Imagine that you are a judge at a sentencing hearing. This is a result of excessive coherence , which dictates our reluctance to change our predisposed conclusions. As the popular saying goes, ‘first impressions last longest’, indicating that initial judgments form a coherence (or halo) that directs our evaluation of others. Thus, reserved judgments (prejudgments) guided by our feelings sometimes direct our thinking, which is an instance of ‘after heuristics’. Similarly, we often tend to collect pieces of evidence that confirm our existing beliefs, which is known as confirmation bias. To avoid answering a difficult question (how is your life going?), people answer the easier alternative (how am I feeling now?), substituting judgments with something that more easily comes to mind, thereby committing availability heuristics bias. When assessing their ability to finish a task on time, individuals overestimate their capacities, committing planning fallacy bias. Starting from the use of heuristics (the mental shortcuts that humans frequently use to arrive at conclusions in decision-making) to undue emphasis on scales and patterns, bias can shape human judgment through various means. Sunstein (writer of Nudge) and Olivier Sibony, Professor of Strategy & Business Policy at HEC Paris, the book elaborates on how to find and measure the occurrence of ‘noise’, while detailing how we can avoid such flaws at length. Written by Daniel Kahneman (Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, 2002, and writer of Thinking Fast & Slow), eminent legal scholar Cass R. In Noise, the authors highlight such crucial flaws of human judgment which they define as random/chaotic deviations from targeted behaviour that invite no causal explanation. Some judgments are biased towards or against certain phenomena, showing predictable systematic deviation from desirable human behaviour, while some are unpredictable they are noisy. Many factors influence them and vary across individuals, times, situations. ‘Where there are six economists, there are seven opinions.’ – Barbara Wootton Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. If you would like to contribute to the series, please contact the managing editor of LSE Review of Books, Dr Rosemary Deller, at A Flaw in Human Judgment. This review originally appeared on LSE Review of Books. This novel book will help readers to better understand the processes we undertake in decision-making and how to encourage more informed and principled decisions, writes Kaibalyapati Mishra. Sunstein explore how ‘noise’ affects human judgment and reflect on what we can do to address this. In Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R.
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