Why We Make Mistakes: Full Blog

Reference

Why We Make Mistakes

Joseph Hallinan

Crown Archetype 2009

Summary

In this book the error prone nature of humans is explored in detail through various studies and observations. The book is structured in a way which brings attention to varying areas of error and mistake making. Each chapter focuses on a different area, as a overall picture evolves. Mistakes are easily made by humans, as we are not perfectly configured for the world we live in. Characteristics like imaginative memory and association through emotion are brought into the light as the author focuses on many of the day to day issues which humans experience. For example, people often make up details related to memories which boost their own image. The author continues to look at issues related to framing or anchoring and the trouble which can be caused by incorrectly framing a situation. Additionally, an exploration of multitasking and skimming is performed. This reveals that humans have great trouble multitasking and often don't pay attention to all of the details of things they are experienced with. Behavior between men and women is also different and therefore leads to different mistakes being made. Additionally, the way a person was raised can influence the types of mistakes they are prone to. There is also a tendency to inaccurately predict the future as being good. The author provides suggestions for correcting these mistakes throughout.

Discussion

This book provided quite a collection of studies and activities that have illustrated the human tendency to make mistakes. There seemed to be a heavy focus on citing behavior of people as the most compelling evidence for our condition. Many of the examples were of things I have noticed before and it was nice to see someone else recognize them. Applying this information to Computer Science is interesting in that there are many diverse and specific lessons to be learned from each chapter and each example. I feel overall the common theme is that there will be errors regardless of the system and we should be ready for them.