THINKING 101 is an instructive text by Woo-kyoung Ahn, the John Hay Whitney Professor of Psychology at Yale University. She does an excellent job of explaining psychology topics of interest to our students. There are chapters that cover eight ideas like Confirmation Bias, Causal Attribution, and Delayed Gratification. While students may have been introduced to many of these concepts in another context, Ahn adds value by interweaving relate-able, real life applications. For example, she recommends practicing and writing out responses to interview questions so as to improve fluidity and to more objectively evaluate whether you would hire yourself for the position. In another chapter titled "The Perils of Examples," Ahn acknowledges that "vivid examples are more convincing, easier to understand and harder to forget than decontextualized, abstract explanations." There, she illustrate the law of large numbers with comments about solicitation letters from Save the Children and her own son's interest in sports. Ahn seems to sincerely want to show her readers "How to Reason Better to Live Better" and her passion for these topics is evident.

This book explains how inherent cognitive biases affect our decision making. It’s informative, engaging, and easy to read.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

TL;DR

Dr. Woo-Kyoung Ahn’s Thinking 101 teaches us how we make mistakes in our thought process through clear definitions and many pertinent, interesting examples. By putting into place her strategies for combating biases, maybe we can make ourselves a little better and find a little more grace and patience for others. Highly recommended.

Disclaimer: The publisher provided a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Any and all opinions that follow are mine alone.

Review: Thinking 101 by Woo-kyoung Ahn

Prior to 2016, I believed that learning to argue would be a good way to change people’s minds about politics. I believed that well-constructed, logical arguments were the way to discuss politics. 2016 and the years since have changed my mind. A person’s politics are decided by emotion with rational explanations decided after the fact. It doesn’t matter which way the person leans – left or right – they are still going with their gut emotional reaction and, then, justifying it later. This has been even more apparent with the rise of Qanon and its smaller Liberal counterpart. As I watched an acquaintance fall under the spell of Qanon and deny reality, I began to wonder how does that happen. What thought processes lead a person to believe such disprovable lies? The only answer I could come up with was biases. People’s thoughts are biased in certain ways that logic cannot overcome. So, I sought out to learn more about biases when a book popped up on NetGalley that promised to do just that. Thinking 101 by psychologist and Yale professor Woo-kyoung Ahn used her extensive research into the human mind to demonstrate how we think and how we can improve our thinking. Ahn draws from her Yale course and from the thinking lab that she leads. This course won’t free us from biases, but we can make better decisions if we’re more aware of our biases.

Professor and psychologist Woo-kyoung Ahn has written an amazing book about how humans think. My review copy had eight chapters that cover the following biases: Fluency, Confirmation Bias, Causal Attribution, Examples, Negativity Bias, Biased Interpretation, Perspective-Taking, and Delayed Gratification. Each chapter gives a definition, some examples, some complications, and strategies for counteracting the effects of the bias. Each chapter flows into the next, and as this isn’t a long book, readers will tear through it. I found each chapter to be fascinating, and I could probably write an essay on each chapter and what I learned from it. Reading about all these biases in a row could be daunting and potentially sad. But instead, I found myself chuckling and nodding along with Ahn’s writing. I easily saw myself in the pages of her book. Instead of seeing how poor my own thinking was, I saw how entirely human I am. Ahn’s book connected me to people in a way that I wasn’t prepared for. I had picked this book up to learn why other people think the way they do, but instead, I found my gaze turned upon myself. And my mental health is all the better for it.

As an example of what readers will experience in the book, let’s look at the first chapter: The Fluency Effect. The Fluency Effect gives us overconfidence. It makes us think we’ve got skill or knowledge that we don’t have. Think of the Dunning-Kruger effect. This happens to all of us. For me, I watched several YouTube clips of bakers making bread. It looked easy enough. So, I tried it. My first bread was basically a cracker. It was thin and crunchy instead of puffy and soft. It was my third bake before I got something that looked right. It was my fifth one that I was actually proud of. On that first attempt, I suffered from the fluency effect. Simply because I watched a video doesn’t mean I had the skills or experience to perform like the video. This is the fluency effect. Woo-kyoung Ahn suggests trying things out to determine your skill level, but she also describes pitfalls associated with making attempts. Ahn discusses the planning fallacy and how it plays into life. She even tells how it builds into conspiracy theories.

Ahn’s chapters give similar detail to the above paragraph. She even breaks down some biases, like Causal Attribution, into cues that influence the conclusions we draw. For example, in Causal Attribution, she says the cues of similarity, sufficiency and necessity, recency, and controllability all effect the causes we attribute to certain actions. But she does more than just classify and define. She gives numerous examples to make her lessons concrete, and the lessons are interesting. One thing you learn writing is that the specific detail is more relatable than the universal. This means that readers are more able to relate to specific details, like saying a blue, porcelain vase instead of simply vase. Or a man with bushy gray mustache, wrinkled forehead, and gray locks of hair in his face paint a better picture than simply old man. Ahn uses this well; her examples are specific and targeted to each lesson she’s giving us. The examples in each chapter are what make this book so useful to me and why I recommend it for anyone. Her years of experience teaching come through the page, and it’s clear that she’s a very good teacher.

Confirmation Bias

Of all the biases she discusses, confirmation bias is the one that I see happen most often. Whether in politics, medicine, video game or book reviews, personal job performance, etc., we all fall into the trap of confirmation bias. This bias is where we seek information that confirm our suspicions rather than disprove them. Ahn recommends a strategy for confirmation bias. When forming a hypothesis, seeking confirmation is not enough. We must also seek what disproves our hypothesis. If we can disprove the hypothesis, then it must be wrong. If we can’t, it may be correct. Her examples of how this hurts us and hurts society are clear and pointed. I loved them. They drive home the need for us to note our confirmation biases.

