Ultimately Kahneman concludes, "The conclusion is that the ease with which instances come to mind is a System 1 heuristic, which is replaced by a focus on content when System 2 is more engaged" (134). Thus how easily an event or tendency can come to a person's mind can have a strong impact on how they view the event or the category of events and its effect on their lives.
Chapter 13: Availability, Emotion and Risk
Kahneman examines the work of various scholars in chapter 13 on how easily one can access memories and associations and the emotions involved and how those elements affect perception, perspective and choice. Kahneman cites the work of Slovic who studied people in regards to associative memory, finding, "the ease with which ideas of various risks come to mind and the emotional reactions to these risks are inextricably linked. Frightening thoughts and images occur to us with particular ease, and thoughts of danger that are fluent and vivid exacerbate fear" (137). Kahneman also discusses Sunstein's theory about the influence of irrational fears and how availability cascades on public policy when it comes to risk and how Slovic is correct when policy makers should consider widespread fears, even if they're irrational.
Chapter 14: Tom W's Specialty
In this chapter, Kahneman discusses the intricacies of probability and the factors that can influence one's perception and judgment of the probable likelihood of an event. Kahneman ultimately concludes, "Anchor your judgment of the probability of an outcome on a plausible base rate. Question the diagnosticity of your evidence"...
Kahneman also discusses how representativeness can also lead people to making poor judgments about others and about companies and that when evidence is weak; one should gravitate to the base rates (152).
Chapter 15: Linda Less is More
Kahneman spends the bulk of Chapter 15 showing evidence for the fact that system 2 is not terribly alert and has some lazy qualities to it. Kahneman demonstrates this through numerous examples, one of which is the example with fictional Linda, making his students guess her profession based on tailored background information about her. Kahneman also demonstrates how representativeness can adequately serve in blocking obvious logical rules (161). Kahneman also demonstrates how intuition can impact judgment and even overcome logic.
Chapter 16: Causes Trump Statistics
Kahneman makes the case for stereotyping, acknowledging the hostile stereotypes are detrimental to society, and that avoiding and questioning stereotypes has created a more just and equal society. However, Kahneman warns against dismissing stereotypes all together, saying that some stereotypes are correct and represent accurate judgment. Kahneman also summarizes his favorite experiment conducted by Nisbett and Borgida who concluded, "Subjects' unwillingness to deduce the particular from the general was matched only by their willingness to infer the general from theparticular"(170). Kahneman adds that there is a profound gap in how people think about statistics vs. how they think about specific cases (170).
References
Kahneman, D.…
