Everyday Illusions

I just got the word from Chris Chabris that the paperback edition of The Invisible Gorilla is scheduled for release on June 7th.

The Invisible Gorilla, refers to a wide variety of stories and counterintuitive scientific findings to reveal- Our minds don't work the way we think they do. We think we know our own minds, but this isn't so. Chabris and Simons combine the work of other researchers with their own findings on attention, perception, memory, and reasoning, to reveal how faulty intuitions often lead us astray.

Often, we think we experience and understand the world as it is, but our perceptions are sometimes, actually, often times nothing more than illusions.

The Invisible Gorilla, provides detailed explanations of why people experience these everyday illusions and what we can do to protect ourselves against their effects. The ultimate goal of the book is to help you notice the invisible gorillas in your own life.

Everday Illusions

A detailed discussion of six everday illusions are discussed
illusions of attention
............. memory
confidence
knowledge
cause
potential

These illusions are referred to as everyday illusions because they influence our lives on a daily basis.

The official website of The Invisible Gorrilla

Simons and Chabris videos

Coming soon! An interview with Simons and Chabris

How We Think and Do Not Think About Food: Behavioral & Cognitive Nutrition

In an effort to understand the complexity of nutrition, eating behaviors and the role of food in society it is important to refer to information from various fields- exercise science, nutrition, biology, chemistry, psychology, marketing, economics, sociology, cognitive science and so on. In the past I have written extensively about nutrition, and most of my references have been to the fields of exercise science, nutrition, chemistry, and biology. In the new book I am co-authoring -How We Think and Do Not Think About Food: Behavioral and Cognitive Nutrition(tentative title)- in addition to referencing info from the fields of exercise science, nutrition, chemistry and biology, research from the fields mentioned in the opening sentence will be discussed.

How We Think and Do Not Think About Food- will provide very brief to no coverage of the following:

The calorie theory
Macronutrient composition
High Glycemic vs Low Glycemic Diets
Organic vs conventional foods (however this subject will be discussed as it relates to ideational motives)
Low carb diet myths
High carb myths
Meal frequency
and many many other myths that i have already addressed in Knowledge and Nonsense

Excerpts from How We Think and Do Not Think About Food

Suppositions that a change in genetics is responsible for the increase in obesity over the past three decades are unlikely due to the lack of evidence of mutations over this short period of time. However, what has changed drastically, is the environment in which we now live (Cohen, 2008).

Food advertising is not new, but greater sophistication in marketing—including the development of branding, expanded use of vending machines and other mechanisms for self-service, technologies like eye movement tracking, and the application of social psychology- are all widely used to increase impulse buying and sales of high calorie indulging foods. Eating behaviors are often made unconsciously.

Food variety, obtained by adding condiments can increase food intake in the short term. The mechanism by which food consumption is increased after the addition of condiments is at least partly related to the attenuation of sensory-satiety for a given food (Brondel et al., 2009). Sensory specific satiety- decrease in pleasure when consuming a specific food, and a consequent renewal in pleasure when consuming a different food or flavor. Senses become sated if continually exposed to the same stimulus. As you eat more of a specific food it becomes less pleasant. The more dissimilar the food's sensory characteristics (taste, flavor, color, texture, shape, temperature) the longer it will take to achieve sensory specific satiety.

Having a variety of foods presented in succession during a meal enhances intake, and the more different the foods are the greater the enhancement is likely to be (Rolls, 1981). However, if the sensory characteristics of a variety of foods presented in a meal are too similar increased consumption may not occur.

Food is often consumed when not hungry. When and how often we eat is determined by a myriad of factors.

Gustation- sense of taste

The four basic tastes are salty, sour, bitter and sweet (Wolfe et al., 2006). However, some sources list a fifth basic taste- Unami (Beauchamp & Mennella, 2009).

'components of flavor, detected by the olfactory system, are strongly influenced by early exposure and learning beginning in utero and continuing during early milk (breast milk or formula) feedings. These experiences set the stage for later food choices and are important in establishing life-long food habits', (Beauchamp & Mennella, 2009). The foods we like are shaped by learning and innate factors.

