The human brain seeks patterns and rules. In fact, it takes it one step further: If it finds no familiar patterns, it simply invents some.

First, the list of fallacies in this book is not complete. Undoubtedly new ones will be discovered.

He has studied the phenomenon of reciprocity and has established that people have extreme difficulty being in another person’s debt.

Life is a muddle, as intricate as a Gordian knot. Imagine an invisible Martian decides to follow you around with an equally invisible notebook, recording what you do, think, and dream. The rundown of your life would consist of entries such as “drank coffee, two sugars,” “stepped on a thumbtack and swore like a sailor,” “dreamed that I kissed the ne

Whether we like it or not, we are puppets of our emotions. We make complex decisions by consulting our feelings, not our thoughts. Against our best intentions, we substitute the question, “What do I think about this?” with “How do I feel about this?” So, smile! Your future depends on it.

Second, the majority of these errors are related to one another. This should come as no surprise. After all, all brain regions are linked. Neural projections travel from region to region in the brain; no area functions independently.

Opening the newspaper, you learn that another CEO has been forced to step down because of bad results. In the sports section, you read that your team’s winning season was thanks to player X or coach Y. In history books, you learn that the success of the French army in the early 1800s is a testament to Napoleon’s superb leadership and strategy. “Eve

Evolutionary psychology is still mostly a theory, but a very convincing one at that. It explains the majority of flaws, though not all of them. Consider the following statement: “Every Hershey bar comes in a brown wrapper. Thus, every candy bar in a brown wrapper must be a Hershey bar.” Even intelligent people are susceptible to this flawed conclus

Social proof, sometimes roughly termed the “herd instinct,” dictates that individuals feel they are behaving correctly when they act the same as other people. In other words, the more people who follow a certain idea, the better (truer) we deem the idea to be. And the more people who display a certain behavior, the more appropriate this behavior is