In her chapter on confirmation bias, she also discusses maximizers versus satisficers. Maximizers are people who are always on the lookout for something better. They want to pull the maximum satisfaction out of life and, even if they’re happy in whatever they’re doing, they’re still looking for something better. Satisficers are people who end their search when they are satisfied enough instead of continuing to look for the absolute best. I had never heard these terms before, but based on Ahn’s descriptions, I knew exactly which one I was. She says this is a maladaptive effect on our lives. I can confirm. I love my job; yet, I always am researching other fields, such as law, economics, programming, etc. I have no idea why other than the fear of missing out on the best job I can have. It is maladaptive because I never feel good in my position despite the fact that I love my job.

Biases Aid Structural Racism

Ahn throws in examples of how biases can lead to unhealthy results and also racist results. I enjoyed her use of Bayes Theorem to show why conflating terrorism with Muslim is not statistically sound. She describes how the harm of biased interpretations perpetuate prejudice. But the most damning thing she says is that contradictory evidence doesn’t make us change our minds. Instead, evidence that contradicts us results in us being even more polarized. People double down on their belief when presented with evidence that the belief is wrong or misguided. People will make excuses as to why the contradictory evidence exists but doesn’t apply to them. This is all over the place in today’s U.S. political scene. Despite the fact that there’s no basement in Comet Pizza, Qanon people still believe there’s a child abuse ring underneath that restaurant.

This is why educating people about racism will never solve racism. White people are very good at making excuses for why they’re not racist or how because America freed the slaves or elected Barack Obama, that the U.S. isn’t racist. Because of this, the Supreme Court of the United States used this very logic to gut the Voting Rights Act in 2013. No matter how many times systemic bias is demonstrated; individuals rationalize it away with excuses.

How Does This Help?

This book claims to be able to help improve our daily thinking. So, did it work? Has my thought processes improved? Yes, I think they have. I wouldn’t say my thought processes have changed, but I’m more aware of my own internal biases and how they’re working. The book didn’t promise to free me from my biases; it can’t do that. However, I can be more aware of what affect my decision making process. I definitely know that I suffer from confirmation bias, but through this book, I learned about planning fallacy. It’s something I’ve learned the hard way that I suffer from. I’ve never put a name on it, and it’s only been in the last few years because of work that I’ve begun to consider. At first, I thought it was rose colored glasses and being optimistic. Now, I see that it’s an actual cognitive process.

The main benefit I’ve gotten from reading this book is a bit of stress relief. I’m giving myself a little more room to make mistakes because despite my best efforts, there will be biases that I cannot overcome. Part of Ahn’s book talks about people knowing they have these biases and yet falling prey to them anyways. Knowing that I have biases slows down my thinking and gives me some grace towards myself.

In addition, Ahn includes strategies for overcoming biases, and a lot of them boil down to putting yourself in another person’s place. Empathy is the strategy to combat biases, and I love this. Cultivating empathy is something this nation needs.

Can I Use This Book to Win Arguments?

Yes. This book has a number of strategies that could be used to manipulate others. But that’s not the book’s intended use, and, in fact, manipulation goes against what Ahn is trying to do with her book. Yes, you can use this book to win arguments, to play upon people’s biases for your benefit, but that doesn’t help your thinking. Using it in such a way is the opposite of empathy.

Ahn’s project isn’t for us to connect with other people through manipulating their ability to think. It’s for us to connect with ourselves by cultivating empathy for ourselves and for others. It’s to de-center ourselves and attempt to view our thoughts from a different perspective. This allows us to view self-criticism in a new light. Often we criticize ourselves way more harshly than we would a friend or, even, a complete stranger. By looking at this criticism as if it were applied to a different person, we can begin to give ourselves a break.

But we’re also training ourselves to see alternate perspectives. If you wish to win arguments, then learning to view a subject from your opponent’s perspective is key. By having empathy for them, you can begin to understand how they’ve formed the conclusions they’ve made. It doesn’t mean you have to agree with those conclusions, simply that you can see where they’re coming from. This allows you to structure your arguments and responses in manners best suited to them, not yourself. Debates can’t be won by laying down a card declaring your opponent’s bias. Debates are won by getting the other side to agree with you or, at least, to consider your arguments as having merit. The best way to do that is to consider your opponent’s thought process and to consider their biases. Thinking 101 will help you do that.

Conclusion

Woo-Kyoung Ahn’s Thinking 101 taught me a lot about myself. I originally requested it to learn how other people think, but instead, I learned how my mind works. Knowing that bias is an inherent part of being human and that there are strategies to work on my biases made me feel better. I plan to work on these, particularly the overthinking and rumination associated with Causal Attribution. My mental health will be better for it. If you read this, I think yours will be too. Highly Recommended.

Thinking 101 by Woo-Kyoung Ahn is available from Flatiron Books on September 13 th, 2022.

I found this book to be so nice interesting. It really made me question my thoughts and why I may be thinking them. I’m not a big thriller of reading books to self-reflect on things like this, but I enjoyed this one! .

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher of this novel for the E-Arc copy. I am rating this book based on my own personal opinion and was not given anything in return. I am not leaving a entire review because I read so many at a time that I physically cannot right now.

Outstanding review of the science relevant to thinking and reason. Highly recommend for those looking for a highly readable and entertaining deep dive into thinking.