Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average

By Joseph T. Hallinan

We forget our passwords. We pay too much to go to the gym. We think we’d be happier if we lived in California (we wouldn’t), and we think we should stick with our first answer on tests (we shouldn’t). Why do we make mistakes? And could we do a little better?

We human beings have design flaws. Our eyes play tricks on us, our stories change in the retelling, and most of us are fairly sure we’re way above average. In Why We Make Mistakes, journalist Joseph T. Hallinan sets out to explore the captivating science of human error—how we think, see, remember, and forget, and how this sets us up for wholly irresistible mistakes.

In his quest to understand our imperfections, Hallinan delves into psychology, neuroscience, and economics, with forays into aviation, consumer behavior, geography, football, stock picking, and more. He discovers that some of the same qualities that make us efficient also make us error prone. We learn to move rapidly through the world, quickly recognizing patterns—but overlooking details. Which is why thirteen-year-old boys discover errors that NASA scientists miss—and why you can’t find the beer in your refrigerator.

Why We Make Mistakes is enlivened by real-life stories—of weathermen whose predictions are uncannily accurate and a witness who sent an innocent man to jail—and offers valuable advice, such as how to remember where you’ve hidden something important. You’ll learn why multitasking is a bad idea, why men make errors women don’t, and why most people think San Diego is west of Reno (it’s not).

Why We Make Mistakes will open your eyes to the reasons behind your mistakes—and have you vowing to do better the next time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Feb 17, 2009
• ISBN: 9780767931472

Reviews for Why We Make Mistakes

[kaitanya64 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting examination of some of the psychological principles behind human error. My two reservations are that the author sometimes seems to stop abruptly in explaining a concept and switch to a different topic. Perhaps he doesn't want to let the explanation get too involved? My other issue is that while many of the illustrating examples are entertaining, not all of them seem well-chosen to illustrate the principles he is trying to define. Often he attributes a certain action or situation to one principle that could have been influenced by many other variables. This seems like rather sloppy work to me.

[informationzmahoe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The book is basically chock full of knowledge. It stands up to its title, but, be prepared. There is a lot of statistics and studies done in this book so its probably best you read the book slowly, otherwise (if you read it in one day) all you'll end up learning is that people aren't as amazing and perfect as they seem. I, for one, remembered it quite easily if you connect the studies with events in your life , it works like a charm for remembering stuff!

[vivienner_3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is an informative and often entertaining book about the psychology of decision-making and behaviour. If you are looking for advice on how to avoid making mistakes, this probably isn't the right book. However, it does have many thought-provoking sections and I may give more thought to minor decision-making. One segment I found interesting was on the topic of finality vs the possibility of change. "Hope impedes adaptation, meaning if you are stuck with something, you learn to live with it. Voters, for instance, have been shown to recognize the strengths of a candidate they opposed once that candidate is elected." Looks like this will be put to the test in the US since the 2016 election results.

[sriemann_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I thought this book answered its title well. You do find out the many different reasons that we make mistakes. In fact, there are so many reasons for us to make mistakes, it's somewhat of a miracle that we actually get as much done correctly that we do. Hallinan also discusses how to take the knowledge of why we make mistakes and apply it so that we make less mistakes. I think this book should be required reading for organizations and companies where mistakes should be minimized -- hospitals, payroll, pharmaceuticals,etc. (I would say airllines... but they looked into where and why they made mistakes and learned from them already, which is a big part of why flying is one of the safest modes of transport in the world.)

[c4ro · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The back cover categorises this book as "Popular Psychology". It covers the general topic of behavioural effects of the human mind makeup and the way this manifests in mistakes we make. It is a well condensed book with a good set of references/ sources. I have read several books in this field, but this still had several examples that were new to me. There are insert summary paragraphs thoughout and a good structure of quite small blocks of information, all with headers so that you are not wading through acres of print waiting for a point to come up for air. The only problem I had occasionally, and this in some ways made it more interesting, is that I'm European/British but this is written heavily to American cultural references. So that, for example, in the error case when familiarity means we don't remember details; the pictures and descriptions are of US coins. For geography, the example is California/ Nevada cities. Overall this didn't matter as I've seen reference examples for Europe (Italy slopes SEasterly much more that people assume so cities even halfway down like Rome will mindmap West of "East Europe" countries/ cities like Poland/ Hungary etc.), in fact this was a nice additional layer to the book for anyone that read already in this area.

