Summary of Pragya Agarwal's Sway

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 When it comes to our children’s health, we parents often have a sense of maternal intuition. It is a feeling of something being wrong, and it is most likely a cumulation of experience with our own children that leads us to this conclusion.

#2 Our gut instinct is a result of our visual matching game, which is a result of our cognitive processing system. It allows us to expedite the process of making decisions, but it can lead to errors that have far-reaching consequences.

#3 When we use our gut instinct, we are allowing our brain to make quick judgments and we are valuing speed over accuracy. This gut feeling, where we use emotions to make snap decisions, is called System 1 in dual process theory.

#4 The idea of bounded rationality states that when we are faced with a time constraint on making a decision, we will resort to cognitive shortcuts. These shortcuts may lead to the deployment of implicit biases.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822511408

IRB Media

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Insights on Pragya Agarwal's Sway

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

When it comes to our children’s health, we parents often have a sense of maternal intuition. It is a feeling of something being wrong, and it is most likely a cumulation of experience with our own children that leads us to this conclusion.

#2

Our gut instinct is a result of our visual matching game, which is a result of our cognitive processing system. It allows us to expedite the process of making decisions, but it can lead to errors that have far-reaching consequences.

#3

When we use our gut instinct, we are allowing our brain to make quick judgments and we are valuing speed over accuracy. This gut feeling, where we use emotions to make snap decisions, is called System 1 in dual process theory.

#4

The idea of bounded rationality states that when we are faced with a time constraint on making a decision, we will resort to cognitive shortcuts. These shortcuts may lead to the deployment of implicit biases.

#5

Conformity affects what we choose to remember, and this in turn shapes our world-view and our biases. We are influenced by the people around us and their actions and decisions.

#6

confirmation bias is when we seek out information that confirms our existing beliefs, even if it means ignoring facts that don’t support them.

#7

Our instincts help us make quick judgments about people and situations, but they can also be clouded by biases that make us favor one object or person over another.

#8

Our instincts about and against people are formed due to association and affiliation. Skin color is often one of the first cues for assigning group memberships, and we all do this, no matter how much we deny it.

#9

There is a lot of unconscious bias in the medical field, and it is largely based on category membership. When people do not know each other well, they fall back on their instincts and prejudices.

#10

Our instinct or intuition is an innate universal animalistic behavior. It helps us navigate the world. But when it comes to making important decisions about people or situations, we cannot always rely on instinct.

#11

The concept of unconscious bias is based in the philosophy that the whole is something else than the sum of its parts. It explains how our thoughts can arise in two different ways as a result of two different processes: usually, there is the implicit or unconscious process, and the explicit or more controlled conscious process.

#12

Our brains have evolved to reason adaptively rather than rationally or truthfully. We see the world as we do because our cognitive processes are adapted to it. We have developed many systems that make it unavoidable for us to not notice danger and respond to it.

#13

The floating man theory is based on the premise that the brain is where reason and sensation interact, and so I am is at the core of all thinking. We respond to others around us and the environment to take advantage of opportunities or respond to fear or threat.

#14

The smoke alarm analogy explains why we develop cognitive shortcuts against