5 Phrases By Daniel Kahneman To Reflect On

Daniel Kahneman is one of the few psychologists who have achieved a Nobel Prize, it was in 2002 in economics. His great merit was conducting very valuable studies to understand how we make economic decisions. Considering the depth of his thinking and his knowledge of how we decide, Daniel Kahneman’s quotes are noteworthy as they invite us to reflect.

For years, he worked both as a teacher and researcher at such prestigious universities as Harvard or Michigan. In addition, he published some books such as Think fast, think slowly, which were very successful, especially among non-specialized audiences because of the richness of his dissemination work. Today, we will discover some of the most important Daniel Kahneman quotes.

1. The mind makes everything worse

This first of Daniel Kahneman’s phrases refers to that tendency / temptation that we can have to put ourselves in the worst. In fact, there is a phrase mentioned by the psychologist Sonia Cervantes that says: ” There is no worse storm than the one you build in your head. “

This is well known to all people who suffer from obsessive / repetitive thoughts that are the result and result of anxiety. In their mind they represent situations that have not yet occurred – more or less probable – and for which they nevertheless suffer. Therefore, it is important to relativize what we think and observe our thoughts more without judging them.

2. The problem of admitting one’s mistakes

The second of Daniel Kahneman’s phrases tells us about that resistance to assuming one’s own mistakes. According to this author, most of us  do not like others to question our actions. This questioning would have a direct impact on our  security: it would make us feel vulnerable.

This is not positive, since the inability to admit one’s mistakes often leads to a lack of flexibility, both in terms of standards and criteria. Also, this can be deeply ingrained in our beliefs. Doing something based on them and someone calling it an error can be quite a shock, because we tend to cling to them, taking them in some cases as absolute truths.

3. Relying too much on our beliefs

This phrase is closely linked to what we mentioned earlier. Although, in this case, Daniel Kahneman points out something very important and that is that we tend to ignore what we do not know. At present we could say that sometimes we ignore it, but in many other cases we attack it.

Both in the news and on social networks we can see people defending various causes strongly linked to their beliefs without taking into account that there are other interests and points of view. Beliefs are just that. It is very difficult to determine which ones are right or which ones are wrong. The positive is knowing how to question them and see how they align with certain values.

4. Pressure sensitivity

The fourth of Daniel Kahneman’s sentences tells us how sensitive we are to pressure. Some of the issues that are difficult to address, but require immediate action, we put off or see its consequences as far away. It is as if we believe (or want to believe) that it will not affect us or that a certain task can be done by itself.

Although we believe that this only happens to us with issues such as climate change, the truth is that this way of “living” is much more present than we think. We just have to reflect for a moment on our experiences in terms of relationships, for example, and on how the consequences that we saw coming and before which we could do something ended up arising because we did not take action in time.

5. Blindness that has no limits

This last of Daniel Kahneman’s phrases appears in his book Think fast, think slowly . With it, this author invites us to a final reflection on our amazing ability to remain blind to what is clearly presented before us. If this is so, how can we be aware of our own blindness?

Opening your eyes is a difficult task. The stimuli come to us filtered by our beliefs, by that first impression that has such a long range and by erroneous information to which we grant truth. The fact of not being aware of how we use these filters and how these filters fill us with biases limits our critical capacity. Let us think that the world we work with is not the world itself, but rather the particular world that we have built.

All these quotes by Daniel Kahneman reflect his way of thinking. His passion led him to write several books and to leave us these phrases to reflect on our way of thinking and perceiving. Each of them, without a doubt, allows us to learn something new or to realize what we already knew, but have forgotten.