Notes on Two Systems - first part of Thinking, Fast and Slow

Notes on first part of Thinking, Fast and Slow (Two Systems)

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The characters of the story

• Two modes of thinking: System 1 (Fast thinking / automatic system) and System 2 (Slow thinking / effortful system). These terms were originally proposed by psychologists Stanovich & West
  • System 1: Operates automatically and fast, with no or little effort, no sense of voluntary control
  • System 2: Conscious, explicit, effortful thinking, concentration.
• System 2 has some ability to change the way System 1 works.
• System 2 can influence where the attention is allocated (see e.g. "The invisible Gorilla")
• System 1 works automatically, System 2 is usually in a comfortable low-effort mode
• System 1 can "call System 2" when e.g. a question arises for which System 1 doesn't offer an answer
• Illusions (both visual and cognitive)
  • e.g. Müller-Lyer illusion
  • System 2 can choose to believe that the lines are of equal length but it can't (at least without lots of training) prevent System 1 from seeing the lines to be of different length.
• NOTE: System 1 and System 2 are fictious characters

Attention and effort

• System 2's operations are effortful.
• as a not: Size of the pupils indicate mental effort
• If System 2 is under load, attention to other tasks (also of System 1) is reduced.
  • "... people, when engaged in a mental sprint, may become effectively blind" (e.g. "The invisible Gorilla")
• Switching from one task to another is effortful.
• Time pressure is another driver of effort

The lazy controller

• For walking, there is usually "a natural speed" with which no strain or "need to push" is experienced
  • Also System 2 has a "natural speed"
• System 2 follows "the law of least effort"
• Maintaining a coherent train of thoughts requires discipline
• Note: "flow" (studied by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)
  • People describe flow as "a state of effortless concentration so deep that they lose their sense of time, of themselves, of their problems"
• A well-established proposition: Both self-control and cognitive work are forms of mental work (by System 2)
  • They both draw at least partly on a shared pool of mental energy (studied by Roy Baumeister)
• Ego depletion
  • Effort of will or self-control is tiring.
  • If you have had to force yourself to do something, you are less willing or less able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes.
  • Study: Tired and/or hungry judges tend to fall back on easier solutions.
• One of the main functions of System 2 is to monitor and control thoughts and actions "suggested" by System 1.
• Recurrent theme of the book: Many people are overconfident, prone to place too much faith on their intuitions. (cognitive effort with System 2 is at least mildly unpleasant)
• Stanovich & West have studied: What makes some people more susceptible than others to biases of judgement?
  • Stanovich draws a sharp distinction between two parts of System 2:
    • "algorithmic mind" (slow thinking and demanding computation) and "rational mind" ("engaged", more skeptical to their intuitions)
    • rationality should be distinguished from intelligence

The associative machine

• System 1 does associations automatically - thoughts, memories, even physical reactions
• Priming effect
  • Example study: exposure to a word causes immediate and measurable changes in the ease with which many related words can be evoked.
  • E.g. primed with "EAT", SO_P becomes more easily SOUP but primed with "WASH", SO_P becomes more easily SOAP
  • Priming is not restricted to words
  • Example, Florida effect
    • Priming with words related to aging caused subjects to walk slower
• Priming is reciprocal (works in both ways), some examples:
  • Walking fast primed for different things/words than walking slow
  • Another examples of reciprocal link: Being amused makes you smile <-> Smiling makes you be more amused
  • Nodding up-down vs. shaking head side-to-side has effect on acceptance/rejection of a message
• Primes quide out judgments and choices quite much
  • Example study of voting patterns for school funding - whether the voting station was in school or just near had effect on the results
  • Another example study of money priming individualism
  • "Lady MacBeth effect"
  • System 2 believes that it is in charge but System 1 has also effect without us even noticing.
• System 1 provides impressions that often turn into your beliefs, and is the source of the impulses that often become your choices and your actions.

Cognitive ease

• Cognitive ease / strain
• Causes (of cognitive ease) for example: Related experience, clear display, primed idea, good mood
• Consequences: Feels familiar, feels true, feels good, feels effortless
• Cognitive ease has multiple causes and they have quite interchangeable effects - it is difficult to tease them apart
• Illusions of remembering (example of made-up celebrity names)
  • E.g. For a new word, making it easier to see/read -> it will be more likely to have the quality of pastness.
• Illusions of truth
  • Frequent repetition makes people to believe falsehoods, familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.
• How to make a persuasive message
  • Anything you can do to reduce cognitive strain helps: Legibility, simple language, memorable message (rhyming), name easy to pronounce
• Strain and effort:
  • Reciprocity: Cognitive strain will activate System 1.
  • Study with Shane Frederick's Cognitive Reflection Test: Performance was better with bad font. (Difficulty to read activates System 2)
• The pleasure of cognitive ease
  • Mind at ease puts a smile on the face
  • Mere exposure effect
• Ease, mood and intuition
  • Intuition works better when we are on a good mood

Norms, surprises, and causes

• The main function of System 1 is to maintain and update a model of your personal world, which represents what is normal in it.
• A capacity for surprises is an essential aspect of our mental life.
• Norm theory
• Our mind is eager to see causes and intentions.

A machine for jumping to conclusions

• System 1 does choices and conclusions automatically and does not keep track of alternatives, or even of the fact that there were alternatives.
• Daniel Gilbert: For a statement, initial attempt to believe is an automatic operation of System 1. Gilber sees unbelieving as an operation of System 2.
• Confirmation bias
  • When asked "Is Sam friendly?" different instances of Sam's behaviour will come to mind than would if asked "Is Sam unfriendly"
  • Positive test strategy
• Halo effect
  • The tendency to like (or dislike) everything about a person - including things you have not observed.
  • The sequence in which we observe characteristics of a person matters how we view that person.
• To derive the most useful information from multiple sources of evidence, one should try to make these sources independent of each other. (decorrelate error)
• What you see is all there is (WYSIATI)
  • Associative memory represents only activated ideas.
  • Intuitive thinking is often jumping to conclusions on the basis of limited evidence.

How judgments happen

• System 2 receives or generates questions - in either case it directs attention and searches memory to find answers
• System 1 continuously monitors what is going inside and outside the mind and continuously generates "basic assessments" of various aspects of the situation.
  • How things are? Is there a thread or opportunity? ...
  • Example of basic assessment - discriminate friend from a woe at a glance.
  • E.g. Todorov's voting study
• Sets and prototypes - System 1 deals well with averages but poorly with sums.
• Intensity matching - System 1's scale of intensity allows matching across diverse dimensions.
  • Example: "Julie read fluently when she was 4 years old." -> "How tall is a man who is as tall as Julie was precocious?"
• Mental shotgun
  • System 1 carries many computations at any one time + automatically. Other computations are voluntary.
  • The control over intended computations is far from precise - we often compute much more than we need. (This is called mental shotgun)

Answering an easier question.

• Normally we have intuitive feelings and opinions about almost everything that comes onto our way.
• Question substitution:
  • The target question is the assessment we intend to produce.
  • The heuristic questions are the simpler questions we answer instead.
• The mental shotgun makes it easy to generate quick answers to difficult questions without imposing much hard work on the lazy System 2.
• Intensity matching helps to fit the answers to the original questions
• Affect heuristics - in which people let their likes and dislikes to determine their view of the world (Paul Slovic)