01/05/2024
We are not all ‘lean-mean-rational-thinking-machines’ that always make decisions in our best self interest.
You don’t even have to be a researcher to know this.
You probably have experienced it yourself sometime, or maybe even more than once.
When you did or didn’t do something merely to fit in with a group of people.
Maybe that was not rational, perhaps it was not in your best interest either, but it was the choice you made at that given time. And that’s ok.
That is called ‘being human’.
And it is because of your system 1 (Kahneman).
So, if we want to understand how to influence choice and behaviour, foremost the fact that:
𝐁𝐞𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧-𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠.
How your brain works is what your system 1 is primarily doing: rapidly sifting through information and ideas without you even noticing it.
Prioritising whatever seems relevant - and filtering out the rest by taking shortcuts. These shortcuts are also called ‘heuristics’. Our system 1 sends suggestions to our system 2. Which then turns them into beliefs.
To summarise, you could say that our system 2 is a slave to our system 1.
Here is an everyday example that will bring this interaction between the two systems into our brain to life immediately.
Think about the first time you met a random person.
You instantly liked someone or not: the famous ‘first impression’.
And you might even think that you are a good judge of character.
What you experience is within seconds your system 1 has decided whether you like a person based on subconscious, automatic short-cuts, like that person’s facial expression, their talk, their glasses etc.
This suggestion is sent to your system 2.
Your system 2 then actively looks for affirmations of this suggestion, which turns the suggestion into a belief.
It becomes true in your mind as you then selectively process all the following information consistent with that first impression.
Hence, this evokes your feeling that your first impressions are often so right.
