You make decisions quicker and based on less information than you think

We fail to anticipate how little information we (and others) use when making decisions.

The immediacy of human judgment generally surprises people: we are startled by how quickly we make judgments and how little information we use doing so.

New information doesn't stack on top of old information until some mental threshold is reached for making a decision.

In reality, the first few pieces of information are weighted much more heavily than later information.

Quick decisions are not always bad. Sometimes they even are remarkably accurate and can save time.

It would be overwhelming to comb through all the available information on a topic every time a decision must be made.

Misunderstanding how much information we actually use to make our judgments has important implications beyond making good or bad decisions.

An example could be our tendency to rely on stereotypes when judging other people: we may believe we'll consider information from all the angles, but in fact, we are more likely to consider very little information and let stereotypes creep in.