Cognitive Psychology - Judgment and Decision Making Pt2 - Followup to Kahneman Thinking Fast & Slow

I highly recommend the book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" (2011) by cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman. It explores -- in quite some depth -- empirical research into how our mind works. That includes our quick-thinking, heuristic-using, jump-to-conclusions "System 1" form of thinking as well as our slower, more rational but effortful "System 2" form of thinking. The book is awesome and the overall, big-picture lessons of the book still hold up.

That said, some of the specific studies Kahneman cites and describes as examples don't hold up as well. The book came out right as the "replication crisis" (or "reproducibility crisis") became front-and-center in the field of psychology, showing that many standard (at the time) but sometimes questionable methodological and statistical practices had led to publishing a huge swath of research which -- depending heavily on the sub-field -- didn't always survive attempts at replication.

The field has since evolved better methodological and statistical practices -- though there's still a lot of room to go -- but in this video I clarify a few examples of research cited in Kahneman's book that did not stand the test of time. Even so, I don't think this undermines the overall lessons from the book (if anything, it serves as another example of our fallible reasoning and the importance of intellectual humility and checking our work).

This is a lecture video for a university course in Cognitive Psychology taught by Dr. Brian W. Stone. You may wish to play it at x1.25 speed. As with anything taught at the undergraduate level the information here may be simplified, and at higher levels of study there is more nuance to all of it.