The pleasure or displeasure associated with tastes is seen in infants. With no experience, infants like sweet and dislike bitter and sour. Some of the most impressive work concerning hardwired taste preferences comes from Jacob Steiner (Steiner, 1973)

A chemist named A.L. Fox discovered we do not all experience taste in the same manner. While synthesizing the compound phenylthiocarbamide some of it spilled and flew into the air. One of Fox's colleagues noticed a bitter taste while Fox tasted nothing. With further testing some of Fox's other colleagues did not taste the compound, but most tasted it as bitter (Fox, 1931).

Flavor is a combination of true taste and smell. Flavor and taste are not synonymous.

Natural preferences for sweet-tasting compounds changes developmentally (infants and children have higher preferences than adults) and can be modified by experience (Cowart et al., 2004). Bitter tasting substances are innately disliked probably because most bitter compounds are toxic- plants evolved systems to protect themselves from being eaten and plant-eating organisms evolved sensory systems to avoid being poisoned (Glendinning, 1994 & Beauchamp, 2009).

Marketers have capitalized on the tendency of humans to be physical misers (put out minimal physical energy) by developing products that make eating quick and easy, including packaging that allows people to eat on the run, eat in their cars, eat fast, etc (Morrison, 2007)

Research has shown that images, sounds, smells, and lighting, affect eating behaviors.

Are fast food restaurants conspiring to make society obese? No. They are conspiring to sale food and make huge profits. If humans preferred eating fruits and vegetables to eating burgers and fries fast food restaurants will sale fruits and vegetables.

Environmental cues to aid in eating less

Use smaller plates and dishes. Use tall skinny glasses.

Eat at the table, and avoid eating in the TV room

Minimize eating from a package

Keep high calorie tempting food out of sight. Don't leave them on the counter in plain view

Avoid eating too many different foods in one meal. If you like to include variety in meals include a variety of nutrient dense, low cal foods that are similar in sensory characteristics

Those are just a few of the many topics that will be explored. Stay tuned for further updates. Any other suggestions for a book title are appreciated.

What Intelligence IS and IS NOT

Intelligence (as defined by narrow theories)- those mental abilities measured by IQ tests and their proxies (SAT etc.) does not provide a comprehensive assessment of cognitive skills. These theories provide a scientific concept of intelligence generally symbolized as g, or "in some cases where the fluid / crystalized theory is adopted intelligence (Gf) and crystalized intelligence (Gc)" (Stanovich, 2009, p. 13). Fluid intelligence reflects reasoning abilities (and to a degree processing speed) across a variety of domains, particularly novel ones. Crystalized intelligence reflects declarative knowledge acquired by acculturated learning- general knowledge, vocabulary, and verbal comprehension, etc. Mental abilities assessed by intelligence tests are important, but a variety of important mental abilities are missed by intelligence tests.

It is important to point out that the research I have reviewed and the research I propose does not suggest there are multiple intelligences or that intelligence is unimportant. Critics of intelligence routinely point out the intelligence does not encompass many domains of important psychological functioning. “However, these standard critiques of intelligence tests often contain the unstated assumption that although intelligence tests miss certain key noncognitive areas, they encompass most of what is important cognitively” (Stanovich, 2009, p. 5). These popular assumptions have been thoroughly refuted, and in fact intelligence tests do not assess many important cognitive skills. Intelligence tests are radically incomplete measurements of good thinking. It is commonplace for critics, writers and the lay public to suggest that intelligence has nothing to do with real life- that it’s not important in real life. Decades of research have shown otherwise- intelligent tests do measure important cognitive skills. “[S]cientific evidence does converge on the conclusion that MAMB IT [mental abilities measured by intelligence tests] picks out a class of mental operations of considerable importance. The problem is just that folk psychology values those mental operations- and the tests used to measure them- too much” (Stanovich, 2009, p.54).

