Reference Information
Title: Why We Make Mistakes
Author: Joseph T. Hallinan
Publisher: 2009 Crown Archetype
Chapter 4: We Wear Rose Colored Glasses
Summary
This chapter discussed people's tendency to unconsciously view themselves in a better light when remembering past events. This includes experiments that have shown people remembering past grades as being higher, experiments with gamblers, and experiments with financial advisors asking more money (moral/self-licensing = when people demonstrate that they're not corrupt, it makes corruption more likely). This means that hindsight is skewed (hindsight bias) and is one of the most common sources of human error.
Discussion
I don't find it all that surprising that people often see themselves as acting better than they did in actuality. People like to be liked, so they may change their memories to believe something other than what actually happened. In particular, I found it interesting that financial advisors (and maybe even doctors) that come clean about conflicts of interest are more likely to be corrupt, thinking that their clients will take it into account.
Chapter 5: We Can Walk and Chew Gum -- but Not Much Else
Summary
This chapter discussed multitasking, and the human inability to accomplish it. In fact, humans just switch between topics, requiring more time to refocus and presenting more of an opportunity for distraction errors to occur. The author described similar problems regarding task saturation with plane crashes, intentional blindness of not seeing objects such as bridges due to distraction, and the perils of driver distraction.
Discussion
I thought it was strange that a person could completely not see an entire bridge, but it does make sense. In particular, I thought some of the ideas regarding driver "entertainment" were just ridiculous, since drivers do not need to email or check Facebook while driving, that's just asking for disaster.
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