Design for Two Modes of Cognition
Monday, September 15th, 2008Our minds have two modes – automatic and manual.
In automatic mode we make instant decisions, take frequent and sometimes dangerous mental short cuts (cognitive biases) and run intuitively with very little conscious awareness and control. Manual mode on the other hand requires attention and conscious mental effort to exert behavioral control, weight options, manage emotions and the like.
As Blink and other recent best sellers on the nature of thinking have pointed out, we pretty much live in automatic mode. But as David Meyer’s claims in his book, Intuition: Its Power and Perils, we generally don’t believe that:
“The big idea of contemporary psychological science is that most of our everyday thinking, feeling and acting operate outside of conscious awareness is hard for people to accept…”
For a good summary of the book look here.
