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It’s not a typo. I really did mean “be aware” instead of “beware.” That’s because I just wrapped up reading “The Undoing Project” by Michael Lewis, a book about Israeli psychologists Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky, two men who changed how people think about how people think – and who’s work behaviorial economics greatly relies. Here’s a New Yorker piece that reviews the book.

Getting back to the subtle title of this blog, “beware” means to be wary and cautious. In contrast, “be aware” is something a little different. Simply acknowledging it exits. As I learned from this book, studies show that knowing about a bias isn’t enough to overcome it. There are too many forms of bias to name. A biggie for me is confirmation bias, where we tend to latch onto information that confirms prior beliefs. I’m also prone to the “Halo Effect,” in which our overall impression of someone influences how we feel about their character (eg. she is nice, she also must be smart). I may be aware that I have these biases – and even though I can try, I can’t totally avoid them.

Reading the book, I wished I studied behavioral economics when I was young. It’s fascinating stuff. For example, the theory of “similarity judgements” – how people make judgments about what is similar mainly based on physical proximity. Mind-blowing. Michael does such a beautiful job of explaining difficult concepts in plain English.

So what can we do about our biases?  Probably the best thing we can do is something along the lines of this quote attributed to Danny in the book: “When someone says something, don’t ask yourself if it’s true. Ask what it might be true of.” In other words, don’t try to tear it down immediately. Try to make sense of it. A challenging task given our inherent nature and all the biases we bring to the table. But perhaps one worth trying…