Response Paper 4
In chapter 10 of Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow Kahneman talks about the law of small numbers and how we jump to conclusions when a small amount of events occur making us believe that there event has to be true. In chapter 11 Kahneman discusses the theory of anchors, which is when people consider a particular value for an unknown quantity before estimating that quantity. In chapter 16 Kahneman speaks about how humans find individual situations more telling than statistics and more often than not make base their opinions on these causal situations. Finally in chapter 17 Kahneman brings up the concept of regression toward the mean which states that individuals will eventually produce the mean outcome and as humans we rely on causal scenarios too frequently. I agree with Kahneman in all his arguments here, I feel many people make decisions based off of skewed or lucky scenarios that will most likely disappoint them. To me it shows how as a society we make quick decisions and do not sit long enough to ponder about these decisions. That is why first impressions are extremely important. The anchoring aspect I was also intrigued by. He gave an example where he told a bunch of real estate agents the listing price of a house and were asked them to estimate the real price. Even though the agents said they were not influenced his study showed that they really were. Goes to show how priming and anchoring can be used in our society for potentially manipulative ways.