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The Myth of Experience: Why We Learn the Wrong Lessons, and Ways to Correct Them
Experience is a great teacher-except when it isn't.
Our personal experience is key to who we are and what we do. We judge others by their experience and are judged by ours. Society venerates experience. From doctors to teachers to managers to presidents, the more experience the better. It's not surprising then, that we often fall back on experience when making decisions, an easy way to make judgements about the future, a constant teacher that provides clear lessons. Yet, this intuitive reliance on experience is misplaced.
In The Myth of Experience, behavioral scientists Emre Soyer and Robin Hogarth take a transformative look at experience and the many ways it deceives and misleads us. From distorting the past to limiting creativity to reducing happiness, experience can cause misperceptions and then reinforce them without our awareness. Instead, the authors argue for a nuanced approach, where a healthy skepticism toward the lessons of experience results in more reliable decisions and sustainable growth.
With real-life examples from bloodletting to personal computers to pandemics, and distilling cutting edge research, Soyer and Hogarth illustrate the flaws of experience as a guide to decision making and provide the remedies needed to improve our judgments and choices-in the workplace and beyond.
Our personal experience is key to who we are and what we do. We judge others by their experience and are judged by ours. Society venerates experience. From doctors to teachers to managers to presidents, the more experience the better. It's not surprising then, that we often fall back on experience when making decisions, an easy way to make judgements about the future, a constant teacher that provides clear lessons. Yet, this intuitive reliance on experience is misplaced.
In The Myth of Experience, behavioral scientists Emre Soyer and Robin Hogarth take a transformative look at experience and the many ways it deceives and misleads us. From distorting the past to limiting creativity to reducing happiness, experience can cause misperceptions and then reinforce them without our awareness. Instead, the authors argue for a nuanced approach, where a healthy skepticism toward the lessons of experience results in more reliable decisions and sustainable growth.
With real-life examples from bloodletting to personal computers to pandemics, and distilling cutting edge research, Soyer and Hogarth illustrate the flaws of experience as a guide to decision making and provide the remedies needed to improve our judgments and choices-in the workplace and beyond.
230 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2022
68 people are currently reading
525 people want to read
About the author
Emre Soyer
1 book7 followersEmre Soyer is a behavioral scientist and an entrepreneur. After working in and establishing several startups, he has completed his PhD in behavioral decision making. Since then, he has been conducting research and working with a variety of companies and sectors, building tools and methods to improve individual and team decisions. He’s also been collaborating with business schools, including INSEAD and ESSEC in France, Cass Business School in the United Kingdom, TUM in Germany, SDA Bocconi and Politecnico di Milano in Italy, USI and St. Gallen in Switzerland, and Ozyegin University in Turkey.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
July 1, 2020
Argumentum Ad Verecundiam. This book had an excellent premise, but just a mediocre implementation (in so far as the arguments themselves - the writing was excellent). Soyer and Hogarth excel when showing how one's own experience can blind oneself in numerous areas and arenas, and suggest ways to overcome this blindness. But then fall to their own blindess in accepting and even appealing to the "authority" of "experts" in various topics - seeming to completely disregard that these very "experts" have the exact same problems with being hampered by their own experiences that Soyer and Hogarth are attempting to show us how to overcome in this book. Ultimately, they make a lot of good points, which is why the book gets as many stars as it does. That you have to wade through so much muck to get to all of them is why it *only* gets as many stars as it does. Still, absolutely something everyone should read, and thus recommended.
April 26, 2023
The content was decent, but overall the book felt like a long article rather than an real analysis of decision making. The book lacks depth and feels very pop-sciencey
January 1, 2021
What is success?
What is failure?
Can we achieve success by getting up early, or being in the moment?
Is it advisable to follow the footprints of successful people's experiences or are they vain?
What if we listen from an entrepreneur who failed so hard?
All the answers or detailed explanations to these questions with important historical or modern business life events are in this book.
Hippocrates warned us about learning from experience: “Life is short, and Art long; the crisis fleeting; experience fallacious, and decision difficult.”
“If we believe we can learn from experience, can we also learn that we can’t?
What is failure?
