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The Art Of Thinking Clearly
The "hiccups" in our everyday thinking.
The Art Of Thinking Clearly aims to illuminate our day-to-day thinking “hiccups” so that we can better avoid them and start making improved choices. Using both psychological studies and everyday examples, the author provides us with an entertaining collection of all of our most common fallacies.
- Anyone interested in learning about our psychology
- Anyone who wants to improve her ability to make decisions
- Anyone who wants to learn how not to fall into the same mind-trap again and again
Rolf Dobelli is a writer and entrepreneur with a PhD in philosophy, as well as the founder of Zurich.Minds, a community of high-profile thinkers. He is also a regular contributor at esteemed European newspapers like Die Zeit and FAZ and has written six novels.
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The Art Of Thinking Clearly
- Read in 18 minutes
- Audio & text available
- Contains 11 key ideas
Synopsis
The Art Of Thinking Clearly aims to illuminate our day-to-day thinking “hiccups” so that we can better avoid them and start making improved choices. Using both psychological studies and everyday examples, the author provides us with an entertaining collection of all of our most common fallacies.
Key idea 1 of 11
We systematically overestimate our abilities in many areas of life.
Do you feel that you have a pretty realistic grasp of your abilities? That, while others might delude themselves into overestimating their abilities, you don’t? If so, you aren’t alone: we all tend to view ourselves through rose-tinted glasses.
Research has shown that we are overconfident in many areas of life.
For example, studies have shown that 84 percent of Frenchmen consider themselves to be above-average lovers. In reality, it’s only possible for 50 percent to be considered “above average,” since, statistically speaking, 50 percent should rank higher and the other half should rank lower.
Similarly, research has shown that 93 percent of US students ranked themselves as “above-average” drivers, and 68 percent of University of Nebraska faculty ranked their own teaching abilities in the top quartile.
These numbers show that the majority of us rate our abilities higher than they probably are.
Not only that, but we also mistakenly attribute successes to our own abilities and failures to external factors.
Researchers even tested this by having a group of subjects take a personality test, and then assigning arbitrary scores to the tests. When the subjects were later interviewed, they found that those with “good” scores believed that the test results had fairly reflected their true abilities, thus successfully assessing their great personalities.
Those who received “bad” scores, however, found the ratings to be useless, and that the test itself ‒ and not their personality ‒ was garbage.
Have you ever had a similar experience? If you got an A on a high school exam, for example, you probably felt that you were responsible for your success. If you flunked, you probably thought that it wasn’t your fault, and that the test was unfair, or some other circumstance caused your failure.
Knowing this, you should therefore be aware of our tendency to overestimate our knowledge and attribute all our success to our own skills. A good way to overcome this might be to invite an honest friend out to coffee and ask for their candid opinion on your strengths and weaknesses.
Key ideas in this title
- We systematically overestimate our abilities in many areas of life.
- We can control and predict much less than we think in life.
- We tend to follow what the group does – and we’ll conform to prevent ourselves from being excluded.
- We interpret information so that it fits with our self-image and our pre-existing beliefs.
- We determine the value of things based on their availability and by comparing them to others.
- We tend to be engrossed by the interesting: whether compelling stories or exotic explanations.
- Our attention is very selective and narrow.
- Making decisions can be tiresome, especially when you are faced with many possible choices.
- We like others if they are attractive, flatter us or remind us of ourselves.
- Feelings guide our decisions more than we think.
- Final Summary
