deliberative systems and, 51-53 Berra, Yogi, 67 bipolar disorder, 157-58 brain. See neural substrates 'brain farts,' 144
Brown, Derren, 2on Brown, James Cooke, 104-5 Buridan's Ass, 171-72 Bush, George W., 58, 87 Buss, David, 8
Cage, John, i34n Candid Camera (TV show), 69-70 Carr, Harvey, 22, 24 Carter, Jimmy, 91 categorization, and memory, 27-29 center embeddings, 116-18 Cheever, John, 127 children education of, 172-76 happiness of parents and, i36n temptations and, 69-70,143 choice. See decision making Chomsky, Noam, 102,114-16 Christmas Club accounts, 76 Christmas truce anecdote, 90-91 Cialdini, Robert, 80 co-articulation, 109-10,122 cognitive dissonance, 141-42 cognitive load, 145-46 computers errors and, 145,147 languages of, 103-4,113 memory stacks in, 31-32, ii9n postal-code memory and, 20-21 confirmation bias belief and, 53-55 mental illness and, 155-60 contextual memory belief and, 43-46 benefits of, 21-22,36-39 choice and, 81-84 confirmation bias and, 54-55
frequency and, 31-32,37 gist vs. detail and, 28-29,37 interference and, 25-27 liabilities of, 23-34,36 mental illness and, 156-58 priming and, 24-26 recency and, 31-34,37,45-46 recursion in language and, 116-18 refraining and, 165-66 revision and, 29-30 tricks for coping with, 34-36 contingency plans, 168 control, quest for happiness and, 131-33 correlation vs. causation, 166 Cosmides, Leda, 7 cost-benefit analysis, 169 counterfactual thinking, 165 creationism, 59n, 162-63. See also intelligent design credit cards, 85 Crick, Francis, ii5n Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 123
Dallaire, Rom?o, 32n Daly, Martin, 8 Darwin, Charles, 12,162 Dawkins, Richard, 8,9-10 daydreaming, 146-47 decision making. See also rational choice theory contextual memory and, 81-84 expected utility and, 70-71,73-75, 78 moral choices and, 90-92 reaching and, 70-73 strategies for improving, 165,16872
sunk costs and, 77-78 temptation and, 69-70,76-77,8790 defense mechanisms, 139. See also motivated reasoning deliberative system, 51-53. See also reflexive vs. deliberative systems belief and, 60 decision making and, 87-94 language and, 113 Dennett, Dan, 16 depression failures of reasoning and, 157-60 hidden benefits and, 151-52,153 ruminative cycle and, 157-58 detail, memory for, 27-29 Dijksterhuis, Ap, 94 disconfirming evidence, 54 DNA, 6,59n
education system, 172-76 elegance, 11,114-15 emotions decision making and, 87-90 neural substrates of, 143 Esperanto, 101-2 evolution belief and, 65-67,68 decision making and, 72,75-76, 84 kluge as product of, 12-14 language and, 111 mental malfunction and, 151-55 of mind, 14-17 perfection and, 9-11,162-64 evolutionary inertia, 12-15, 84-87 evolutionary psychology, 7-9,15
mental disorders and, 151-55 explanation, human need for, 159 eye, 5,10 eyewitness testimony, 2,28-29
false memory, 26-27 familiarity, 48-51,134-35. See also recency Ferreira, Fernanda, 121 Festinger, Leon, 141-42 Fischer, Ernst, 164 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 137 flashbulb memories, 27 focusing illusion, 44,51 Fogerty, John, 110 food choices about, 83, 84-85 familiarity and, 49 pleasure and, 125,128 thinking about money and, 75-76 forebrain, 13 Forer, Bertram, 40 framing. See also anchoring choice and, 81-83 personalized, 82n reframing and, 165-66 free association, 38 Freud, Sigmund, 37,38,124,140 Fromkin, Vicki, 95n 'full matching,' logic of, 111 future discounting, 84-87,149
Gage, Phineas, 92 generics, 112-13 Get Smart (TV show), 115 Gilbert, Daniel, 65- 66,135-36 Gladwell, Malcolm, 94 Glass, Ira, 66
goals anxiety and, 154 contingency plans and, 168 distraction from, 146-47 memory and, 31-32 procrastination and, 147-49 short- vs. long-term, 170-71 Gollwitzer, Peter, 168 Gould, Stephen Jay, 17,162 grammar. See also language ambiguity and, 118-21 recursion and, 115-18 Granholm, Jackson, 4 Groopman, Jerome, 15
The Hacker's Dictionary of Computer Jargon, 3 Haidt, Jonathan, 91-92 halo effect, 42-43,51 happiness. See also pleasure definitions of, 123-24,126 prediction of, 135-38 pursuit of, 138-39 Harding, Tonya, 32n Harris, Sam, 58 Haselton, Martie, 8 Heimlich maneuver, i07n Hemingway, Ernest, 137-38 hemoglobin, 10 Hildegard of Bingen, 101 hindbrain, 13 Hitler, Adolf, 60 Hobbes, Thomas, 84 Holmes, Sherlock, 131 Homo economicus, 70 homosexuality, 129-30,150 human body, as imperfect, 5-6 human genome, 14
hyperbolic discounting curve, 84 hypernormal stimuli, 132
imperfections. See also memory, common quirks of; mental contamination; mental errors in evolution, 10-11 in human body, 5-6 in language, 95-101 value of, 163-64 infanticide, 8 inference belief and, 62-64,65 logic and, 60-62 memory errors and, 37-39 reconstruction and, 33 information belief and, 65-67 pleasure and, 130-31 reasoning skills and, 173-74 intelligent design, 1,162-63. See also creationism interference, and memory, 25-27. See also mental contamination Internet, 82n, 130,173-74 iPod, 105,107
Jackendoff, Ray, 116 Jacob, Fran?ois, 12 Jost, John, 51
Kahneman, Daniel, 46,93 Kasun, Bob, 5on Keillor, Garrison, 141 kluge, concept of in engineering, 2-3,4-5,13-14 mind and, 6-7,13,14-17 in nature, 5-6,16-17
origin of term, 3-4 value of imperfections and, 163
64 Kuhn, Deanna, 173 Kunda, Ziva, 55-57
l'Acad?mie fran?aise, 100 language ambiguity in, 96,98,100-101,11821,164-65 attempts to systematize, 101- 3,
104-5 change and, 110-12 formal structure of, 113-21 irregularities in, 1,15,95-101,121
22 neural substrates of, 13 as perfect, 114-16 as source of truth, 65-67 sources of idiosyncrasy in, 105 speech sounds and, 105-10,122 word meanings and, 110-13,114
Lappin, Shalom, 114 larynx, 106-7 law of large numbers, 167 Lederer, Richard, 1 Lerner, Melvyn, 142 Leslie, Sarah-Jane, 113 Levine, Linda, 30 Loewenstein, George, 89 Loftus, Elizabeth, 28-29 logical reasoning, 60- 62. See also
decision making
belief and, 62-64
decision making and, 87-90
language and, 111
