Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman

ecause of brain damage: Damasio’s idea is known as the “somatic marker hypothesis” and it
has gathered substantial support: Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason,
and the Human Brain (New York: Putnam, 1994). Antonio R. Damasio, “The Somatic Marker
Hypothesis and the Possible Functions of the Prefrontal Cortex,” Philosophical Transactions:
Biological Sciences 351 (1996): 141–20.
risks of each technology: Finucane et al., “The Affect Heuristic in Judgments of Risks and
Benefits.” Paul Slovic, Melissa Finucane, Ellen Peters, and Donald G. MacGregor, “The
Affect Heuristic,” in Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman, eds., Heuristics
and Biases (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 397–420. Paul Slovic, Melissa
Finucane, Ellen Peters, and Donald G. MacGregor, “Risk as Analysis and Risk as Feelings:
Some Thoughts About Affect, Reason, Risk, and Rationality,” Risk Analysis 24 (2004): 1–12.
Paul Slovic, “Trust, Emotion, Sex, Politics, and Science: Surveying the Risk-Assessment
Battlefield,” Risk Analysis 19 (1999): 689–701.
British Toxicology Society: Slovic, “Trust, Emotion, Sex, Politics, and Science.” The
technologies and substances used in these studies are not alternative solutions to the same
problem. In realistic problems, where competitive solutions are considered, the correlation
between costs and benefits must be negative; the solutions that have {ns problems,the largest
benefits are also the most costly. Whether laypeople and even experts might fail to recognize
the correct relationship even in those cases is an interesting question.
“wags the rational dog”: Jonathan Haidt, “The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social
Institutionist Approach to Moral Judgment,” Psychological Review 108 (2001): 814–34.
“‘Risk’ does not exist”: Paul Slovic, The Perception of Risk (Sterling, VA: EarthScan, 2000).
availability cascade: Timur Kuran and Cass R. Sunstein, “Availability Cascades and Risk
Regulation,” Stanford Law Review 51 (1999): 683–768. CERCLA, the Comprehensive
Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, passed in 1980.
nothing in between: Paul Slovic, who testified for the apple growers in the Alar case, has a
rather different view: “The scare was triggered by the CBS 60 Minutes broadcast that said 4,
000 children will die of cancer (no probabilities there) along with frightening pictures of bald
children in a cancer ward—and many more incorrect statements. Also the story exposed EPA’s
lack of competence in attending to and evaluating the safety of Alar, destroying trust in
regulatory control. Given this, I think the public’s response was rational.” (Personal
communication, May 11, 2011.)
14: Tom W’s Specialty
“a shy poetry lover”: I borrowed this example from Max H. Bazerman and Don A. Moore,
Judgment in Managerial Decision Making (New York: Wiley, 2008).