Cognitive abilities assessed on intelligence tests are not about:

- personal goals and their regulation
- tendency to change beliefs when faced with contrary evidence
- argument & evidence evaluation

Intelligence tests do not measure important thinking dispositions, such as: openness to experience, belief perseverance, level of confirmation bias, reliance on intuition, impulsiveness, myside bias, one-sided bias, need for cognition, need for closure, alternative hypothesis testing, thought flexibility, fully disjunctive reasoning etc.

In short, cognitive abilities assessed on intelligence tests are not measurements of rationality, but measurements of algorithmic- level cognitive capacity. Good thinking is more than just intelligence.

References

Stanovich, K. (2009). What Intelligence Tests Miss: the psychology of rational thought. Hartford, CT: Yale University Press.

Science @ Psych Central

Psych Central provides readers with a wide array of content from various writers. The site is updated on a regular basis- numerous times daily- and produces informative, quality scientific information (emphasizing health sciences). The site is easy to navigate, well organized, and presents scientific information in a way that is relatively easy to comprehend for the layman. However, the site is also useful for individuals with moderate and advanced levels of scientific knowledge. Psych Central is different than many of the popular psych sites. Psych Central promotes REAL PSYCHOLOGICAL INFORMATION- PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE

I am a regular contributor to the site. Some of my recent articles include:
Testimonials Aren’t Real Evidence

Does GRE measure anything related to Grad School?

Why Intelligent People Do Foolish things?

Here is a short list of some excellent articles featured at Psych Central:

Is Science Dead? In a Word: No

Why doctors oversell benefits undersell risks and side effects

2011: The Power of Positive Thinking

Five relationship benefits in knowing how your brain works


There are many, many other excellent articles at Psych Central.

Dysrationalia: Intelligent people behaving irrationally

by Jamie Hale

The following interview features the Stanovich, West, Toplak Research Lab.

Your research shows that intelligence does not imply rationality. Could you please briefly explain your general findings?

Those findings are easy to summarize briefly. They are simply that the correlations between measures of intelligence and various tasks from the cognitive psychology literature that measure aspects of rationality are surprisingly low. We use the term “surprisingly” here, because for many years it has been known that virtually all-cognitive ability tasks correlate with each other. Indeed many show quite high correlations. So, being psychologists, the surprise is in the context of this wide and vast cognitive ability literature, which has the technical name “Spearman’s positive manifold.” This positive manifold--that performance on cognitive tasks tends to correlate, and often quite highly--is more than 100 years old.

Thus, it was in this particular context, when we started observing fairly modest or low correlations between measures of intelligence and rational thought, that we thought this quite startling. Indeed, in restricted samples of educated adults this correlation can be virtually zero on certain tasks in the literature. Most often the correlation is positive, but, again, in light of 100 years of correlations between cognitive ability tasks, the correlations are often surprisingly low.

Of course one of the implications of this is that it will not be uncommon to find people whose intelligence and rationality are dissociated. That is, it will not be uncommon to find people with high levels of intelligence and low levels of rationality, and, to some extent, the converse. Or, another way to put it is that we should not necessarily expect the two mental characteristics to go together. The correlations are low enough--or moderate enough--that discrepancies between intelligence and rationality should not be uncommon. For one type of discrepancy, that is for people whose rationality is markedly below their intelligence, we have coined the term dysrationalia by analogy to many of the disabilities identified in the learning disability literature:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysrationalia

What is the definition of rationality?

Dictionary definitions of rationality tend to be of a weak sort—often seeming quite lame and unspecific. For example, a typical dictionary definition of rationality is: “the state or quality of being in accord with reason”. The meaning of rationality in modern cognitive science has a much stronger sense, it is much more specific and prescriptive than typical dictionary definitions. The weak definitions of rationality derive from a categorical notion of rationality tracing to Aristotle, who defined “man as the rational animal”. As de Sousa (2007) has pointed out, such a notion of rationality as “based on reason” has as its opposite not irrationality but arationality. Aristotle’s characterization is categorical—the behavior of entities is either based on thought or it is not. Animals are either rational or arational.

