Book Reading #47 - Why We Make Mistakes

Title:
Chapter 8: We Like Things Tidy
Chapter 9: Men Shoot First

Reference:
Hallinan, Joseph.  Why We Make Mistakes.  Random House, Inc.c New York.  2009

Summary:

Chapter 8: We Like Things Tidy

This chapter focused on our perception of things in terms of our simplifying of them.  When we think of relative locations of things on a map, we simplify places and put it in a hierarchical structure in order to get more of a larger picture of the map.  

Music and environment can play a large role in our remembering something.  When brought back into our original context of the state we learned or recognized the even in, we are more likely to remember the event. 

Our memory also evades us.  When retelling a story, we often either embellish parts or detract from parts based upon the audience and our goal in telling the story.  When we replace the facts with more things we make up, we then come to think that the things we made up were actually a part of the actual event upon repetition of the story. 

Chapter 9: Men Shoot First

This chapter went through the idea that not only are men overconfident when compared with women, but they are also more likely to engage in riskier business.  All these factors are hard to trace back, but some is due to the way in which boys grow up as compared to girls.  When it comes to navigation, men are more likely to not ask directions whereas women would.  The author points this to the fact that boys tend to have a larger range of mobility allowed to them by their parents when they are young over girls.  Boys are also encouraged to tinker more than girls are which also may influence the risk taking and overconfidence of the male.

Discussion:
I think it is very important to us to simplify these things.  The book did not go into how our minds categorize things, but I think it is very important to our association and recollection of things for us to categorize things and put classes of object together maybe even oversimplifying things.  Our spacial parts of our brains are so much more powerful at remembering things than just rote memory.

Being a man, I see this overconfidence in us over girls all the time.  It is a part of who we are and cannot really be separated out in order to have a different perspective of things.  While we may be able to look back on an event or even ourselves and recognize this difference, we will always (in my opinion) be prone to this type of behavior.