'Why We Make Mistakes' by Joseph T.Hallinan -p.99 treatment

I took out three books from my pile 'To Be Read' last night and decided to subject them to Page99Test. 'Why We Make Mistakes' by Joseph T.Hallinan is the first out here. The book subtitle is 'How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average'

Page 99 starts with a block sentence:

Those who want to watch a movie later pick highbrow movies; those who want to watch one now pick lowbrow movies.

Apparently these were the results from asking people who were about to rent movies from Blockbuster or Netflix. More information comes in the next paragraph, which takes most of this page.

In the second instance researchers found parallel effect occurred when they asked office workers to chose which of two snacks they want delivered in a week: fruit or junk food. Twist here is that workers were asked this question at two different times: (1) when they were likely to be hungry in the late afternoon; and (2) when they were likely to be full straight after lunch. Turns out that 78% of "hungry" group picked the unhealthy snack, but only 42% of the "full" group did the same. So, like with movie watchers, office workers went for easy instant gratification (my words) in food.

The page finishes intriguingly with the statement that

something similar happens when people buy clothes.

It then even more intriguingly claims that when temperature goes down not only do the orders for cold-weather gear go up, but so do the returns. The first is totally expected, the second definitely is not.

Given that this is how the page ends, I would without waiting want to turn the page and find out why this is the case.


So, what are the P99Test results in this case?

For a book that addresses why we make mistakes, we certainly are presented with several examples of the kind of 'mistakes' that it deals with. What we do not get here is any answers to the

Why

of the title.

Given that I will be reading this book, I followed with a peak into p.149 next in search of the answer. This turns out to be the first page of Chapter 10 entitled 'We All Think We're Above Average' and towards the bottom right has a box with the following text in highlights:

"Almost everyone is overconfident- except the people who are depressed, and they tend to be realists."

This was apparently the conclusion of Stefano Della Vigna, a professor of economics at University of California, Berkley based on his research in many different settings. So, here was at least one general answer to the title question.

On the basis of this short exploration, I venture to say - READ THIS BOOK. Oh, and you may also want to follow the links on Joe Hallinan's webpage and check out his blog there as well.

PS I take it you have spotted the Mistake on the book front page?