Can we achieve success by getting up early, or being in the moment?
Is it advisable to follow the footprints of successful people's experiences or are they vain?
What if we listen from an entrepreneur who failed so hard?
All the answers or detailed explanations to these questions with important historical or modern business life events are in this book.
Hippocrates warned us about learning from experience: “Life is short, and Art long; the crisis fleeting; experience fallacious, and decision difficult.”
“If we believe we can learn from experience, can we also learn that we can’t?
April 7, 2025
3rd read:
I’m a YouTube content creator and I can get pretty frustrated at the randomness of the algorithm. What’s even more frustrating is people who pretend to “know” how it works based on their experience, or they point to success stories as though the anecdotal evidence is proof enough that something works. This is another book that I re-read when I need a return to sanity. It does an excellent job explaining how experience isn’t everything and how people take away the wrong lessons from having experience with something.
1st read:
I read a lot of books about the psychology of decision making so I can better understand the cognitive flaws that we all face on a daily basis. With that being said, this book from Soyer and Hogarth is definitely one of the best. I dive deep into topics when I get interested in them, and sometimes they can be extremely repetitive, but I can say that Soyer and Hogarth took quite a few unique angles.
I really enjoyed the premise of this book as well because we often make inferences based on previous experiences, but sometimes that's not the best strategy. I also really appreciated the chapter on the problem with learning from the success and failures of others when it comes to selection bias and some other issues. The one thing I think would have been interesting in this book is a chapter on how our memory can be flawed as well, which is another reason our experience isn't always a great teacher. They touched on it slightly, but I'd love a full chapter from them on it.
2nd read:
I read this book when it first came out in 2020, and I loved it so much. Recently, I started reading a book, and it was just anecdote after anecdote as evidence, and I thought, “I need to re-read The Myth of Experience.” So, I stopped that book about two chapters in and started re-reading The Myth of Experience, and it’s still just so damned good. I can’t recommend it enough. I’ve been teaching my son more about thinking errors and how to evaluate evidence, and I’m definitely going to teach him about some of the information from this book.
In this book, Soyer and Hogarth discuss how relying on experience can sometimes get us into trouble or lead us down the wrong path if we don’t evaluate the experience correctly. On a daily basis, we put a ton of value in our experience or the experience of others. While doing this, we neglect all of the things that didn’t happen and many other factors. While we can learn from experiences, we must be careful. And this book provides a ton of suggestions along with warnings so we can become much better at taking the right lessons from experiences and doing further research.
I absolutely recommend this book, and I’ll probably read it for a third time when I need a refresher.
I’m a YouTube content creator and I can get pretty frustrated at the randomness of the algorithm. What’s even more frustrating is people who pretend to “know” how it works based on their experience, or they point to success stories as though the anecdotal evidence is proof enough that something works. This is another book that I re-read when I need a return to sanity. It does an excellent job explaining how experience isn’t everything and how people take away the wrong lessons from having experience with something.
1st read:
I read a lot of books about the psychology of decision making so I can better understand the cognitive flaws that we all face on a daily basis. With that being said, this book from Soyer and Hogarth is definitely one of the best. I dive deep into topics when I get interested in them, and sometimes they can be extremely repetitive, but I can say that Soyer and Hogarth took quite a few unique angles.
I really enjoyed the premise of this book as well because we often make inferences based on previous experiences, but sometimes that's not the best strategy. I also really appreciated the chapter on the problem with learning from the success and failures of others when it comes to selection bias and some other issues. The one thing I think would have been interesting in this book is a chapter on how our memory can be flawed as well, which is another reason our experience isn't always a great teacher. They touched on it slightly, but I'd love a full chapter from them on it.
2nd read:
I read this book when it first came out in 2020, and I loved it so much. Recently, I started reading a book, and it was just anecdote after anecdote as evidence, and I thought, “I need to re-read The Myth of Experience.” So, I stopped that book about two chapters in and started re-reading The Myth of Experience, and it’s still just so damned good. I can’t recommend it enough. I’ve been teaching my son more about thinking errors and how to evaluate evidence, and I’m definitely going to teach him about some of the information from this book.
