Nobel laureate psychologist Daniel Kahneman distills a career of research into how the mind reaches judgments and decisions, organized around two systems: fast, intuitive System 1 and slow, deliberate System 2. Drawing on decades of experiments conducted with Amos Tversky, he surveys the biases and mental shortcuts—anchoring, availability, loss aversion, overconfidence—that quietly shape choices about money, risk, and happiness. He also explores the split between the moment-to-moment 'experiencing self' and the retrospective 'remembering self' in judging a life well lived. The book became a landmark popular account of behavioral economics and cognitive psychology.
Books mentioned in Thinking, Fast and Slow (12)
Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll: “A skilled reader who sees it for the first time will be able to read the opening stanza of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" with perfect rhythm and intonation, as well as pleasure: 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe...”
The Hedgehog and the Fox by Isaiah Berlin: “He uses the terminology from Isaiah Berlin's essay on Tolstoy, "The Hedgehog and the Fox." Hedgehogs "know one big thing" and have a theory about the world.”
The Invisible Gorilla by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons: “The most dramatic demonstration was offered by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons in their book The Invisible Gorilla.”
A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton G. Malkiel: “Everybody in the investment business has read Burton Malkiel's wonderful book A Random Walk Down Wall Street.”
Free to Choose by Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman: “Milton Friedman, the leading figure in that school, expressed this view in the title of one of his popular books: Free to Choose.”
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert: “The psychologist Daniel Gilbert, widely known as the author of Stumbling on Happiness, once wrote an essay, titled "How Mental Systems Believe," in which he developed a theory of believing and unbelieving.”
The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: “A story in Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan illustrates this automatic search for causality.”
In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr.: “The average profitability of the companies identified in the famous In Search of Excellence dropped sharply as well within a short time.”
Built to Last by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras: “...Porras's Built to Last. (Fragment from the same halo-effect passage discussing business bestsellers alongside In Search of Excellence; the full sentence names Jerry Porras's co-authored book directly.)”
Attention and Effort by Daniel Kahneman: “He eventually became the leading authority on "cognitive pupillometry," and I wrote a book titled Attention and Effort, which was based in large part on what we learned together and on follow-up research I did at Harvard the following year.”
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely: “Irrational is a strong word: The view of the mind that Dan Ariely has presented in Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (New York: Harper, 2008) is not much different from mine, but we differ in our use of the term. (Likely an endnote aside rather than continuous body narrative, but it substantively compares…”
Strangers to Ourselves by Timothy D. Wilson: “Timothy Wilson's Strangers to Ourselves (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2002) presents a concept of an "adaptive unconscious" that is similar to System 1. (Likely an endnote aside rather than continuous body narrative, but it substantively relates the book's central concept to the source book's own theory rather than merely citing it, so…”