How Do We Think? Daniel Kahneman’s Two Systems Of Thought

According to author Shanon M. Koening, People have 60,000 thoughts a day and most are negative. Such a shocking figure makes us consider how little we know about thinking and the great influence it has on our behavior and decision-making.

Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist with a Nobel Prize

A renowned American psychologist realized the importance of thinking and His research led him to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001 To explain the theory that led him to win the Nobel Prize, Kahneman begins by asking his students the following riddle:

Do not try to solve this exercise and try to use intuition:

A bat and a ball cost 1.10. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

The 10 cent answer is presented as a quick, powerful and attractive intuition, but it is incorrect.

To arrive at the correct solution, 5 cents, many of us will have to resort to pencil and paper, transforming the riddle into a mathematical equation. We will have to resort to the slowest and most tiring way of thinking that our brain allows. Some psychologists consider that This type of test is a more valid predictor of intelligence than ordinary IQ tests In this case, it serves to illustrate that intuitions can be wrong, no matter how powerful they seem.

Kahneman uses this example to describe the two different ways the mind creates thought.

First of all, there is the System 1 or implicit This way of thinking is fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotyped and subconscious. On the other hand, there is the System 2 or explicit It is slow, lazy, infrequent, logical, calculating and is accompanied by the awareness of solving a problem.

These two systems of antagonistic nature are found in the daily decisions of our lives.

How do the 2 thought systems work?

The quick 10 cent solution you came up with at the beginning of the exercise is due to System 1 working to give you a reasonable answer. However, when you used pen and paper, you used System 2, which this time gave you the correct solution of 5 cents, a slower and more expensive solution but, after all, the correct answer.

This is because system 1, driven by intuition and heuristics, allows us to do simple tasks like walking or brushing our teeth effortlessly In contrast, system 2 will be in play when we are doing more complicated tasks, such as learning to drive.

Both system 1 and system 2 are continuously active and communicating. System 1 determines our thoughts with external perceptions, visual and associative memory, and then develops a framed conclusion, which we do not even question, thus avoiding any other alternative story. The challenge is that he usually does a good job, so that we can trust him.

Intuitions guide our daily lives

Using the theory of heuristics, Kahneman states that system 1 associates new information with existing patterns, or thoughts, rather than creating new patterns for each new experience to This gives rise to different types of biases. System 1, by generating narrow and framed thinking, tries to demonstrate that it leads directly to confirmation bias. Confirmation bias leads people to ignore some evidence that contradicts such thinking, and it is one of the single biggest problems when companies make decisions.

In short, people tend to look for information that validates their initial hypothesis. Kahneman details a series of experiments that aim to highlight the differences between these two thought processes and how they arrive at different results even when they receive the same information.

Now you know a little more about those products that your brain generates an average of 60,000 times a day, and about how many of them are generated quickly and without taking into account all the information present, leading to erroneous conclusions.

So, Next time you make a bad decision, don’t hold it against yourself Now you know that it is system 1 acting automatically and that the best decision you can make is to take paper and pen so that thinking system 2 is activated and leads you to make the right decisions.