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Mechanisms of our mind
System 1 and System 2
Daniel Kahneman, psychologist and one of the fathers of behavioural economics, uses a 2 systems approach to explain mechanisms of our mind that are leading individuals to behave "irrationaly".
Irrational as not rational according to the rational choice theory.
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He literally considers the systems as “characters” at play in our mind. It is essential, according to him to understand that all the decisions we make are a resulting exercise of these two characters at work in our brain.
The appellation of "Systems" goes back to K. Stanovich and R. West which are the researchers that came up with the dual process models, namely System 1 and System 2.
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System 1 = Automatic, fast, associative, undemanding of concentration and resulting of personal
experience, unconscious
System 2 = Controlled, slow, rule-based, demanding of concentration, effortful, conscious
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System 1:
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• Detect that one object is closer than another
• Orient to the source of a sudden sound
• Complete the phrase “bread and …”
• Detect hostility in a voice
• Answer to 2+2 = ?
• Drive a car on an empty road
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System 2:
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• Look for a woman with white hair
• Focus attention on clowns in a circus
• Monitor the appropriateness of your behavior in a social situation
• Count the occurrences of the letter “a” in a page of text
• Park in a narrow space (for most people except garage attendants)
• Fill out a tax form
• Check the validity of a complex logical argument
Associative machine
Since “An enquiry concerning Human Understanding” written in 1748 by David Hume it is commonly known under the term association of ideas that the links in our brain follow each other in an orderly way.
Today, psychologists consider ideas as a broad network that are linked to each
other. Our System 1 and his automatic features associate ideas without any control. D. Kahneman describes many different types of links our associative memory creates: causes are linked to their effects ( virus - cold); things to their properties (banana - yellow); things to categories they belong to (ape - animal) .
Curiously, when we think of an idea, the associate memory mechanism links
this idea not merely to 1 other idea but to a whole set of ideas through the different links.
Furthermore, we are only aware of a few generated ideas and many ideas generated happen in our unconsciousness.
Cognitive ease
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System 2 is slow, demanding of concentration and effortful. D. Kahneman discovered many people seem to find cognitive effort (the activation of System 2) “at least slightly unpleasant” and thus avoid it as much as possible.
When we are in a comfortable, well-known environment and in a good mood we experience what is called “cognitive ease”. It is a state of mind where our System 2 is in his low-effort mode and relies (nearly blindly) to the suggestions of System 1. This makes us especially inclined to fall in the systematic errors of the interaction between our 2 systems: the cognitive biases.
The causes of cognitive ease can be various: Being familiar with a situation or with people, being positively primed by an action or simply being in a good mood. As a consequence we tend to judge all the input we are confronted with based on our intuition.
Search for coherence​
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Above were discussed 2 mechanisms of the interplay between System 1 and System 2 namely the associative machine and the cognitive ease. These 2 mechanisms result in a third important characteristic mechanism of the functioning of our brain and subsequently the functioning of our decision-making: the quest for coherence.
This happens because our System 1 associates unconsciously and automatically everything it is confronted to AND it is effortful to activate System 2 to think about the occurrence of things. As a result, System 1 associates to everything a cause and an effect that suits with his experience, beliefs, memory, concepts in order not to have to activate System 2.
If System 1 is truly unable to find a match with what is happening and what he knows intuitively, System 2 will be activated. However, unconsciously the human brain avoids this situation because most of us find it unpleasant to leave to comfortable cognitive ease where every cause has a wellknown effect.
Consequently, we are prone to find to every cause a plausible effect and vice versa. Because for our System 1 every cause has an effect the world should be like this too. Unfortunately, it is not! Some effects happen because of pure hazard or luck. However, our System 1 doesn’t like to attribute causes and effects to hazard or luck, but instead wants to categorize these in well-known experiences. The functioning of our brain is persuading us that every cause should have a rational logical effect.
As a consequence we are constantly looking for coherence in what we experience, even if there is no true link between both we will create one in order to fit on our mental models (boxes).
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