In its stronger sense, the sense employed in cognitive science and in this book by de Sousa (2007), rational thought is a normative notion. Its opposite is irrationality, and irrationality comes in degrees. Normative models of optimal judgment and decision making define perfect rationality in the noncategorical view employed in cognitive science. Rationality and irrationality come in degrees defined by the distance of the thought or behavior from the optimum defined by a normative model. This stronger sense is consistent with what recent cognitive science studies have been demonstrating about rational thought in humans.
We would also warn that some critics who wish to downplay the importance of rationality have been perpetuating a caricature of rationality that involves restricting its definition to the ability to do the syllogistic reasoning problems that are encountered in Philosophy 101. The meaning of rationality in modern cognitive science is, in contrast, much more robust and important. Syllogistic reasoning and logic problems are one small part of rational thinking.
Cognitive scientists recognize two types of rationality: instrumental and epistemic. The simplest definition of instrumental rationality, the one that is strongly grounded in the practical world, is: Behaving in the world so that you get exactly what you most want, given the resources (physical and mental) available to you. Somewhat more technically, we could characterize instrumental rationality as the optimization of the individual’s goal fulfillment.

The other aspect of rationality studied by cognitive scientists is termed epistemic rationality. This aspect of rationality concerns how well beliefs map onto the actual structure of the world. The two types of rationality are related. In order to take actions that fulfill our goals, we need to base those actions on beliefs that are properly calibrated to the world.

Although many people feel that they could do without the ability to solve textbook logic problems, virtually no person wishes to eschew epistemic rationality and instrumental rationality, when properly defined. Virtually all people want their beliefs to be in some correspondence with reality, and they also want to act to maximize the achievement of their goals. Psychologist Ken Manktelow (2004) has emphasized the practicality of both types of rationality by noting that they concern two critical things: What is true and what to do.

Epistemic rationality is about what is true and instrumental rationality is about what to do. For our beliefs to be rational they must correspond to the way the world is—they must be true. For our actions to be rational they must be the best means toward our goals—they must be the best things to do.

De Sousa, R. (2007). Why think? Evolution and the rational mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Manktelow, K. I. (2004). Reasoning and rationality: The pure and the practical. In K. I. Manktelow & M. C. Chung (Eds.), Psychology of reasoning: Theoretical and historical perspectives (pp. 157-177). Hove, England: Psychology Press.

What are some of the rational thinking skills that are positively associated with intelligence? How about rational thinking skills that are not associated with intelligence?

Various probabilistic reasoning tasks have moderate correlations with intelligence. However, myside bias (the tendency to view evidence from one’s own side) is pretty much independent of intelligence in university samples. There are many, many domains of rational thinking measures and they each have important characteristics that will impact whether they are associated with intelligence. Stanovich’s Yale book contains a theoretical explanation of why some rational thinking tasks correlate with intelligence and others do not:

Stanovich, K. E. (2009). What intelligence tests miss: The psychology of rational thought. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

In a TV interview you (Toplak) mentioned the need for RQ testing. Do you think we can expect to see RQ testing within the public domain, in the near future?

Yes, this would be a great thing, but it is not likely to happen in the near future. The development of such an instrument would be a logistically daunting task, partly because rational thinking is such a big construct with so many parts. We use the term “multifarious” to describe this, and a metaphor we use is that it is like going to your family doctor for a check-up: there is not one test that will tell you that your health is good, rather the doctor checks multiple things to make this assessment.

The purpose of our work, and many of our recent publications, has been to speed the development of an RQ test along. We have done this by showing that there is no impediment, theoretically, to designing such a measure. The tasks that would be on such a measure have been introduced into the recent literature. In several recent publications we have been working on bringing them together into a coherent structure. Of course there are many, many, more steps that are needed before one has an actual standardized test. Standardization samples would need to be run and items would need to be piloted. In terms of the corporations that produce mental tests, it’s an endeavor that, if one were to measure it in dollars, would be millions of dollars.