In this book, Soyer and Hogarth discuss how relying on experience can sometimes get us into trouble or lead us down the wrong path if we don’t evaluate the experience correctly. On a daily basis, we put a ton of value in our experience or the experience of others. While doing this, we neglect all of the things that didn’t happen and many other factors. While we can learn from experiences, we must be careful. And this book provides a ton of suggestions along with warnings so we can become much better at taking the right lessons from experiences and doing further research.
I absolutely recommend this book, and I’ll probably read it for a third time when I need a refresher.
December 15, 2020
The authors (inadvertently) timed this book well. They talk about how our experience shapes our reactions, how this can at times be misleading, and what to do about it. Throughout the pandemic, I saw their point everywhere I looked. Once you see it, it's hard to unsee.
The examples in the book come from a diverse set of situations. The insights are helpful in interpreting / understanding how decisions of companies, governments and individuals might come to be, through the lens of how past experience might have influenced the outcome.
The book is meant for business leaders, though the ideas are relevant for any field that deals with decisions and actions of people / groups (historians, political scientists, doctors...) Highly recommend!
The examples in the book come from a diverse set of situations. The insights are helpful in interpreting / understanding how decisions of companies, governments and individuals might come to be, through the lens of how past experience might have influenced the outcome.
The book is meant for business leaders, though the ideas are relevant for any field that deals with decisions and actions of people / groups (historians, political scientists, doctors...) Highly recommend!
May 17, 2020
I received a digital galley of this book from Net Galley in exchange for a fair review. “The Myth of Experience,” is a wise, well-written book that deftly analyzes how experience can give false assurance to how we perceive events and how we can make the wrong decisions based on a selective recollection of events. The authors do a brilliant job, in my opinion, organizing their book chapter-by-chapter on how experience can convey a deceptive message to individuals by telling too simplistic narratives, how it can conceal danger and impede satisfaction while also demonstrating how it can imperil important decisions by limiting creative potential and narrowing options. I also liked how the authors encouraged us to become “story skeptics” when we are being pitched to buy a product or endorse ideas that are selectively constructed and leave out information that may not be conducive to the idealized image the storyteller is trying to present.
The book has a nice mix of representative stories to explain how experience can be deceptive along with including other authors’ findings supporting their argument and how the reader can avoid falling into deceptive experience traps, especially in “wicked learning environments.” Wicked learning environments are complex, messy, and ambiguous such that “our experience is constantly subject to a variety of filter and distortions,” such that what we see is not all there is. In these situations we should ask two questions: First, “is there something important missing from my experience...if I hope to fully understand what is happening.” Second, “what irrelevant details ...(do) I need to ignore to avoid being distracted from what is happening.”
My favorite chapter was the one on experience and creativity. Slyer and Hogarth write, “experience can further limit our inventiveness by generating so-called competency traps,” such that we sometimes lose the mindset that allowed us to explore alternatives to pressing problems. As a result, we fall into habits , become fixed in our approach so that “core capabilities (turn) into core rigidities.” One of the more fascinating discussions in this book centered around “experience design,” which blends many disciplines like psychology, design, marketing and communication, among others to understand how we experience goods and services. Although beneficial in many instances, the authors highlight the perils of experience design if it leads us to make decisions solely among what outside influencers have planned. We can potentially become manipulated and the choices we make are based on the framework of others that lead us to make decisions that go against our best interests.
This smart, appealing book is filled with a lot of wise counsel and is engaging and clearly written. I highly recommend this book for readers who are looking to challenge themselves in making thoughtful decisions and how to know when they may be under the influence of experience design principles so they aren’t manipulated into making a decision that is not in their best interest.
The book has a nice mix of representative stories to explain how experience can be deceptive along with including other authors’ findings supporting their argument and how the reader can avoid falling into deceptive experience traps, especially in “wicked learning environments.” Wicked learning environments are complex, messy, and ambiguous such that “our experience is constantly subject to a variety of filter and distortions,” such that what we see is not all there is. In these situations we should ask two questions: First, “is there something important missing from my experience...if I hope to fully understand what is happening.” Second, “what irrelevant details ...(do) I need to ignore to avoid being distracted from what is happening.”
