Why Good People Make Bad Decisions
Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman's research revealed that human decision-making is riddled with systematic biases. Confirmation bias leads us to seek information that supports what we already believe. Anchoring makes us over-rely on the first piece of information we encounter. The sunk cost fallacy keeps us investing in losing propositions because we have already spent money or effort. Loss aversion makes us fear losses roughly twice as much as we value equivalent gains. Status quo bias makes us prefer the current state even when alternatives are objectively better. These biases are not signs of stupidity — they are features of how the brain processes information efficiently under uncertainty. But awareness of biases, combined with structured decision processes, dramatically improves outcomes.