Unlike System 1, system 2 is often on the rest mode and only activates when there is a complex problem or something that has not been stored in our memory. Also, as system 1 governs the quick decisions, it helps us identify mistakes in others’ behaviour in everyday life. For example, the halo effect is where we perceive a person’s character based on their first impression. That is why a handsome, charming person is often perceived as someone who is intelligent, successful and having good manners. However, this thinking is of course flawed.

System 2 Is Normally On Rest Mode

We can't live in a state of perpetual doubt, so we make up the best story possible and we live as if the story were true.

Even compelling causal statistics will not change long-held beliefs or beliefs rooted in personal experience.

Do you know that even the single stream of thoughts we usually have is governed by two parallel cognitive systems which Daniel Kahneman calls System 1 and System 2.

Two Systems Of Thinking Govern Our Behaviour

System 2 is deliberate, slow and logical. It helps you solve complex problems. With System 2, your brain produce thinking that helps you understand problems, figure out the reasoning and then solve it.

System 2: The Slower One

Changing one's mind about human nature is hard work, and changing one's mind for the worse about oneself is even harder.

Expert intuition strikes us as magical, but it is not. Each of us performs feats of intuitive expertise many times each day.

System 1 is focused on identifying patterns and associations in our environment. It then stores these patterns in memory where the System 2 takes hold of these patterns and tries to make sense of it. Also, once System 1 adds these impressions and associations to our memory, it becomes beliefs in our memory.

System 1 Forms Patterns And System 2 Helps Make Sense Of Them

And lastly, I truly agree that making our decisions based on certain appearances or short meeting may not be enough to get a real idea about anyone’s personality. You need to be able to find the consistencies in the behaviour to be able to form a true opinion.

System 2 believes itself to be where the action is, but system 1 is the secret author of many of the choices and judgements you make.

Mostly, our brains want to save energy and therefore would always want to make quick decisions even if it risks making the wrong call. However, as system 1 cannot always solve the big problems, it will call system 2 in action where the system 2 then does the reasoning to solve the problem.

Our Brain Wants To Save Energy

System 1 is fast, automatic and emotional. It helps us recall 2 x 2 = 4 on the go. With System 1, your brain helps you make quick decisions in your everyday life.

System 1: The Faster One

System 1 is a different self where it helps us form memories that we use to draw our self from. System 2, on the other hand, is different self because it evaluates the present and past information to make a decision. However, as the system 1 is not always reliable, we need to refine our thinking process to be able to make sense of situations. For example, a consistency in events may be a better indicator of identifying a certain behaviour rather than relying on the past information from our memory. You should know, however, that is not easy for us to change our behaviour even in face of stats.

Two Different Selves

The confidence that individuals have in their beliefs depends mostly on the quality of the story they can tell about what they see, even if they see little.

Daniel Kahneman was a Nobel Prize winning psychologist, economist and an author of best-selling books such as “Thinking Fast & Slow”. Also, Daniel Kahneman was a professor of psychology at Princeton University. He is also someone who took pleasure in admitting his mistakes and working towards improving his beliefs.

Who Is Daniel Kahneman

As quoted earlier, intuition is a process built upon the set of unconscious biases collected and gathered over our lives. Even though System 1 may be looked down upon due to its susceptibility towards biases, it is the one that has always helped us survive due to its approach to making decisions quickly. When in life-threatening situation, System 1 helps us make quick decisions that helps us get out of those situations. Such as hearing a distant voice in the dark heightens our senses and help us perceive the danger.

System 1 Is More Prone Towards Cognitive Biases

Learn how our cognitive systems drive our behaviours and help with decision making. Discover the system 1 and system 2 thinking and how unconscious biases leads to building our beliefs about the world.

Major New York Times bestseller Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award in 2012 Selected by the New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011 A Globe and Mail Best Books of the Year 2011 Title One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year One of The Wall Street Journal's Best Nonfiction Books of the Year 2011 2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Kahneman's work with Amos Tversky is the subject of Michael Lewis's The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds In his mega bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic.

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Daniel Kahneman (born 5 March 1934) is an Israeli-American psychologist and winner of the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, notable for his work on behavioral finance and hedonic psychology.With Amos Tversky and others, Kahneman established a cognitive basis for common human errors using heuristics and biases (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973, Kahneman, Slovic & Tversky, 1982), and developed Prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). He was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in Prospect theory. Currently, he is professor emeritus of psychology at Princeton University's Department of Psychology.

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