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Overconfidence in memory could emerge from our daily experience: We recall events easily and often, at least if they are important to us, but only rarely do we find our memories contradicted by evidence, much less take the initiative to check if they are right. We then rely on confidence as a signal of accuracy — in ourselves and in others. It’s no accident that Oprah Winfrey’s latest best seller is called “What I Know For Sure,” rather than “Some Things That Might Be True.”Continue reading the main story Our lack of appreciation for the fallibility of our own memories can lead to much bigger problems than a misattributed quote. Memory failures that resemble Dr. Tyson’s mash-up of distinct experiences have led to false convictions, and even death sentences. Whose memories we believe and whose we disbelieve influence how we interpret controversial public events, as demonstrated most recently by the events in Ferguson, Mo.Erroneous witness recollections have become so concerning that the National Academy of Sciences convened an expert panel to review the state of research on the topic. This fall the panel (which one of us, Daniel Simons, served on) released a comprehensive report that recommended procedures to minimize the chances of false memory and mistaken identification, including videotaping police lineups and improving jury instructions.

"Metaphorical thinking—our instinct not just for describing but for comprehending one thing in terms of another—shapes our view of the world, and is essential to how we communicate, learn, discover and invent. ... Our understanding of metaphor is in the midst of a metamorphosis. For centuries, metaphor has been seen as a kind of cognitive frill, a pleasant but essentially useless embellishment to 'normal' thought. Now, the frill is gone. New research in the social and cognitive sciences makes it increasingly plain that metaphorical thinking influences our attitudes, beliefs, and actions in surprising, hidden, and often oddball ways." Geary further unpacks metaphor's influence in his foreword: "Metaphor conditions our interpretations of the stock market and, through advertising, it surreptitiously infiltrates our purchasing decisions. In the mouths of politicians, metaphor subtly nudges public opinion; in the minds of businesspeople, it spurs creativity and innovation. In science, metaphor is the preferred nomenclature for new theories and new discoveries; in psychology, it is the natural language of human relationships and emotions."

The upshot of the boom in metaphor studies, Geary makes clear, is the overturning of that presumption toward literalism: Nowadays, it's believers in a literalism that goes all the way down (so to speak) who are on the defensive in intellectual life, and explorers of metaphor who are on the ascendant. As a result, Geary hardly feels a need to address literalism, devoting most of his book to how metaphor connects to etymology, money, mind, politics, pleasure, science, children, the brain, the body, and such literary forms as the proverb and aphorism.

We are told that we are an irrational tangle of biases, to be nudged any which way. Does this claim stand to reason?

A culture that believes its citizens are not reliably competent thinkers will treat those citizens differently to one that respects their reflective autonomy. Which kind of culture do we want to be? And we do have a choice. Because it turns out that the modern vision of compromised rationality is more open to challenge than many of its followers accept.

Modern skepticism about rationality is largely motivated by years of experiments on cognitive bias.

There are a number of problems with teaching science as a collection of facts. First, facts change. Before oxygen was discovered, the theoretical existence of phlogiston made sense. For a brief, heady moment in 1989, it looked like cold fusion (paywall) was going to change the world. In the field of medical science, “facts” are even more wobbly. For example, it has been estimated that fewer than 10% of published high profile cancer studies are reproducible (the word “reproducible” here is a euphemism for “not total poppycock”).

First, there is nothing special or magical about ten thousand hours. Gladwell could just as easily have mentioned the average amount of time the best violin students had practiced by the time they were eighteen — approximately seventy-four hundred hours — but he chose to refer to the total practice time they had accumulated by the time they were twenty, because it was a nice round number.

And the number varies from field to field.

Third, Gladwell didn’t distinguish between the type of practice that the musicians in our study did — a very specific sort of practice referred to as “deliberate practice” which involves constantly pushing oneself beyond one’s comfort zone, following training activities designed by an expert to develop specific abilities, and using feedback to identify weaknesses and work on them — and any sort of activity that might be labeled “practice.”

Douglas Van Praet argues that while decision making is governed by our emotions, brands should still provide people with a logical lifeline (but they should steer clear of research that lets the post-rationalizing tail wag the emotional dog).

One of the longest-running debates in marketing is whether to use a rational or emotional advertising approach in marketing--but cognitive science says that argument is pointless. While emotions overwhelmingly drive behavior, it is misguided to believe that thinking and feeling are somehow mutually exclusive. Emotion and logic are intertwined. Behavioral science is now telling us that we don’t really have “free will.” We have “free won’t.” We can give in to the visceral impulses that drive us or choose to apply the brakes of rational restraint. While we can’t choose our emotions because they originate unconsciously, we can choose our conscious response to our feelings. This is essentially what consciousness is--a series of critical reflections and interpretations about how we are feeling.