Reference Information:
Title - Why We Make Mistakes
Author - Joseph T. Hallinan
Editors - Crown Archetype 2009
Summary
A Mistake/error is a misunderstanding of the meaning/implication of something or a wrong action/statement preceding from faulty judgement. This is the definition, according to Hallinan of an error/mistake. He talks about the idea that the space we live in accounts for the reasoning behind out mistakes. He believes that the world we live in causes and encourages our mistakes
In chapter 1, Hallinan discusses the idea of human's being able to look at an object but not necessarily pointing out all of the details. This shows that we can only process a certain amount of data at a time and we only notice what we believe is the important things. This also depends on certain things about a person. Some people are very good observers and others simply have poor vision
Hallinan discusses human perception more in the chapter 2. He explains that humans take more importance in sight and sound than actual details of the scene around them. He uses examples like tongue errors and recall errors to explain his point. Hallinan also explains that we shouldn't have to think so hard to create passwords or they will easily be forgotten. Hallinan continues with his theme in discussion the human mind in Chapter 3. He talks a lot about how humans make connections. He brings up the idea of voters using competence to determine which candidate to choose on a ballot. Price on a wine bottle also has an effect on preference as to which bottle people will choose.
In chapter 4, Hallinan discusses that humans look through "rose-colored glasses" when seeing memories. He is saying that we actually remmeber things that we do rather than how things were/are during the event. We also seem to build things up in our memories, seeming better than reality.
In Chapter 5, the author begininns talking about multitasking in humans. They propose the idea that we don't really do multitasking, even though we are under the impression that we actually are doing it. Multi tasking, in the end, impairs the human brain and tends to make us forget things. Trying to remmeber things, causes down time which causes us to retry the task we set out to do.
Hallinan, in chapter 6, discusses the idea of framming and that we simply use it to get a view of something. He discusses that how much time we use to make the actual decision will go along way in the outcome. He uses the following examples: wine buying using the music, and multple-unit ricing.
Here, in chapter 7, Hallinan discusses the idea of human's skimming stuff. Just like in chapter 6, he uses alot of examples. His examples involves how we actually do the skiming. He brings up a rookie pianist who found an error that had been going on for any years. Humans actually only read the first couple of letters and then assume the rest. We are only focusing on the content the information provides, not the spelling
In chapter 8, Hallinan brings up the idea of straightening things up. People tend to make things simple or just put stuff in random order to help understand them. The author discusses the Seine River as well as New York's streets as a couple examples. Also, Hallinan talks about how people re-tell stories, shorten maps, etc.. Hallinan explains this is a natural occurrance, people don't try and do this, just kind of happens.
As far as chapter 9 goes, Hallinan is discussed the different actions in which women and men. According to Hallinan, men do a better job as actions than women do. Overconfidence is what attributes to this, says Hallinan. It is transformed into more of a risk taking attribute, so men will end up taking more risks in life than women.
In Chapter 10, Hallinan discussed the idea that people have different perespectives of themselves. They believe they are better than average and this often leads to overconfidence. He used examples that take advantage of this overconfidence, such as advertising. Hallinan talks about the idea of calibration which is used to judge just how much overconident a person truley is. He later talks about information overload, illusion of control, and the power of feedback. Hallinan, in chapter 11 talked about humans and how they tend to wing things. It is obvious that people hate instruction manuals and want nothing to do with them. After people learn how to do something, they will stick to it no matter what.
Hallinan, in Chapter 12 talks about both contraints and affordances in this chapter. Hid discusses how affordances give people great insight in how things are used and also how they can aid us. People just need to figure out where to look. Appitude plays a very large role in how many mistakes will occur.
In Chapter 13, Hallinan decided to focus on the idea of people tending to be able to predict just how their emotional reaction will be based on future events. This deals with bias on purchasing gift cards and rebates. When making decisions in life, people tend to look at the incorrect details. Often focussing on individual factors rather than the big picture, tended to be the majority out come. Judging the happiness of others is very difficult while making one's self happy tends to be rather easy.
The conclusion of the book byHallinan summarized making mistakes. He talked about different mmistakes that are made and even offrred a few different methods that could be used to prevent these mistakes. Considering bad occurances, disregarding habits, sleeping more, and slowing down were all different proposed solutions by Hallinan. Happiness was also talked about. He mentioned the tendency of material needs to create happiness. Money was talked about as Hallinan discusses that is is actually the currency of time not actually life.
I enjoyed reading this chapter by Hallinan. It was nice to get a different perspective of the idea behind mistakes and errors. I also liked that he talked about many mistakes are encouraged by the world around us. Poor design is the the biggest reason for mistakes and errors in today's world
Hallinan makes some very good points in this chapter. I enjoyed his discussion on the amount of data interpreted depends on the person trying to do so. It was also cool to look at how much people actually see vs what the notice is around them. I enjoyed this chapter about memory and settings. I also liked the idea of not thinking to hard when creating passwords. I have created several passwords that at the time seemed unbreakable. They were unbreakable, even I couldn't figure them out.
I enjoyed Hallinan's take on connecting dots for the human mind. It was interesting to look at the wine idea. People think just because it's more expensive, it must be better. I'm no wine expert but there are some not so expensive wines out there that taste just as good as $50 bottles.
I thought Hallinan made an interesting point here when dicussing hte idea of the "rose-colored glasses" I know I have pumped myself up in several of my memories, so I can relate to what he is saying in this chapter.
