Thinking Better to Live Better – Dr. Woo-kyoung Ahn

You may be familiar with cognitive bias from behavioral economics. But being aware of common thinking traps and how to elude them can help you in your retirement planning and in your day-to day life, including making you a wiser consumer. Dr. Woo-kyoung Ahn, a Psychology professor at Yale, is the author of the new book Thinking 101: How to Reason Better to Live Better. She joins us for an enlightening conversation about how we can be more keenly aware of our cognitive tendencies, sharpen our thinking and duck thinking errors that can have real-life implications. We discuss: How confirmation bias works - and how it gets in our way Negativity bias - and why loss aversion carries more weight than gains do Overconfidence and the fluency effect Estimating better and the planning fallacy How marketers use cognitive bias - and how to be a wiser consumer Applications of the research in daily life How cognitive psychology can help at the individual and societal levels Dr. Ahn joins us from New Haven. ________________________ Comments, Suggestions or Questions You’d Like Me to Address on the Podcast? Leave a Voice Message Here _________________________ Bio Woo-kyoung Ahn is the John Hay Whitney Professor of Psychology at Yale University. After receiving her PhD in Psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, she was Assistant Professor at Yale University and Associate Professor at Vanderbilt University. Her research on thinking biases has been funded by NIH. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. _________________________ For More on Dr. Woo-kyoung Ahn Thinking 101: How to Reason Better to Live Better Website _________________________ Mentioned in This Episode BTS Music Video (The dance sequence Dr. Ahn uses in her class is from 1:18 to 1:24. ) (Video of my attempt to do this is currently unavailable...) Breaking the Age Code – Dr. Becca Levy __________________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like Chatter & Your Inner Voice – Ethan Kross Think Big – Dr. Grace Lordan The Expectation Effect – David Robson Smarter Tomorrow – Elizabeth Ricker ___________________________ How to Win the Retirement Game (It Might Just Be the Most Important Game of Your Life) What Readers Are Saying: “Definitely the best book I’ve read on the non-financial aspects of retirement.” “I wish I had this book when I retired.” “…the book is amazingly readable, and chock full of insights.” “This is the book I didn’t know I needed after retiring!” “This is a great gift for anyone anticipating retirement years or already in the thick of it.” Amazon    Barnes & Noble    Bookshop.org ___________________________ Wise Quotes On Estimating & Planning Better "...what I do to overcome the planning fallacy in myself is I just basically add 50% of the time that I initially estimate. And I try not to negotiate with myself on this. And sometimes 50% was not enough. My favorite story was I was planning I was preparing for a lecture on the planning fallacy, and I thought It'll be done within four days. And I said, Okay, that means a week. No. It took two weeks, because there's so many studies that I read and then I said, No, this one doesn't work. No, this is not interesting.