether to dine-in or take-out (Chris knows) because I haven't been particularly happy lately.