Cognitive Illusions: A Handbook on Fallacies and Biases in Thinking, Judgement and Memory

by Rüdiger F. Pohl (Editor)

Cognitive Illusions investigates a wide range of fascinating psychological effects in the way we think, judge and remember in our everyday lives. At the beginning of each chapter, leading researchers in the field introduce the background to phenomena such as illusions of control, overconfidence and hindsight bias. This is followed by an explanation of the experimental context in which these illusions can be investigated and a theoretical discussion drawing conclusions about the wider implications of these fallacy and bias effects.
Written with researchers and instructors in mind, this tightly edited, reader-friendly text provides both an overview of research in the area and many lively pedagogic features such as chapter summaries, further reading lists and suggestions for classroom demonstrations.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Brain

450 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Ajith · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the introduction of this book, it claims to be useful to both a professional in the field of psychology(a professor/researcher) as well as the interested layman. As a layman looking at the organization of the book I was a bit skeptical of this claim.

But all my skepticism vanished as I dug into the book, the book has the feel of a text book but it is very rewarding with highly interesting discussions on competing theories (with results and conclusions) on probable causes of many cognitive illusions which have been studied. Reading the book brought a change in the way I think about illusions and the human cognitive processes, it inculcates a discipline of rigorous fact checking and empirical data collection before coming to conclusions.

In hindsight the decision to pick up this book was one of my best decisions.