My favorite chapter was the one on experience and creativity. Slyer and Hogarth write, “experience can further limit our inventiveness by generating so-called competency traps,” such that we sometimes lose the mindset that allowed us to explore alternatives to pressing problems. As a result, we fall into habits , become fixed in our approach so that “core capabilities (turn) into core rigidities.” One of the more fascinating discussions in this book centered around “experience design,” which blends many disciplines like psychology, design, marketing and communication, among others to understand how we experience goods and services. Although beneficial in many instances, the authors highlight the perils of experience design if it leads us to make decisions solely among what outside influencers have planned. We can potentially become manipulated and the choices we make are based on the framework of others that lead us to make decisions that go against our best interests.
This smart, appealing book is filled with a lot of wise counsel and is engaging and clearly written. I highly recommend this book for readers who are looking to challenge themselves in making thoughtful decisions and how to know when they may be under the influence of experience design principles so they aren’t manipulated into making a decision that is not in their best interest.
April 1, 2021
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool," said Richard P. Feynman. This book tries to explain how we fool ourselves and proposes some tactics to stay vigilant. It's a good book when it summarizes other books, but when it tries to be original... things get messy.
The first chapters are a great combination of insights from other sources. They are organized well, explain briefly and easily key ideas, and provide references for those who want to go down the rabbit hole. Authors discuss biases (Thinking, Fast and Slow), randomness (Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets), behavioral psychology (Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions), and innovation/creativity (How Innovation Works: Serendipity, Energy and the Saving of Time). I think it's written well, and I guess everyone should regularly remind themselves about those concepts.
Later on, authors take on less known and researched subjects and try to put them in the context of the last decade or two. US elections, Hurricane Katrina, pseudoscience and alternative medicine, COVID pandemics, social media, startup culture, persuasive design, and many more recent examples are used to prove claims about not trusting our perception of reality. Sometimes it works, other times it falls short and feels like authors become the victims of their own experience. There is more pop-science and storytelling than solid research in this part. The book loses focus, contradicts itself, and sometimes just makes no sense (especially when authors explore areas that clearly are not their own domain).
Overall it's an engaging book, with a good pace and clear writing. I wish it shown more rigor and consistency in the second part, where authors deviate from widely recognized sources.
The first chapters are a great combination of insights from other sources. They are organized well, explain briefly and easily key ideas, and provide references for those who want to go down the rabbit hole. Authors discuss biases (Thinking, Fast and Slow), randomness (Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets), behavioral psychology (Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions), and innovation/creativity (How Innovation Works: Serendipity, Energy and the Saving of Time). I think it's written well, and I guess everyone should regularly remind themselves about those concepts.
Later on, authors take on less known and researched subjects and try to put them in the context of the last decade or two. US elections, Hurricane Katrina, pseudoscience and alternative medicine, COVID pandemics, social media, startup culture, persuasive design, and many more recent examples are used to prove claims about not trusting our perception of reality. Sometimes it works, other times it falls short and feels like authors become the victims of their own experience. There is more pop-science and storytelling than solid research in this part. The book loses focus, contradicts itself, and sometimes just makes no sense (especially when authors explore areas that clearly are not their own domain).
Overall it's an engaging book, with a good pace and clear writing. I wish it shown more rigor and consistency in the second part, where authors deviate from widely recognized sources.
December 5, 2022
Robin Hogarth and Emre Soyer are two respected and proven researchers and academics (for example, their work on Kind vs Wicked Environments in the peer reviewed journal Current Directions in Psychological Science) as well as expert communicators to a wider audience (e.g their HBR articles on the pitfalls of experience).
In the Myth of experience, the authors demonstrate these credentials in abundance. What results is a well-researched and engaging book, supported throughout with robustly sourced research and fascinating real-world examples. All in service to answering the question - whilst experience is a convincing teacher, are it’s lessons to be trusted?
The book has an impressive coverage of the risks of relying unquestionably on our experiences. Highlighting the danger of experience in oversimplifying and missing nuance, in blinding us to risk and creativity, in overweighting outcomes over processes, and even in impacting our wellbeing.
