Understanding Cognitive Biases

De: Alexander B. Swan, The Great Courses

Narrado por: Alexander B. Swan

As you read this sentence, your brain has just processed about 20 million bits of information. In fact, every second of every day, your brain processes about 11 million bits. And yet, that astonishing number just isn’t enough to get you through your day. Consequently, your brain takes some shortcuts—and it’s those shortcuts, called heuristics, that make it all work. Some shortcuts are completely benign and helpful—such as your ability to recognize your child even if half his face is in shadow or your ability to imagine tomorrow even though you will never actually see it.

The shortcuts of cognitive biases, however—when the brain fills in gaps of solid, reliable information with a lot of guesswork for efficiency’s sake—can lead to errors of memory and judgment and cause faulty decision-making with unintended, even dire, consequences. For example, take confirmation bias. This tendency to consider only information that confirms our existing beliefs can cause us to make incorrect assumptions about the cause of a coworker’s behavior, misinterpret experimental data, or even make disastrous engineering decisions resulting in loss of life.

In Understanding Cognitive Biases, you will learn how to recognize these biases for what they are, counteract them when necessary, and even use them to your advantage in some instances. In 24 fascinating lectures, Dr. Alexander B. Swan uses examples from psychology experiments, history, politics, movies, TV, comics, social media, and more to illustrate dozens of cognitive biases that affect us all. You’re not alone in your sometimes irrational judgments and interpretations of events or people. But you can learn how to make better decisions—no matter what shortcuts your brain wants to take!

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

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Introductory course on cognitive bias

Sometimes I drifted away when listening to the course. I definely need to check the additional materials.

Very Informative

This was an accessible overview of the way biases inform our thinking. It's also a good springboard for further research.

Good info

It was well put together. Though he did seem to play both sides of the fence at times. If there is a bias to make you do something and a bias to stop you from doing the same thing, you can stall the actual content of the conversation indefinitely by focusing on any number of bias evaluations. Is there a bias of assuming all other people have failed to think through their own bias to a reasonable degree?

Great overview

I enjoyed this and think it could benefit from sequels. For example, I think a lot of people would benefit from one focused on cognitive biases that affect healthcare.

A good introduction to bias

The book offers a well curated although surface level mix of the more common psychological biases.
Perhaps what disfavors it’s overall performance is that there are any other sources for this information.