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?? Why do we think irrationally?

Explore heuristics, biases, memory, emotion, social influence, incentives, and why reasoning depends on context.

5
lessons
~30 min
to learn
Adults
level
Start the course →

What you’ll learn

  1. The Fast StoryExplain why fast judgments can be useful yet vulnerable to shortcuts.Automatic inference edits experience quickly, and its shortcuts depend on context.
  2. Beliefs Protect ThemselvesDescribe how prior beliefs and identity can shape evidence search and interpretation.Beliefs influence which evidence is noticed, trusted, and allowed to change a conclusion.
  3. When Probability Feels WrongShow why intuition can misread base rates, samples, conditions, and regression.Probability requires reference classes and explicit conditions, not only compelling stories.
  4. Stories Beat NumbersExplain how framing, loss, sunk costs, and memory summaries alter judgment.The way outcomes are narrated can change their felt weight without changing the underlying facts.
  5. A Better Second LookPresent practical reasoning checks that improve calibration without promising perfection.Better updating comes from visible assumptions, alternatives, uncertainty, and claim-sized conclusions.

Questions this course answers

Which statement best describes a heuristic?

Heuristics reduce effort and can be useful when their cues fit the environment, but they can mislead when conditions change.

Match each reasoning pattern with its description.

These patterns differ in what captures attention: memory accessibility, an initial number, a neglected starting frequency, or an unrecoverable past cost.

Put this careful reasoning sequence in order.

A clear question sets the frame; evidence and assumptions then become comparable, alternatives prevent premature closure, and the final claim should match the support.

Why can a vivid example distort a judgment about frequency?

Ease of recall is not the same as frequency. News coverage and personal salience can make rare events mentally available.

What is a useful reason to write down assumptions?

Externalizing assumptions reduces hidden steps and lets another person inspect the structure, while uncertainty and error remain possible.

Grounded in trusted sources

  • https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heuristics/
  • https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/decision-theory/
  • https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/probability-interpret/
  • https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4972783/
  • https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5573739/
  • https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/7-introduction
  • https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK390/

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