Again, the purpose of some of our recent work has been to sketch out what such an endeavor would look like, to show that there is no theoretical or empirical impediment to such a thing, and to recruit others into this endeavor of working on such an instrument. We would like to include others in this endeavor, because we believe that it is way beyond the capabilities of a single laboratory. Our hope is that such an instrument might someday stand in parallel to the intelligence tests. This has been one of the motivations in our recent books and chapters, such as the following:

Stanovich, K. E., West, R. F., & Toplak, M. E. (in press). Intelligence and rationality. In R. J. Sternberg & S. B. Kaufman (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of intelligence (3rd Edition), Cambridge,UK: Cambridge University Press.

We need to emphasize, however, that there is no reason for this to be an all or nothing, rather than an incremental, process. There clearly would be immediate practical uses of less all-encompassing instruments that focused on important components of rational thinking (e.g., economic thinking, probabilistic thinking, scientific thinking, reduced myside biased thinking).

Is rationality more important than intelligence?

No, we would never make such a blanket statement. We would only say that the magnitude of its importance at least approaches that of intelligence. Differences in rational thought have real world consequences that cash out in terms of important outcomes in peoples lives. We don’t want to get into a contest of which is more important. We acknowledge that intelligence, as assessed by standardized tests, is one of the most important psychological constructs that has ever been discovered. But outlining the nature of rational thought, how to theoretically conceive it, and how to measure it empirically, is certainly up there with intelligence in terms of the most important five or six mental constructs that psychologists have investigated.

Can a person be highly rational, but rank low in intelligence?

Yes. This was addressed in our response to question number 1, that the whole point of our research showing that the correlation between the two is not excessively high is that you can have discrepancies, and that one can be high on one and low in the other.

Tell our readers how they can improve their rational thinking skills.

A good first start is education, which readers have already started here by reading this blog entry. Having an understanding of how cognitive scientists have expanded what is meant by rationality is important, namely that rationality is about two critical things: What is true and what to do.

There are numerous books that deal with rational thinking. Some of the chapters and books in our own research lab have contributed to this, and we will list them at the bottom of this entry.

Do you think a good starting point would be becoming educated on basic logic?

Basic logic would be part of a rational thinking skills curriculum, but not necessarily the first part. Again, rational thinking in cognitive science encompasses decision theory, epistemic rationality, and many areas beyond simply the study of basic logic in philosophy 101. It is very important to understand that rational thinking in cognitive science is rooted in good decision-making. Good decision making skills and good skills of knowledge acquisition do have logical thinking as one subcomponent. But there are many subskills that are even more important than logic. The subskills of scientific thinking, statistical thinking, and probabilistic reasoning, for example. Many of these are listed in the books that we will recommend here.

Baron, J. (2008). Thinking and deciding (Fourth Edition). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Hastie, R., & Dawes, R. M. (2001). Rational choice in an uncertain world. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. (a new 2010 edition is just out)

A recent chapter of ours contains a large number of citations to successful attempts to teach the skills of rational thought:

Toplak, M. E., West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (2011). Education for rational thought. In M. J. Lawson & J. R. Kirby (Eds.), The quality of learning. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Is there a particular book that you recommend- for people interested in increasing their rationality- for the lay public?

Yes, some of the books that we have already mentioned. We will be so immodest as to recommend a small textbook of our own.

Stanovich, K. E. (2010). Decision making and rationality in the modern world. New York: Oxford University Press.

Weblinks with bios and further information:

http://web.mac.com/kstanovich/iWeb/Site/Home.html
http://www.yorku.ca/mtoplak/
http://web.me.com/westrf1/Site_2/Welcome.html
Video- Stanovich Grawemeyer Lecture- Third link from the top of the page
http://web.mac.com/kstanovich/iWeb/Site/Audio_Visual.html

Good Thinking: More Than Just Intelligence

by Jamie Hale

Are intelligent people good thinkers? Some are, some are not. Society is replete with examples of intelligent people doing foolish things. There is a plethora of scientific data showing intelligence does not necessarily predict rationality. Intelligence shows a low to moderate association with some critical thinking / rational thinking skills, while showing little to no association with other rational thinking skills. A study published in 2008, in Thinking & Reasoning (Stanovich & West), investigated two key critical thinking skills- avoidance of myside bias and avoidance of one side bias.

