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    Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average
    Unavailable
    Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average
    Unavailable
    Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average
    Audiobook7 hours

    Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average

    Written by Joseph T. Hallinan

    Narrated by Marc Cashman

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    We forget our passwords. We pay too much to go to the gym. We think we'd be happier if we lived in California (we wouldn't), and we think we should stick with our first answer on tests (we shouldn't). Why do we make mistakes? And could we do a little better?

    We human beings have design flaws. Our eyes play tricks on us, our stories change in the retelling, and most of us are fairly sure we're way above average. In Why We Make Mistakes, journalist Joseph T. Hallinan sets out to explore the captivating science of human error-how we think, see, remember, and forget, and how this sets us up for wholly irresistible mistakes.

    In his quest to understand our imperfections, Hallinan delves into psychology, neuroscience, and economics, with forays into aviation, consumer behavior, geography, football, stock picking, and more. He discovers that some of the same qualities that make us efficient also make us error prone. We learn to move rapidly through the world, quickly recognizing patterns-but overlooking details. Which is why thirteen-year-old boys discover errors that NASA scientists miss-and why you can't find the beer in your refrigerator.

    Why We Make Mistakes is enlivened by real-life stories-of weathermen whose predictions are uncannily accurate and a witness who sent an innocent man to jail-and offers valuable advice, such as how to remember where you've hidden something important. You'll learn why multitasking is a bad idea, why men make errors women don't, and why most people think San Diego is west of Reno (it's not).

    Why We Make Mistakes will open your eyes to the reasons behind your mistakes-and have you vowing to do better the next time.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateFeb 17, 2009
    ISBN9780739370599
    Unavailable
    Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average

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    Reviews for Why We Make Mistakes

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    • 4/5
      The back cover categorises this book as "Popular Psychology". It covers the general topic of behavioural effects of the human mind makeup and the way this manifests in mistakes we make. It is a well condensed book with a good set of references/ sources. I have read several books in this field, but this still had several examples that were new to me. There are insert summary paragraphs thoughout and a good structure of quite small blocks of information, all with headers so that you are not wading through acres of print waiting for a point to come up for air. The only problem I had occasionally, and this in some ways made it more interesting, is that I'm European/British but this is written heavily to American cultural references. So that, for example, in the error case when familiarity means we don't remember details; the pictures and descriptions are of US coins. For geography, the example is California/ Nevada cities. Overall this didn't matter as I've seen reference examples for Europe (Italy slopes SEasterly much more that people assume so cities even halfway down like Rome will mindmap West of "East Europe" countries/ cities like Poland/ Hungary etc.), in fact this was a nice additional layer to the book for anyone that read already in this area.