Your brain makes thousands of decisions today. Most of them were made before you knew it.
You think you are rational. You think you weigh options, evaluate evidence, and arrive at conclusions through careful deliberation. The research says otherwise.
Since Kahneman and Tversky's landmark discoveries in the 1970s, cognitive science has documented over 180 systematic errors in human thinking - predictable, replicable patterns of irrationality that shape every decision you make, every belief you hold, and every person you think you understand. These are not occasional quirks. They are the architecture of the mind.
Cognitive Bias is the complete, evidence-based guide to the mental machinery that runs your life - and how to start running it yourself.
Inside you will discover:
• The two-system model: why System 1 makes most of your decisions before you are aware of them
• Confirmation bias: why you find exactly the evidence you were looking for
• The availability heuristic: why you fear what you remember, not what will actually harm you
• Anchoring: why the first number you hear controls every number after it
• The sunk cost trap: why you can't walk away from what you've already lost
• Social proof: how information cascades and echo chambers manufacture consensus
• Loss aversion: why losing $100 hurts twice as much as gaining $100 feels good
• The Dunning-Kruger effect: what you don't know about what you don't know
• Emotional reasoning: when feelings become facts
• Bias in relationships: why the people you know best are the ones you see least clearly
• The planning fallacy, overconfidence, and the gambler's fallacy at work and with money
• What debiasing actually looks like - and what the research shows works
The machinery is real.The curtain is open.Now you can begin.
