Psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahnemann has written the book “Thinking – Fast and Slow.” In it, he says that we have two systems that we use to understand the world: system 1 and system 2 .
System 1 thinks quickly, is “cheap to operate”, unconscious, runs all the time and has a tendency to generalize. It constantly looks for connections between the things we experience, which it also very often finds – even where there are none. Kahnemann calls system 1 “the mental shotgun” because it shoots imprecisely, but hits a lot of what it is supposed to hit.
System 1 is like that person you went to class with who always raised their hand when asked a question and said, “Me! Me! Me!”.
System 2 thinks slowly, is expensive to operate, deliberate and much more accurate, but tiring to use for long periods of time, so we avoid it if we can get away with it.
Normally, it is System 1 that makes the decisions in our lives, and System 2 simply accepts that this is the case - without us realizing it.
Let's test how the two systems work with a small problem. Although it's very simple, I failed miserably the first time I tried to solve it - and very few people get the answer right. In fact, I still fail even though I know the answer.
A sausage and a loaf of bread cost 1.10 krone together. If the sausage costs 1 krone more than the bread, how much does the bread cost?
Most people will immediately say that the bread costs 10 øre. But that's not true.
Try to think about it again...
Here, many will insist that they have thought about it and that the answer is 10 øre, and there is no need to consider it further. At least, that is what I have experienced many times.
If the bread costs 10 øre, and the sausage with bread together costs 1.10, it would mean that the sausage cost 1 kroon. But if the sausage costs one krone and the bread 10 øre, then the sausage does not cost one krone more than the bread, but only 90 øre more.
The correct answer is that the sausage costs one krone and 5 øre, and the bread costs 5 øre.
What happens is that system 1 quickly finds an answer that seems plausible, and system 2 accepts it without further ado.
Another task that also demonstrates this is the following question:
How many animals of each kind did Moses bring in his ark?
If you say or think 'two', then it's not completely off the mark.
The problem with that answer is, of course, that it was not Moses, but Noah, who, according to the Bible, built an ark. When you now - in retrospect - reflect on it, you might object that you actually noticed that too. But you answered 'two' because you unconsciously understood the intention of the question. That is also usually very sensible. The point of asking the question is simply to show that we also safely leave such considerations to system 1.
I also mentioned that System 1 finds connections even where there are none. Kahnemann refers in the book to an experiment in which participants were asked to rate how happy they were on a scale and then indicate the number of dates they had been on.
The participants were divided into two groups. The first group was asked the two questions in the order listed. In this group, there was no correlation between the number of dates they had been on and how happy they felt.
The second group was asked the same questions, but the order was reversed, so they had to answer how many dates they had been on before they had to answer how happy they were. In this group, there was a strong correlation between how many dates they had been on and how happy the participants said they felt.
The participants in the group created a connection between two different questions, so that it influenced the answers.
These were just a few examples of how System 1 and System 2 manifest themselves. I find System 1 and System 2 to be a very useful model for understanding our behavior and why we sometimes behave irrationally.
I highly recommend you read " Thinking – Fast and Slow "*). I believe that the book should be a permanent element in everyone's education and upbringing.
*) If you buy the book from Saxo.com via the link above, we will receive a small commission. We write because we are passionate about what we write about, not to make money. When we mention a book, it is because we have read it and think it is worth recommending. When we link to Saxo.com, it is because we buy books through them ourselves.
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