Book Reading #47: Why We Make Mistakes

Chapter 8
Summary
Chapter 8 focuses on a person’s desire to keep things organized even in memory. Hallinan begins with several examples to demonstrate this: people drawing the Seine River straighter than it actually is and stating where Reno, Nevada is in relation to San Diego, California. Hallinan further explains the idea of tidy memories through his discussion on how we like to organize information into a hierarchy.

Hallinan also explains that who the person is will affect how he or she remembers things. In other words, people rationalize memories and change them, as shown in the study where people were asked to recall a folktale. When telling stories, people are also known to leave out details or make them up depending on the purpose of the story. These added or omitted details sometimes cause the person to remember the event differently.

Discussion
This chapter made me think about gossip, and how it can get out of control really quick, especially when the gossip begins with a person telling a story of what they saw. Everyone has their own view of the world and pays attention to different things. Compound this idea with the idea that people will add details to make it more interesting and the story can get blown out of proportion really fast.

Chapter 9
Summary
Chapter 9 seemed to be a compare and contrast of men and women. Hallinan discusses the relationship between overconfidence and perceived risk. He also discusses how women seem to have less confidence than men in several areas. Examples he give includes getting lost while driving, selling back lottery tickets and fixing bugs in a spreadsheet. Hallinan relates some of these differences back to how boys tend to tinker more than girls, and boys tend to explore further out than girls.

Discussion
Maybe it’s just me, but men seemed to be given a bad rep in this chapter. Still, it was interesting to read through the different studies and examples Hallinan provides. I totally agreed with the discussion on getting lost and how guys tend to have better spatial skills than girls. I think an interesting way to show this is through video games. I like to play RPGs and first-person shooters with my guy friends. I’ve noticed that whenever we get to a point where we need to find our way back to a certain place, the guys always have a much better idea of where to go – even on new games where I know we’re on the same level experience-wise with the maps.