Notes on Stuart Sutherland (1994) Irrationality: the Enemy Within. Penguin paperback

In terms of making a great breadth of research easy to understand with a variety of examples and applications, this is still the best non-technical introduction to the topic of cognitive biases. It looks at judgement and decision-making It relies heavily on scientific research -  there are many elegant descriptions of psychological experiments - yet the technical details are kept out of the main text to make it easy for a non-specialist reader. 324 footnotes point to the book's scientific basis.

The version I have is the first edition. A second, revised edition has been released in 2007. Cordelia Fine's A Mind of Its Own covers newer research than the first edition but it's not nearly as ambitious a book.

If it has a flaw, it's on the philosophical side rather than the psychological side. In order to judge that some behaviour is irrational, you need a clear standard of rationality and an understanding of why that is the best choice. Sutherland is good at succinctly explaining the normative standards, but some of his examples are not as clear-cut as he makes them out, and there is a legitimate scientific question about whether some of the decisions he talks about are irrational (see for example my Are People Bayesian?).

Outline

1. Introduction

2. The Wrong Impression

3. Obedience

4. Conformity

5. In-groups and Out-groups

6. Organisational Folly

7. Misplaced Consistency

8. Misuse of Rewards and Punishments

9. Drive and Emotion

10. Ignoring the Evidence

11. Distorting the Evidence

12. Making the Wrong Connections

Illusory correlation

13. Mistaken Connections in Medicine

14. Mistaking the Cause

15. Misinterpreting the Evidence

16. Inconsistent Decisions and Bad Bets

17. Overconfidence

18. Risks

19. False Inferences

20. The Failure of Intuition

21. Utility

22. The Paranormal

23. Causes, Cures and Costs