Humans’ ability to reason and make logical decisions is commonly regarded as one of the most important of human mental abilities. Yet it was not given much attention by psychologists until the 1970s when they began studying how memory and perception sometimes lead people to make mistakes. Although many psychologists were focusing on these areas, Daniel Kahneman and his colleague Amos Tversky looked into what causes people to make errors because of their reasoning faculties. They found that humans often make irrational decisions because of their tendency to rely too heavily on heuristics – rules of thumb that work well in certain situations, but not in others.
They concluded that although they have the ability to think through problems before making decisions, they often choose to do so based on heuristic rules of thumb rather than weighing up all the options. This is partly because they may not have enough time to consider all the pros and cons properly, and also because their minds are lazy and prefer quick fixes. There are two types of decision-making systems – fast and slow. And we frequently revert to the faster, easier one. The problem is that this shortcut system can easily lead to mistakes, due to biased choices made on the basis of limited information.
