Substituting a Hard Question for an Easier One: Daniel Kahneman’s ‘Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow’
Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel Prize for showing how our brains take shortcuts. One of his most powerful examples? We swap hard questions for easy ones — and barely notice we’re doing it.
But here’s the twist: sometimes that “mistake” actually works. Yu-kai Chou explains why Kahneman’s famous Ford stock example isn’t as clear-cut as it seems — and how the Octalysis Framework explains what’s really going on.
This article is written by Erik van Mechelen in “conversation” with Yu-kai Chou and Daniel Kahneman.
Author Credibility: Yu-kai Chou
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Google Scholar — with 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
The Substitution Heuristic: Swapping Hard Questions for Easy Ones
Do you like Yu-kai’s glasses? You might substitute an easier question — “Do I like Yu-kai?” — then quickly answer “Yes I like your glasses” and move on with your day.
In the introduction to Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman describes the process by which we trade hard questions for cognitively easier ones. This is the substitution heuristic — a common behavioral and cognitive process that shapes decisions far more than most people realize.
On page 12, Kahneman describes a Chief Investment Officer who invests tens of millions of dollars in Ford, because he goes to an automotive show and was impressed with the cars.
“He liked the cars, he liked the company, and he liked the idea of owning its stock. From what we know about the accuracy of stock picking, it is reasonable to believe that he did not know what he was doing” because the one question should be “Is the stock currently underpriced?”
But this is where Yu-kai disagrees:
A stock could be overpriced, but due to consumer psychology, will rise even more until a correction. A fund manager could invest in the short to midterm based on investor psychology instead of accurate valuations of a stock.
Also, some growth stocks are always overpriced but people are investing in where they would be in the future, as opposed to now.
This is a key distinction Kahneman overlooks. In markets driven by collective human emotion, the “wrong” question — “Do I like Ford?” — might actually predict what other investors will do better than fundamental analysis. This connects directly to Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness in the Octalysis Framework, where people make decisions based on what they believe others will do.
The Affect Heuristic: When Feelings Drive Decisions
The affect heuristic is the tendency for judgments and decisions to be guided directly by feelings of liking and disliking, with little deliberation or reasoning. Kahneman identified this as one of the primary mechanisms behind the substitution heuristic.
Yu-kai had more thoughts on this:
The issue is that other investors are motivated the same way. If you go to a car show and feel affection towards a Ford car over all the others, that means other investors are likely to do the same and buy Ford, moving the price up.
As opposed to buying the worse looking unsexy car that no one cares about, the stock is cheap and undervalued, but has a grim future.
Intuitive Heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution. Instead of thinking if Ford is a stock worth investing in, it is substituted with “Do I like Ford cars?”
A note from me (Erik): I actually don’t mind being intellectually “lazy” in these instances (if your goal is to increase your earnings by purchasing this stock), since others will make the same “mistake”, turning your “mistake” into a good result.
The difference though is knowing why you are taking an action.
When algorithms begin taking over stock market buying and selling decisions, humans might have a more difficult time adjusting and beating the algorithms in their deep modeling. The algorithms won’t make these sorts of mistakes.
How the Octalysis Framework Explains the Substitution Heuristic
Kahneman’s substitution heuristic maps directly onto the Octalysis Framework‘s distinction between how the 8 Core Drives interact.
When users make decisions based on how something feels rather than careful analysis, they’re being driven by Right Brain Core Drives — particularly Core Drive 5: Social Influence (what others are doing) and Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity (the emotional thrill of the unknown).
This is why Right Brain Core Drives are so effective in gamification design: they tap into the same cognitive shortcuts Kahneman identified. The best products don’t fight these heuristics — they design with them.
Understanding the substitution heuristic also explains a pattern in gamification: why surface-level features like points, badges, and leaderboards often fail. Designers substitute the hard question (“What motivates the user at each stage of the experience?”) with an easier one (“What game elements should I add?”). That substitution — in Kahneman’s terms — leads to bad design.
Continue the Conversation
In Octalysis Prime, the conversation is permanent and continuous. We discuss everything from Thinking, Fast and Slow to the nuances of the latest gamification implementations.
See you on the island.
Related Reading
- The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design
- 5 Psychology Books That Contextualize Gamification Design
- What is Gamification?
- Overcome Your Cognitive Biases: Expert Analysis of ‘Super Forecasting’
- Left Brain vs Right Brain Core Drives in Gamification
- Points, Badges, and Leaderboards: The Gamification Fallacy
- Books by Yu-kai Chou