Summary
The Introduction introduces the ideas that are to be explored throughout the book. The author begins by describing mistakes and explains how much of the world around us is designed in such a way as to expect us to see things clearer and remember things better than we actually do. The author also defines “mistake” and outlines some of the topics to be discussed in the book: similar mistakes that happen, what a person can do to make fewer errors and understanding the role of context.
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Chapter 1 focuses on vision and how we don’t always see as much as we think we do. The author, Joseph T. Hallinan, gives several examples through movie mistakes and the door experiment, an experiment in which a person asking for directions switches places with another person passing through and helping carry a door. The author also explains the beer-in-the-refrigerator problem and how people have a quitting threshold when searching for something.
The second chapter continues the discussion of the first chapter, but doesn’t spend as much of the chapter on vision. The focus is on how the meanings we pick up on in what we see/hear are more important than the actual details of a scene. As in the first chapter, Hallinan gives many examples such as slip-of-the-tongue errors, recalling part of something (like a name) but not all of it and how we forget passwords and hiding places. At the end of the chapter Hallinan relates the discussion to crime and the process of identifying suspects.
Chapter 3 focuses on how we consider things. Hallinan begins with an example about people running for election and how voters make quick decisions based off of how competent a candidate looks. He gave another example of how people drinking wine rated the $90 wine as tasting the best when it was the same as the $10 wine – their brains even showed more evidence of being happy with the more expensive wine. Price is not the only thing that plays a part in this. The color of objects and a person’s memory of regret also play a role in people’s choices and consequently their mistakes. The author states that all of these examples are given to help readers better understand sources of mistakes.
Chapter 4 discusses how we tend to remember our actions with rose-colored glasses. When remembering things that we do and say, we tend to make ourselves sound better than we actually were/are. Hallinan presents several examples: students remembering their grades as being better than they were and remembering good grades more than the bad grades, the Watergate scandal and how John Dean remembered the events entirely differently than how they really went down (proven through tape recordings) and how gamblers remember their wins and how losses are near-wins in their eyes.
In chapter 5 Hallinan explores the idea of multitasking and how we don’t actually do it. He discusses how multitasking slows us down, can cause us to forget what we are doing and creates a need for downtime, the time it takes to refocus on a task. The author provides examples of a pilot, a bus driver and drivers in general who do other tasks (like texting, talking on the phone or fiddling with a GPS) while driving. He explores in depth the car and the many distractions being created to “aid” us distract us and how drivers need downtime when switching between tasks while driving.
In chapter 6 Hallinan discusses framing, how we look at something. He uses examples such as buying a certain wine depending on the music being played, the location of information regarding a company in a newspaper and the time that we make decisions (immediate or future) can affect our decisions. Hallinan also writes about multiple-unit pricing and the impact it has on shoppers. In seeing the tag, “4 for $2,” the number, 4, acts as an anchor that makes the shopper more likely to buy four of the item rather than just one or two. He relates this same idea to selling a house.
In chapter 7 Hallinan begins by showing us some examples of how we skim material and how this ability to skim comes with a trade-off: details are overlooked. He discusses how we skim when we read by only reading the first few letters of a work and assuming the rest, how a rookie piano player once noticed an error that had gone unnoticed for years and how a thirteen-year-old boy corrected NASA on their estimation regarding an asteroid.
Hallinan also discusses the importance of the context we are in when recognizing and remembering information. Hallinan demonstrates this with several examples: reading a description of doing the laundry before and after we know the context and a study in which people memorized words above and under water.
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.
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.
Chapter 10 focuses on how people tend to believe they are above average. In other words, people tend to be overconfident. Hallinan sites many examples of this: golfing, paying for the gym on a yearly or monthly basis rather than day-to-day and credit card rates. Hallinan then discusses calibration, the difference between a person’s actual and perceived abilities. He discusses that calibration tends to be poor, but weather forecasts are well calibrated. The power of feedback is also discussed (feedback is poor when it comes to gym memberships). Hallinan also notes that as a task gets harder, people tend to be even more overconfident. The reason described for this is that people are overloaded with information and believe all the information actually makes them more likely to be right.
In chapter 11, Hallinan discusses how even professionals have difficulty in knowing how good or bad they are at something. He also discusses how experts become experts by practicing, starting at a young age and creating a library of specialized knowledge within the mind. Hallinan also presents information on a study of cognitive maps and mice, discusses how do-it-yourselfers hurt themselves with nail guns and how people prefer to do things without manuals in part because of how long the manuals can be. He then points out how people tend to do something in the first way they learned it – referred to as functional fixity – and backs up the idea with a task involving jars of water. Hallinan concludes by saying we should think outside the box though we usually do not when we already have learned a certain way to complete a task.
In chapter 12, Hallinan discusses constraints and affordances. He defines constraints as “simple mental aids that keep us on the right track by limiting our alternatives.” He defines affordances as “clues to how a thing can be used.” He discusses the technique by which different organizations name things and gives two examples: prescription drug names and identifiers that pilots use. He also discusses the importance of finding the root cause and knowing where to look (the culture of the place where we work) when searching for the source of an error. In discussing pilots and doctors, Hallinan also explains the effect that attitude has on errors.
In chapter 13 Hallinan begins with an example of two people who moved to L.A. and then ended up moving back to Wisconsin. He uses this example to show how people mispredict how they will feel about important life decisions in the future because they focus on relatively minor factors. He uses the same idea of misprediction to explain why gift cards are great for the company but not so great for the consumer.
In the Conclusion Hallinan gives some advice on how the readers can apply the ideas presented in this book to their lives. Some of the things he recommends we keep in mind are:
1. Think small
2. Calibration can be taught
3. Creating a written record helps a person fend off the rose-colored-glasses of hindsight bias
4. In some cases it will be important to look for and even expect failure
5. Don’t be set in your ways
6. Slow down
7. Be aware of the anecdote (he references NutriSystem here)
8. Get plenty of sleep
9. Be happy
Hallinan concludes by discussing how money does not eliminate mistakes and is not the currency of life.
Discussion
I really enjoyed this book and how the author presents so many examples to back up his claims. I especially liked the Conclusion, because Hallinan does a great job of summarizing his ideas without going overboard. It’s short and concise but effective. Some of the discussion in class was about how while this information is great, it is difficult to apply it to our lives to help prevent mistakes. While I still think this is true, I like how he gives some advice on how we can try to prevent the mistakes. I also think this book will be beneficial in helping us better understand mistakes we make, and as a Computer Scientist, I think this book will help us design better systems that prevent users from making certain expected mistakes.