However what sets this book apart is it’s uncanny prescience. Whilst many works in the field of behavioural science can be backward-looking, focussing on what one did wrong (not always without a sense of smugness), Soyer and Hogarth look forward. They provide practical advice throughout to question our thinking and to improve decision making. The book was written at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic and prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As these events unfolded, the authors’ work becomes all the more insightful.
We have much to learn on the subject of experience, and thankfully the authors are here to provide us with this insightful and applicable guide.
In the Myth of experience, the authors demonstrate these credentials in abundance. What results is a well-researched and engaging book, supported throughout with robustly sourced research and fascinating real-world examples. All in service to answering the question - whilst experience is a convincing teacher, are it’s lessons to be trusted?
The book has an impressive coverage of the risks of relying unquestionably on our experiences. Highlighting the danger of experience in oversimplifying and missing nuance, in blinding us to risk and creativity, in overweighting outcomes over processes, and even in impacting our wellbeing.
However what sets this book apart is it’s uncanny prescience. Whilst many works in the field of behavioural science can be backward-looking, focussing on what one did wrong (not always without a sense of smugness), Soyer and Hogarth look forward. They provide practical advice throughout to question our thinking and to improve decision making. The book was written at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic and prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As these events unfolded, the authors’ work becomes all the more insightful.
We have much to learn on the subject of experience, and thankfully the authors are here to provide us with this insightful and applicable guide.
July 28, 2022
Authors provide outstanding insight into the value (and caveats) of relying upon experience, success stories, emotions and recollection to drive current-day decisions. The book also provides insights and implications for managers and leaders as to how to create an environment that is conducive to innovation, positive change, autonomy and worker satisfaction without falling prey to group think, the creation of counter-productive and misleading "bubbles" and "filters" or causing competition among colleagues. We read this book as part of our company-wide Book Club, which spans multiple levels of our organization - from new hire to C-suite - and everyone raved about it. It united us a team and we highly recommend!
July 31, 2022
Emre Soyer thank you for your wise wisdoms. I enjoyed the argument on how experience can limit our thinking. Self fulfilling prophecies, near misses, our decision making process, how experience doesn’t factor in for new innovations and ideas. If our bodies have two kidneys. If we were corporations, we would remove one kidney as it would be viewed as not needed, not efficient! Great way of thinking, Emre Soyer!
I appreciate being able to challenge the reputation that experience trumps everything. Popular opinion is actually incorrect. Harry Potter, Google rejected because experience limited our ability to see new ideas in their infancy. This is a fascinating topic. #thankyou #decisionmaking #experience #judgement #prediction #problemsolving Publisher #publicaffairs
I appreciate being able to challenge the reputation that experience trumps everything. Popular opinion is actually incorrect. Harry Potter, Google rejected because experience limited our ability to see new ideas in their infancy. This is a fascinating topic. #thankyou #decisionmaking #experience #judgement #prediction #problemsolving Publisher #publicaffairs
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 6, 2021
The way we perceive & remember & talk about events and convert them into "experiences" is a highly subjective process. This is not a huge issue as long as we're aware of this nuance before turning these experiences into life-long lessons and use them to help shape our future decisions.
This book is super helpful to shed some light on the process of "getting more experienced" and to inform you around where the common pitfalls are.
Very clearly & plainly written, easy to follow yet super informative. I'd definitely recommend.
This book is super helpful to shed some light on the process of "getting more experienced" and to inform you around where the common pitfalls are.
Very clearly & plainly written, easy to follow yet super informative. I'd definitely recommend.
October 31, 2020
Being familiar with the authors' previous work, I was looking forward to the publication of this book. It didn't prove me wrong. It was a very pleasant read, valuable insights, lots of new learning from behavioral science, and a great collection of current examples that I already started using in the classes I teach on perception and decision making. Highly recommended...
December 23, 2020
Quick read, quite interesting. Not especially original, as it cites and reports works and ideas from other authors all the way through, but a good introduction to the topic. It's easy to understand and presents interesting ideas, well connected to the main theme. Good to read in 2020 with all that's going on.
