6 Ways You're Thinking Wrong and What You Can Do About Them.

Our species adopted a host of cognitive strategies to survive and thrive. These lessons can help you avoid their pitfalls.

- By Woo-Kyoung Ahn

When I was a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, doing research in cognitive psychology, our lab group went out every now and then for nachos and beers. It was a great opportunity for us to ask our adviser about things that wouldn't likely come up in our more formal meetings. At one of those gatherings, I summoned up the courage to ask him a question that had been on my mind for some time: "Do you think cognitive psychology can make the world a better place?" I had asked a simple yes-or-no question, so he chose a simple answer: "Yes." Over the course of the next 30 years, I've tried to answer that question myself by working on problems that I hope have real-world applications. In my research at Yale University, where I've been a professor of psychology since 2003, I've examined some of the biases that can lead us astray-and developed strategies to correct them in ways that are directly applicable to situations people encounter in their daily lives.

I also saw how "thinking problems" cause troubles that go far beyond our individual concerns. These errors and biases contribute to a wide range of societal issues, including political polarization, complicity in climate change, and ethnic profiling.

They can also come into play for people who run businesses-how they hire staff, interact with their colleagues, set strategies.

I introduced a course called "Thinking" to show students how psychology can help them recognize and tackle some of these real-world problems and make better decisions. Now I've written a book, Thinking 101, to make these lessons more widely available. And here I'm presenting a sample of the kind of material you'll find in it.