THINKING & REASONING
2008, 14 (2), 129 – 167

On the failure of cognitive ability to predict myside and one-sided thinking biases
Keith E. Stanovich
University of Toronto, Canada
Richard F. West
James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA, USA

Two critical thinking skills—the tendency to avoid myside bias and to avoid one-sided thinking—were examined in three different experiments involving over 1200 participants and across two different paradigms. Robust indications of myside bias were observed in all three experiments. Participants gave higher evaluations to arguments that supported their opinions than those that refuted their prior positions. Likewise, substantial one-side bias was observed—participants were more likely to prefer a one-sided to a balanced argument. There was substantial variation in both types of bias, but we failed to find that participants of higher cognitive ability displayed less myside bias or less oneside bias. Although cognitive ability failed to associate with the magnitude of the myside bias, the strength and content of the prior opinion did predict the degree of myside bias shown. Our results indicate that cognitive ability—as defined by traditional psychometric indicators—turns out to be surprisingly independent of two of the most important critical thinking tendencies discussed in the literature.

Key cognitive skills required for critical thinking are the ability to evaluate evidence in an objective manner, and the ability to consider multiple points of view when solving a problem, or coming to a conclusion. Most people fail to demonstrate these critical thinking tendencies. Myside bias is displayed when people evaluate evidence and come to conclusions that are biased towards their own beliefs and opinions. One side bias is demonstrated when people prefer one sided arguments over arguments presenting multiple perspectives. Intelligent people are just as likely as less intelligent people to demonstrate these thinking biases. Before going further, it is important to mention that intelligence in this context refers to cognitive abilities measured by popular intelligence tests and their proxies. These tests do a good job assessing computational power and certain types of declarative knowledge. But, they do not adequately assess critical thinking skills. Avoidance of myside bias and one side bias are not measured on intelligence tests. It seems that intelligence tests are missing an important element of good thinking- evaluating evidence in a unbiased manner, and considering a multitude of perspectives when problem solving. I don't think any sane person would argue that these skills are not important.

In a series of experiments Stanovich and West examined the association between cognitive ability and two cardinal critical thinking skills- avoidance of myside bias and avoidance of one side bias. In Experiment 1 natural myside bias was investigated in 15 different propositions. In Experiment 2 myside bias and one-sided bias was studied. In Experiment 3 associations between thinking dispositions- in addition to cognitive ability- and one-sided and myside bias were investigated.

In Experiment 1, the researchers concluded, there was "no evidence at all that myside bias effects are smaller for students of higher cognitive ability" (p.140). The main purpose of Experiment 2 was to investigate the association of cognitive abilities with myside and one side bias. "The results... were quite clear cut. SAT total scores displayed a nonsignificant 7.03 correlation with the degree of myside bias and a correlation of .09 with the degree of one-side bias (onebias1), which just missed significance on a twotailed test but in any case was in the unexpected direction" (p.147). It was also revealed that stronger beliefs usually imply heavier myside bias. In Experiment 3 "the degree of myside bias was uncorrelated with SAT scores", and "[t]he degree of one-side bias was uncorrelated with SAT scores" (p.156). Myside bias was weakly correlated with thinking dispositions. One side bias showed no correlation with thinking dispositions.

The final two sentences or the research report read: "Our results thus indicate that intelligence—as defined by traditional psychometric indicators—turns out to be surprisingly independent of critical thinking tendencies. Cognitive ability measures such as the SAT thus miss entirely an important quality of good thinking" (p.161). The good news is critical thinking abilities are malleable, and in fact, probably more malleable than intelligence

Reference
Stanovich, K. & West, R. (2008). On the failure of cognitive ability to predict myside and one-sided thinking biases. Thinking & Reasoning, 14 (2), 129-167.

