Understanding Cognitive Biases

By: Alexander B. Swan, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Alexander B. Swan

Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2023 The Great Courses (P)2023 The Teaching Company, LLC

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?

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.

Interesting, informative and well organized

I am quite interested in the psychology, and cognitive biases in particular. The professor of this Great Course presents a variety of biases using examples and gives advice on how to overcome the bias.

Practical and Accessible Psychology Audiobook!

Overall 5 Stars for Alex Swan in delivering this audiobook with easy-to-follow stories that highlight insightful takes on everyday psychological concepts. Nothing earth-shattering although a great overview of ways we approach, think about and deal with both people and things on a daily basis. Included PDF "book" makes it even easier to review and follow along.