How We Know What Isn't So


Notes on How We Know What Isn't So: The fallibility of human reason in everyday life by Thomas Gilovich, 1991, Simon & Schuster. ISBN: 0029117062 (Google Books info)

 

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I'd highly recommend this as one of the starting points to anyone interested in learning about cognitive biases. Gilovich is both a prominent researcher and an excellently readable writer. He encourages the reader to think like a bias researcher. Using logical principles, we can get hypotheses about which biases to expect. With controlled experiments, we can verify the existence of biases and by applying them to specific topics we can see how natural human fallibility can have disastrous results. Cordelia Fine's "A Mind of Its Own" complements it nicely, and is more recent.

 

Outline

Part One: Cognitive Determinants of Questionable Beliefs

 

Ch. 2: Something Out of Nothing: The Misperception and Misinterpretation of Random Data

 

Ch. 3: Too Much from Too Little: The Misinterpretation of Incomplete and Unrepresentative Data

 

Ch. 4: Seeing What We Expect to See: The Biased Evaluation of Ambiguous and Inconsistent Data

 

Part Two: Motivational and Social Determinants of Questionable Beliefs

 

Ch. 5: Seeing What We Want to See: Motivational Determinants of Belief

 

Ch. 6: Believing What We Are Told: The Biasing Effects of Secondhand Information

 

Ch. 7: The Imagined Agreement of Others: Exaggerated Impressions of Social Support

 

Part Three: Examples of Questionable and Erroneous Beliefs

 

Ch. 8: Belief in Ineffective "Alternative" Health Practices

 

Ch. 9: Belief in the Effectiveness of Questionable Interpersonal Strategies

 

Ch. 10: Belief in ESP

 

Part Four: Where Do We Go from Here?

 

Ch. 11: Challenging Dubious Beliefs: The Role of Social Science