Categories of Bias in The Undoing Project

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Categories of Bias in The Undoing Project
The Undoing Project, written by Michael Lewis, is an introduction of various studies which explain the unexpected pitfalls that human being might fall into. Such pitfalls are a result of the decisions that people make. Michael outlines the lives of Kahneman's and Tversky's as an example of the things that they did and argued about to reveal the different categories of bias (Kazdin 2017). Bias is the tendency of human beings to make decisions in an illogical way that might be caused by the information involved in the decision-making process or the expectations of society. Michael has been able to describe that many human beings decide on things based on their emotions rather than the rational point of view hence contributing to the various categories of bias. Therefore, the underlying project provides an analysis of the underlying causes of biases and flaws, which in turn are considered to be the root of all the human errors in judgment through two Israelites who had described ad tested them before.
Michael presents the status quo bias where human beings tend to think that what they own is more valuable as compared to other objects that they do not own. However, this is wrong in the world of making judgments because an individual might stick to a particular decision while they have better options out there. Unfortunately, it is a common type of bias affecting a lot of people and especially in the ways that they think. For instance, an individual can take all the risks to go watch a movie that they had already paid for online, while they have an option of forgoing the movie to avoid the risk. This turns out to be the nature of how the human brain works and hence, explains the reason why some uncertainties tend to affect people more than the expected flaws. The status quo is an emotional bias that affects the preference of the current state of affairs in any given situation (Dean, Mark, Özgür, and Yusufcan 100). People use the current status of an event as the baseline for decision making, and any change from the perceived nature of something is considered to be a loss. What people fail to consider is that the change from the normality could be a superior or helpful decision. This kind of bias has affected marketers since they end up facing uncertainties that cause them huge losses. Those losses could have been avoided by making decisions whose facts were not made on the status quo. The business world is dynamic and thus is the need to avoid the status quo bias. People need to think outside what they already know and open their minds to better opportunities out there (Geng 441). However, the status quo bias is not always bad since it can prevent an individual from facing a loss that could have been caused by a diversion from the baseline of the current state.
The author describes a category of bias in that no one makes a decision as a result of a number since people need a story in order to be able to decide on something. The author uses the study by Amos and Danny to illustrate how the information provided to an individual can bias the decision-making process. According to the study, two doctors are allocated a dyin...