hypotheses, 165 ambiguity, 96,98 context and, 100-101, 164-65 sentence structure and, 118-21 types of, i2on ancestral (reflexive) system. See reflexive vs. deliberative systems anchoring belief and, 46-48 choice and, 80-81 anecdotal evidence, 171 anxiety, 154
Apollo 13, 2
Aristotle, 6, 124, 175
articulation, 106, 107-9 auto accidents, 147 awareness of origins of beliefs, 40-43 of stupid choices, 86- 87
Bargh, John, 25 Bayes, Rev. Thomas, 6n Bayesian optimality, 6-7 belief awareness of origins of, 40-43 biased reasoning and, 53-57 components of, 65 contextual memory and, 43-46 hearing and, 65-67 irrationality and, 57-60, 64-65 logic and, 60-62 mental contamination and, 43-51 perception and, 65-67 reflexive vs. 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, Romeo, 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, 87-90 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, Francois, 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’Academie francaise, 100 language ambiguity in, 96, 98, 100-101, 118-21, 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
sorites paradox and, 99-100 Loglan (language), 104-5
losing touch with reality, 155-58.See also mental illness Lovell, Jim, 2 Luria, Alexander, 63
machine translation, ii9n manic depression. See bipolar disor
der Mann, Merlin, 24 Marx, Chico, 65 memorization, 35,173 memory, 18-39. See also contextual
memory common quirks of, 18-20,31-34 in people vs. computers, 19-24 as unconscious, 24-25
mental contamination, 43-51 mental errors, 144-49 mental illness, 149-60
context and, 15m evolutionary psychology and, 151 55 recurring patterns in, 149-51 mere familiarity effect. See familiarity metacognition, 176 method of loci, 34 midbrain, 13 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 71 Mill, John Stuart, 6 Miller, Geoffrey, 133 Miller, George, 130 mind. See also neural substrates; reflexive vs. deliberative systems improvement of reasoning skills and, 165-72 as kluge, 6-7,13,14-17
