Thinking, Fast and Slow

he gorilla study illustrates two important facts about our minds: we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.

If you wish to experience your System 2 working at full tilt, the following exercise will do; it should br"0%e ca Tting you to the limits of your cognitive abilities within 5 seconds. To start, make up several strings of 4 digits, all different, and write each string on an index card. Place a blank card on top of the deck. The task that you will perform is called Add-1. Here is how it goes:

Start beating a steady rhythm (or better yet, set a metronome at 1/sec). Remove the blank card and read the four digits aloud. Wait for two beats, then report a string in which each of the original digits is incremented by 1. If the digits on the card are 5294, the correct response is 6305. Keeping the rhythm is important.

In general, a strategy of deliberately “thinking the opposite” may be a good defense against anchoring effects, because it negates the biased recruitment of thoughts that produces these effects.