January 1, 2021
Experience is reliable, easy to reach and helps solves many of our problems. Is that really the case?
In “The Myth of Experience”, Emre Soyer and Robin Hogarth explore the pitfalls of over-reliance on past experience to make decisions and to solve complex problems.
The book is packed with several anecdotes which are hugely relatable in our day-to-day lives. A fun read!
In “The Myth of Experience”, Emre Soyer and Robin Hogarth explore the pitfalls of over-reliance on past experience to make decisions and to solve complex problems.
The book is packed with several anecdotes which are hugely relatable in our day-to-day lives. A fun read!
February 9, 2022
A professor recommended this book to me. I thought I’d give it a go, but unfortunately it missed the mark. The concept was great, but the execution was terrible. The authors really had no depth to this book and I didn’t even finish it. I understand why some people might’ve liked it, but personally I did not. Sad, that I spent about $30 because the hardcover version is the only version available.
March 26, 2022
The Myth of Experience: Why We Learn the Wrong Lessons, and Ways to Correct Them has many some good insights and several references to other work. Even so, there isn’t enough value to offset the boring writing. The juice simply isn’t worth the squeeze.
See my full review at
https://www.threestarleadership.com/e...
See my full review at
https://www.threestarleadership.com/e...
July 14, 2022
A short book showing that experience is not necessarily a wise guide all the time because of the wicked learning environment the life provides us. Indeed experiences can be quite useful but they should be taken with a grain of salt since it is easy to draw wrong lessons from them due to personal and environmental factors .
April 21, 2023
This book showed up all over my feeds so I figured I should check it out. Unfortunately it did not live up to the promise.
Maybe I read too many pop science books — this just read like a mash up of other books with worse writing.
Also if I have to hear about the Guerilla attention study again I might hit something — who hasn’t heard of this by now?
Maybe I read too many pop science books — this just read like a mash up of other books with worse writing.
Also if I have to hear about the Guerilla attention study again I might hit something — who hasn’t heard of this by now?
May 4, 2024
This is a great book if you want summaries of other books. While I enjoyed the authors style and how they explained concepts, every chapter is essentially a summary of other books concerning various aspects of psychology. If you are looking for your next book to read, grab this one and write down the other books cited.
November 12, 2020
really enjoyed the reading. it is a general analysis of the decision process - where our experience plays a crucial role - and its fallacies. While nicely covering the literature and enriching it with accurate, new examples, it comes up with applicable points on how to improve decisions.
December 21, 2020
Interesting premise and ties in insights from leading behavioral scientists, psychologists, and thought leaders (ironically) on how experience can hinder us. Soyer and Hogarth write in a easily understandable style using stories and data to help support their premise. Enjoyable read!
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May 27, 2022Very pleasant to read book, with examples from a variety of fields: from medicine, to business.
If you enjoy some of Taleb´s publications on uncertainty, or know the principles of "correlation does not mean causation", this book be of high interest for you.
If you enjoy some of Taleb´s publications on uncertainty, or know the principles of "correlation does not mean causation", this book be of high interest for you.
November 4, 2022
Started great and interesting. Got increasingly redundant and less scientific after about half of the book. Fits my personal narrative that experience is not only overrated but often enough hindering.
December 15, 2020
Great book with good examples and should be compulsory for new management consultants, so they just don't follow the crowd and old management consultants who think they've seen it all.
February 8, 2021
This book is simply repeating thinking fast and slow, in a less intense manner.
April 21, 2021
This is a great book that will help you to understand your experiences better. There is always a different way to interpret things and this book will show you the path. A must read...
December 30, 2021
excellent book
Helps me see through senior candidates interviews where differentiation becomes difficult because everyone has learnt to be a glib talker through their life
Helps me see through senior candidates interviews where differentiation becomes difficult because everyone has learnt to be a glib talker through their life
May 22, 2023
Please follow the link to my blog for the review. Thank you.
https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/202...
https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/202...
August 6, 2023
Interesting insights, but the book could be much shorter. Lacks practical advice beyond “being aware of…”.
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December 6, 2023i love the amount of nuance this book portrays!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews