We are often confident even when we are wrong, and an objective observer is more likely to detect our errors than we are.

People should be conscious of the large contribution made by anything that gets people together easily in the reduction of loneliness and emotional well-being.

People just hate the idea of losing. Any loss, even a small one, is just so terrible to contemplate that they compensate by buying insurance, including totally absurd policies like air travel.

To know whether you can trust a particular intuitive judgment, there are two questions you should ask: Is the environment in which the judgment is made sufficiently regular to enable predictions from the available evidence? The answer is yes for diagnosticians, no for stock pickers. Do the professionals have an adequate opportunity to learn the cues and the regularities? The answer here depends on the professionals' experience and on the quality and speed with which they discover their mistakes.

To better avoid errors, you should talk to people who disagree with you and you should talk to people who are not in the same emotional situation you are.

Facts that challenge basic assumptions-and thereby threaten people's livelihood and self-esteem-are simply not absorbed. The mind does not digest them.

That's one of the real dangers of leader selection in many organizations: leaders are selected for overconfidence.