3 common thinking traps and how to avoid them, according to a Yale psychologist
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The mind is a tricky thing. It can lead us to believe that we can confidently sing "Bohemian Rhapsody" at karaoke even though we haven't heard the song in years, or that one terrible review on Yelp is reason enough not to go to a 4-star rated restaurant.
These thinking errors are what people in the psychology community call cognitive biases. And that's the focus of a new book out this month, Thinking 101: How to Reason Better to Live Better, by Yale psychology professor Woo-kyoung Ahn. In the book, Ahn highlights some of the most pernicious cognitive slip-ups we make — and how biases can cloud our judgment and affect the people around us.
toggle caption Left: StudioDUDA photography; Right: Flatiron Books
Researchers suspect that many of these biases are evolutionary, says Ahn. During times of scarcity, our ancestors had to make quick judgments in order to survive among predators or thrive in a difficult environment.
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