Summary, Analysis, and Review of Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow

Summary

Please note: This is a key takeaways and analysis of the book and not the original book. Start Publishing Notes’ Summary, Analysis, and Review of Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow,includes a summary of the book, review, analysis & key takeaways, and detailed About the Author section.

Preview: Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, sums up an exceptionally productive career of scholarly research in behavioral psychology. In collaboration with psychologist Amos Tversky, Kahneman helped develop the fields of behavioral economics, and the psychology of judgment. Most importantly, through a series of research projects, Kahneman and Tversky challenged the notion, still dominant in the field of economics, that people are rational decision-makers whose preferences remain constant over time. Far from it, Kahneman and Tversky discovered: our decisions are heavily influenced by context, all the way from how the questions are presented to us, to the images and numbers that might accompany them.

Kahneman uses this audiobook to explore how these decision-making processes work. He characterizes the type of rapid-fire, thoughtless reacting, that constitutes most thought as “System 1” thinking, and more reflective, strategic thinking as “System 2.” Examples of System 1 managed functions include simple arithmetic, basic reading comprehension, and determining the relative distances and sizes of objects. System 2, by contrast, handles difficult tasks such as parallel parking, walking at a faster-than-normal speed, acting appropriately in various public settings, following people, and sorting and classifying various materials (numbers, letters, products, and so on).