[luvlylibrarian · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Listened to the NLS Talking Book version. The book gives lots of real-world examples that give insight to the workings, and failings, of the human mind. The narration held my attention, while the information presented made me take better notice of things and people around me.

[pat1eiu · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A friend loaned me this book, so i gave it a read. I was afraid it was going to be sort of dry, but it definatly was not. It was pretty interesting and I am glad that I read it.

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This books provides a description of various reasons we make mistakes, including hard-wired cognitive biases, not paying attention, multitasking, framing and more. It is not an in-depth study, but it is easy to read with lots of entertaining stories and examples.

[adriancho_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a great book. Extremely well researched and full of lots of great stories and details.

[rachelrawlings · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I listened to the audio version of this book, rather than reading a copy.While it was well-read and well-written, I was expecting some kind of analysis of why we make these mistakes, and therefore advice on how we could avoid making them in future. However, it just seemed to be a collection of stories of different mistakes, including one from Burt Reynolds, and I quickly tired of them.Even if you aren't interested in a kind of self-help book, from a pop-psychology perspective, I didn't think there was enough analysis of psychological processes, biases and cultural perspectives to make this informative in any way. The author simply reels off lists of studies that have been done without really discussing the findings in any depth.If you're looking for practical advice or any kind of evidence to back up these stories that start off amusing but quickly get tired, I wouldn't recommend this book.

[auntieclio · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Cognitive psychology is a fairly young discipline and as such, can only give vague, sweeping generalized answers to questions like “why do we make mistakes?” Hallinan’s book attempts to answer that question in an easy to read book that relates the results studies to the many types of mistakes we make. But it’s not a deep book. And it can’t be a deep book because everything anyone knows about how cognition works can be written in a few short sentences, one of which is “We don’t know how things work.”I wanted more. I always want more from books like this. Aside from the common sense things like paying more attention to our surroundings and being more disciplined about not using our cell phones while driving or walking (that includes sending text messages), it turns out that some of our mistakes come from biases so deep there’s little chance of identifying them, must less fixing them.One of the more interesting stories Hallinan writes about is the exact opposite of what I had been taught about test-taking. Many of us have had it drilled into us that going with our instinct and using our instincts is the best way to take a test, going back and second-guessing ourselves and changing the answer only hurts our score. But Hallinan says studies show differently. Anecdotally, I’m not sure I believe this. I’ve seen the “go with your gut” scenario play out far too many times to be willing to dismiss it completely; but I am willing to give Hallinan the benefit of the doubt.I think that’s another problem with this book, one has to be willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt. Do anesthesiologists and radiologists really make that many mistakes? Or is there a bias in the presentation? Some of this stuff comes off a little slick and a little, “you have no idea how bad things are.” But in an era where so many believe the President of the United States somehow got into office without a valid birth certificate, I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that Why We Make Mistakes could be viewed as just another attempt at skewed data.If you want to read it, I’d say “enjoy, but keep the salt nearby.”

[wvlibrarydude · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Another pop psychology synthesis of research into how humans understand and interact with the world. I enjoy finding out about how our mind interprets our sensations and creates a world around us. We often take for granted what we see, hear, and think about until we come across a book like this that shows how easily we can be mislead by others and ourselves.An interesting book that I thought did a good job of summarizing the research and putting forward in a logical construction. Much better than Snoop.

[readermom_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was the most comforting book I have read in a long while. It explains that our brains are wired in a certain way and so are the mistakes we all make. For example, names are hard to remember because they have very little meaning, other than as random syllables that indicate a certain person. We can remember their job or their family status or their connection to us much more easily because that has more content we can remember.The book was full of that type of explanation for mistakes we all make. It suggests that instead of trying to change the way people are, we make adjustments for it to prevent errors; things like checklists and written reminders.