Full Blog: Why We Make Mistakes

Reference Information

   Title: Why We Make Mistakes

   Author: Joseph T. Hallinan

   Editors: Broadway Books (2009)


Summary

In the introduction, Hallinan describes what mistakes are and how the world is designed as to expect us to see things clearer than than they appear. The topics to be discussed: similar mistakes that happen, what one can do to make fewer errors and understanding context.


The next chapter Hallinan talks about how we don't see things as clearly as we think we do. He gives many examples of this such such as the door experiment. He also talks about movie mistakes. Towards the end, the author goes on to explain the beer-in-the-fridge problem and how people have a threshold at which point they will quit searching for something.


In the chapter "We All Search for Meaning", Hallinan focuses on meanings we pick up on. Hallinan talks about the ones that we see and hear are more important than the details of the entire scene. He gives a lot of examples as to how details aren't stored well in memory: penny test, slip of tongue errors, recall errors, things like that. He talk about how we should come up with passwords quickly because we won't remember it in the future if we had to figure it out first. Next the author considers how we connect dots and consider things. He gives a lot of examples. One of them is how voters make quick decisions on who they're going to vote for based on how competent the candidate looks. Another example was wine tasting--people rated more expensive wine as tasting better even if it tasted exactly the same as cheap wine. The author gives a bunch ore examples to help us understand mistake sources.

Hallinan then talks about how we see our memories through "rose-colored glasses". What that means is that we remember things that we do or say better than they actually were/are. We tend to make ourselves sound better than reality. Examples he gave were: the Watergate scandal and how Dean remembered events completely differently from how they actually occurred, gamblers and their wins, losses and near wins, and students remembering their grades.

In regards to multitasking Hallinan muses that we think we do it but in all actuality, we really don't. Usually multitasking slows us down and makes us forget what we were doing in the first place. It creates a need for downtime, the time it takes to refocus on the task at hand. 

In the next chapter, Hallinan talks about framing. Framing is essentially how we view something. Hallinan gives a lot of examples in this chapter. He talks about the time that we take to make decisions can affect the outcome (immediate or future), multiple-unit ricing, wine buying based on the music and store tags. Customers will key in on the first part of tag and will have an "anchor" as to how many to buy.

Hallinan also talks about how we skim things. He gives a lot of examples of how we skim material and the trade-off along with it. Hallinan talks about how we miss a lot of important details and cites a rookie piano player that noticed an error that went unnoticed for several years. We only read the first few letters of a work and decide to assume the rest. Context is important when recognizing and remembering information.

The author then goes on to describe how we organize things within our memory. He talks about the hierarchical nature in which we like things organized. In addition, he gives a few examples about how people remember things. One of them was how people drew the Seine River much straighter than it actually was. He also goes on to talk about how people remember things. A lot of people will rationalize memories and change them, leaving out or making up details as they go. These added details cause them to remember events differently from how they happened.

People tend to believe that they're all above average. People are overconfident and it shows in things like golfing. The believes that this is caused by calibration, the difference between a person's actual and perceived abilities. He also goes on to talk about harder tasks and the overconfidence that comes along with it. People that are overloaded with knowledge believe they will be likely more right. Hallinan talks about how professionals have difficulty knowing when they are good or bad at something. Experts become experts by practicing. At a young age, they construct a library of specialized knowledge. He ends by talking about how people tend do do things the way they first learned it.

In chapter 13, the author talks about the thought processes behind important life decisions. People tend to focus on minor factors when doing so. He also discusses how people mispredict how they will feel about important life decisions in the future because of the focus on minor factors.

Hallinan concludes by giving advice to the readers as to how they can apply the the ideas discussed in the book. He recommends: think small, calibration should be taught, create a written record to take off the rose-colored glasses, expect failure, don't be set in your ways, slow down, be aware of anecdotes, get plenty of sleep, and be happy. He finishes by talking about how money does not eliminate mistakes.

Discussion

I really liked this book. I feel like I really got a lot out of it. Many of the concepts seemed pretty obvious when reading them but things that I had forgotten to take into consideration. He gave a bunch of good examples and really stresses on looking at the bigger picture when making big decisions. Making mistakes is something very natural to do and it is good to understand why they happen.