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.

If people can construct a simple and coherent story, they will feel confident regardless of how well grounded it is in reality.

People talk of the new economy and of reinventing themselves in the workplace, and in that sense most of us are less secure.

Employers who violate rules of fairness are punished by reduced productivity, and merchants who follow unfair pricing policies can expect to lose sales.

The illusion that we understand the past fosters overconfidence in our ability to predict the future.

I used to hold a unitary view, in which I proposed that only experienced happiness matters, and that life satisfaction is a fallible estimate of true happiness.

Endlessly amused by people's minds.