Zz Why Should everyone learn psychology?

When it comes to psychology, the first impressions in the minds of many people are the words "psychological problems", "psychological counseling", "freuch", "depression", and "mind reading, I always think that psychology is concerned with some dark or problematic people. This is a typical misunderstanding of Modern Psychology (seeHow to Think Straight About PsychologyThe Chinese Translation of psychology is different from that of the "public". In fact, psychology has come out from the freuard's one, combining modern scientific and technological means (such as FMRI) and research methods (such as controlled random experiments), interdisciplinary research of the characteristics of human brain thinking and the relationship with real life. Among them, the most fruitful cross-domain is the marriage of economics and psychology, which has given birth to a large number of excellent researchers and works, such as Richard Thaler'sNudgeTo study how to develop economic strategies creatively targeting the inherent drawbacks of people's thinking, so as to benefit the people's health, economy and happiness: such as the famousSave More Tomorrow(Chinese translation of the name "more storage tomorrow") it has successfully prompted a large number of Americans who do not have storage habits to start to store more; for example, Barry Schwartz'sParadox of Choice-Why More is LessUsing a large number of vivid and interesting research cases shows that many times it is more comfortable to choose less. Another example is to find out why creative ideas are popular.Made to StickWhich analyzes the cause and has learned some social psychology (The Social Animal, Translated as "social animals") and brain memory principle (Searching For MemoryIn the Chinese translation of "looking for the lost self") people should see the clues at a glance, the book is the beginning of a naked reference to psychology experiments. Even Malcolm Gladwell, one of the most popular books in the best-selling book market over the years (The Tipping Point,Blink,OutliersIn fact, we are also using a large number of living cases to prove some of the psychology principles that have not been fresh for a long time.

 

Psychology is closely related to daily life. On the other hand, it is the daily judgment and decision-making (the judgment and decision-making needs in life are far more than we think )(Psychology of Judgment and demo-making,Translated into "decision making and judgment"). Popur once said: Life is just a solution (all life is problem-solving ). Judgment and decision-making are the most common problems. Although it seems that there are not many major decisions in our lives, on the other hand, we are always making the most important decisions: deciding where your time and money are invested. For example, can you imagine someone would rather spend time cutting coupons in the newspaper every day, but be indifferent to the 1% discount on house prices? (Do not be a normal foolPredictably IrrationalAnother example: Do you know why we are holding our hair while the stock price at hand cannot slide to the abyss? (Yes, our psychological mechanisms adapted to ancient times are not adapted to financial markets at all .) Why are we waiting for a few dollars in transactions in front of a stall and a supermarket, but we are confused by the huge decisions we make in our lives? Poor judgment and decision making make our lives worse. However, this is not the most important thing. The most important thing is that we can hardly learn to question our own judgment, you can always "find" other reasons to defend yourself (Mistakes were Made, but not by Me).

 

Now is an era of information flooding, which leads to another problem: how to effectively filter valuable information in the ocean, and how to avoid wrong information affecting our brain (critical thinking) I have a bean column ("learn to think") on Douban. I hope that one day I will be able to learn more about this topic.

 

The human brain and thinking are the most complex systems that are currently known, and the research into this system is extremely fascinating, even for the vast universe of beings like us, even if you do not do research and learn some popular science knowledge in this area, it is also of great benefit to learn to think correctly.

 

The brain is our most important tool. The only way to make the most of it is to understand it, especially its weakness. Contrary to the intuition of many people, our thinking has a variety of defects and traps (cognitive bias). Our way of thinking for solving daily problems is not always the best (bounded rationality ), we feel that many of the right things are wrong. The well-handled behaviors we take for granted are not necessarily in line with the principle of maximizing benefits. Here is an introduction to my bean column:

 

Our thinking has many weaknesses. I have always believed that the correct way of thinking is the basis for efficient learning. For example, see the following two examples. a wrong way of thinking has a much higher possibility of failure.

• People always like to follow their previous learned experiences and use analogy to deduce them. When I took the subway at a subway terminal for the first time and looked at the subway from a distance, I was puzzled-"every car is so long, how can I adjust my head? (I didn't see a large U-Shaped Bend at the end of the rails )? ", When I started driving the car, I realized that the car could be driven in both directions.
• People like to look for cause and effect from association. Once my wife and I went to the bank to withdraw money and went to the automatic door of the ATM room, I jokingly took the meal card at hand to brush it, then the door opened. I immediately came to the conclusion that this card swipe device is not safe, at least it is not capable of identifying UnionPay cards. I even quickly generalized a more general theory to explain this phenomenon: it is possible that all magnetic cards can be used to open the door. My wife threw a cold disk of water at my satisfaction: It's not necessarily your card. You don't need to swipe your card to try it. I don't believe it. How is it possible? I thought that I had to swipe my card and opened the door. There is a more obvious causal relationship than this. But to my surprise, I stepped out of the door, but this time I didn't swipe my card, and the door opened. It turned out to be a sensor door. Originally, this ATM room was indeed a hacker, but later I changed it to a sensor door, the device that swiped the card was not removed and left there.

In general

• Human Thinking is filled with various shortcuts. every shortcut is a two-blade sword. On the one hand, it reduces the cognitive complexity of the brain (a general view of a problem is much simpler than a detailed analysis) and helps to quickly make the most correct judgments; but on the other hand, it also often leads people to regard the rules established in most cases as universal. It can be said that there are as many shortcuts as there are errors.
• Human emotions also affect human thinking to a large extent. For example, if you hate a person, you will usually oppose all his positions, and vice versa.
• After a long period of evolution, the human brain naturally has some specific "mindset ", this allows humans to quickly respond to adaptive problems that often occur during evolution without thinking. However, in modern society, many such mindsets are no longer suitable. (Mean Genes,Chinese Translation of "Instinct";Influence, Translated as "influence";Sway, Chinese translation name "Swing",Evolutionary Psychology, Translated as evolutionary psychology)
• Humans are inevitably influenced by a variety of prejudices, some of which are "mindset" that adapt to certain values (such as smart prejudices afterwards ), some are the "defects" of the brain's cognitive mechanism ".

The above constitutes all kinds of errors in human thinking. To learn to think is to learn to recognize these mistakes.

 

There is a long-established discipline in the West that describes the fallacy of human thinking. It is called the critical thinking )(Asking the Right QuestionsAs early as in the ancient Greek age, Aristotle had a certain understanding of all kinds of errors in human language (for example, "We cannot discuss things that do not exist, so all things are true "), and various errors existing in the debate are classified.

 

Some of the books in this bean column introduce the mechanisms of human thinking work. Understanding these mechanisms is a prerequisite for correct thinking. Many of them are about human Reasoning (Reasoning) there are various errors in the process (Nonsense,Crimes Against LogicOnly by recognizing these mistakes can we avoid them. Only by avoiding the mistakes of thinking can we start to think correctly.

 

Reading:

A list of the most complete cognitive bias (cognitive bias): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

 A complete fallacies list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies

Wikipedia entry on critical thinking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking