Whenever I teach Intro to Psychology, one of my favorite topics
to cover is the cognitive revolution. During the continuing
revolution, much attention has been paid to human decision-
making processes. Most of us like to believe that our intellect,
our experiences and our perceived expertise lead us to make
rational and well-informed decisions. But, mountains of research
clearly show otherwise: human beings are highly irrational
decision makers, irrespective of intellectual ability. The work
of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, two pioneers in the
revolution, showed that we tend to overestimate the occurrence
of scenarios that most easily come to mind, a phenomenon called
the availability heuristic. Many folks, for example, since the
events of September 11th, have resisted air travel and opted for
other means of (more dangerous) transportation, even though
those decisions are statistically irrational. But more
importantly, Kahneman and Tversky also showed that people’s
decision making is affected by the manner