OP Book Insights: Ch 1, The Characters in the Story (Thinking, Fast and Slow)
As part of Octalysis Prime, Yu-kai provides OP Insights on important research and books in the field of, in this case, Behavioral Economics.
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.
P19 — System 1 vs System 2
Author asks readers to look at a woman’s photo and states that the reader, without trying, immediately knows the woman is angry.
Then he shows a math problem 17 x 24 and asks us to calculate it.
He states that the first one is based on System 1 (we immediately know intuitively), and the second one is System 2 (we deliberately have to think about it).
Our System 1 immediately knows it is a multiplication problem and that we could likely solve it. Our System 1 would also know what is probably too high or too low.
But we wouldn’t know for sure if 568 is correct or not. We have to CHOOSE to engage our System 2 to start solving the problem.
P20 — Origins of the Terminology
System 1 and System 2 terminology come from psychologists Keith Stanovich and Richard West.
P23 — Inattentional Blindness
Intense focusing on a task can make people effectively blind to anything else.
When we are focusing on a difficult task of tracking people wearing white shirts from black shirts, we miss a gorilla costume person walking in front of the screen.
This is demonstrated in Chabris and Simons’ book The Invisible Gorilla and demonstrated by Netflix Brain Game.
P24 — System 2 Drains System 1
The counting task and the instruction to ignore the other team causes this. 50% of the people don’t see it, and would not believe at all they would miss something so obvious.
When a lot of resources are allocated to System 2, our System 1 becomes less effective.
“We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.”
System 1 usually makes suggestions to System 2, and System 2 is in low effort mode and agrees to the intuition or impression. This then becomes belief.
When System 1 cannot solve an issue, System 2 then becomes highly engaged.
P25 — System 2 as the Gatekeeper
System 2 keeps us polite when angry, and focused when driving at night.
System 1 makes way more decisions but usually System 2 has the final say if it bothers.
System 1 usually works quite well, and it cannot be turned off. It is working all the time.
P26 — Conflicts Between System 1 and 2
Sometimes System 1 and 2 have a conflict, such as saying the text “right” is on the left. We may still identify those correctly, but we need to slow down to properly do it.
P27 — The Müller-Lyer Illusion
The famous Müller-Lyer illusion shows 2 lines, one with fins pointing outwards and one with fins pointing inwards.
If we have seen it, our System 2 knows as a fact that the lines are equal length, but our System 1 will continue to let us see that one line is longer than the other.
We cannot unsee the longer line, but we have learned to mistrust it.
Sometimes there are cognitive illusions (instead of just visual). If a patient tells a doctor that every doctor in the past has screwed them over, but you are different — run away from this patient, even though System 1 wants to help him.
The strong sympathetic attraction to the patient is like the lines with fins — it is an illusion and our System 2 should learn to distrust it.
Yu-kai’s note: the patient actually effectively used CD5: Social Influence, CD7: Curiosity on this disease, CD3 for the doctor to see if he can solve the problem that no one else can, CD4: Identity in the sense of “I am that uniquely good doctor that cares about patients” and even CD1: Calling, “it’s my life mission to cure people, especially those who are mistreated by others.”
No wonder even doctors cannot resist this!
P28 — Living with Cognitive Illusions
We cannot turn System 1 off, but it is impractical to always be vigilant of these cognitive illusions.
The best we can do is recognize situations where these errors are more prone to happen, especially when stakes are high.
P29 — Why Name Them Characters?
The reason why we name systems 1 & 2 as characters is because it is more memorable to the brain than abstract academic terms. Characters and personalities are more memorable.
Yu-kai notes: this is adding CD5 to create more relatedness with the concept.
P30 — Practical Usage
Author gives some ways to use his concepts in everyday conversation at the end of each chapter, such as, “This is your System 1 talking. Slow down and let your System 2 take control.”
Yu-kai notes: While it is a bit geeky and only helpful among people who have studied this, this is a good example of CD3: Empowerment. The author immediately allows users to see how they can strategically USE these concepts in everyday conversations, perhaps sounding smarter and grasping the concepts better as a result.
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Related Reading
- Substituting a Hard Question for an Easier One: Kahneman
- The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design
- Overcome Your Cognitive Biases: Super Forecasting
- 5 Psychology Books That Contextualize Gamification Design
- What is Gamification?
- Books by Yu-kai Chou