Additional Sources
What IQ Tests Miss- Dr. Toplak Interview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGka5bQIgS4

　
Stanovich, K. E. (2009, Nov/Dec). The thinking that IQ tests miss. Scientific American Mind, 20(6), 34-39. First Link at the top of this page -
http://web.mac.com/kstanovich/iWeb/Site/Research%20on%20Reasoning.html

Next week I will be publishing an interview with the Stanovich, West, Toplak Research Lab.

How We Know What Isn't So: Interview w/ Thomas Gilovich

by Jamie Hale

Recently, I had a chance to conduct an interview with one of my favorite writers- Thomas Gilovich. Gilovich is the author of one of the most celebrated books- How We Know What Isn’t So- in the skeptic, critical thinking community. I first learned about the book when reading Shermer’s- Why People Believe Weird Things. In addition, Gilovich has co-authored three other books. He is also a prominent primary researcher and professor & chairperson at Cornell University.

If you have any interest in critical thinking, everyday judgments and beliefs you will love the following interview.

Does the "hot hand" or "streak shooting"- as defined by basketball enthusiasts, really exist? What are the origins of this idea? How prevalent is this idea among basketball enthusiasts?

Despite what everyone "knows" to be the case, basketball players do not shoot in streaks. That is, their streakiness does not exceed the level of streakiness one observes when, say, flipping coins. The widespread belief in streak shooting seems to stem from a common misconception about what chance outcomes look like. Statisticians refer to this as the clustering illusion. Purely randomly arranged stimuli "clump" together more than one would expect and so when we see instances of randomness, it doesn't look random to us. Applied to basketball, when we see a player make four, five, or six shots in a row, we think the player is hot. But careful statistical analyses reveal that the frequency of such sequences do not exceed what one would expect if the outcomes of prior shots had no influence on the outcomes of subsequent shots.

Does money buy happiness? Explain.

Money is associated with happiness. People in rich countries are happier, on average, than people in poor countries and, within a country, people with more money are happier, on average, than people with less. As you might imagine, it's not a huge effect, but it's there. Whether money "buys" happiness depends in part on how one spends it and a great deal of recent research in psychology and economics has been devoted to figuring out what type of expenditures yield the most happiness, and the most enduing happiness.

What do you think is the most common, or maybe a short list of a few of the most common errors in thinking that lead to bad decision-making?

At the top of the list, what my colleague Scott Lilienfeld refers to as "the mother of all biases," is what is known as the confirmation bias, or the tendency to examine whether an idea is true—to test a hypothesis—by looking disproportionately for evidence consistent with that idea. Someone testing whether professors tend to be pompous will search their memories (or the outside world) for pompous professors; someone testing whether professors tend to be modest will search their memories for modest Profs. Because there is SOME evidence for nearly any idea (there are many pompous profs and many modest ones), this bias leads to an excess of credulity.

What advice can you give people who are interested in increasing their critical thinking skills?

Take a course in statistics and in psychology (social psychology in particular)

What is your favorite book? Favorite website?

I'm not a big fan of favorites because there's so much great stuff at the top end of almost any category, and who wants to assign one member of the upper echelon to a lower rung (Is Citizen Kane really better than The Godfather, as the American Film Institute would have us believe?) But Guns, Germs, and Steel and The Omnivore's Dilemma are certainly favorites, as is the book I just finished, Nicholson Baker's fabulous The Anthologist. As for a favorite website, it's hard to beat The New York Times—and I can't resist a plug for my brother's website, www.surfline.com

Of the books you have written, which one is your favorite?

Again, I don't much like the idea of favorites but my first, How We Know What Isn't So, will always be special to me.

What are your current research interests?

I remain interested in trying to understand how people can become convinced of things that dispassionate analysis and careful inquiry indicate are not true. False beliefs, superstitions, faulty judgments in all walks of life—in politics and government, in economics and personal finance, in sports, and in personal relationships.


Recommended Sources

Gilovich faculty page

http://www.psych.cornell.edu/people/Faculty/tdg1.html

Gilovich Books
http://www.psych.cornell.edu/tdg1/Books.html