Who knows what I want to do? Who knows what anyone wants to do? How can you be sure about something like that? Isn't it all a question of brain chemistry, signals going back and forth, electrical energy in the cortex? How do you know whether something is really what you want to do or just some kind of nerve impulse in the brain. Some minor little activity takes place somewhere in this unimportant place in one of the brain hemispheres and suddenly I want to go to Montana or I don't want to go to Montana. (White Noise, Don DeLillo)

People prefer to make changeable decisions rather than unchangeable decisions because they do not realize that they may be more satisfied with the latter. Photography students believed that having the opportunity to change their minds about which prints to keep would not influence their liking of the prints. However, those who had the opportunity to change their minds liked their prints less than those who did not (Study 1). Although the opportunity to change their minds impaired the postdecisional processes that normally promote satisfaction (Study 2a), most participants wanted to have that opportunity (Study 2b). The results demonstrate that errors in affective forecasting can lead people to behave in ways that do not optimize their happiness and well-being. In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. —T. S. Eliot, Poetry (Vol. 6)

The authors propose that people adopt others ’ perspectives by serially adjusting from their own. As predicted, estimates of others ’ perceptions were consistent with one’s own but differed in a manner consistent with serial adjustment (Study 1). Participants were slower to indicate that another’s perception would be different from—rather than similar to—their own (Study 2). Egocentric biases increased under time pressure (Study 2) and decreased with accuracy incentives (Study 3). Egocentric biases also increased when participants were more inclined to accept plausible values encountered early in the adjustment process than when inclined to reject them (Study 4). Finally, adjustments tend to be insufficient, in part, because people stop adjusting once a plausible estimate is reached (Study 5). We have endeavored to show... that thought in the child is egocentric, i.e., that the child thinks for himself without troubling to make himself understood nor to place himself at the other person’s point of view.... If this be the case, we must expect childish reasoning to differ very considerably from ours, to be deductive and above all less rigorous. (Piaget, 1959, p. 1) Children view their perceptions of the world as accurate reflections

The economic conception of human behavior assumes that a person has a single set of well-defined goals, and that the person’s behavior is chosen to best achieve those goals. We develop a model in which a person’s behavior is the outcome of an interaction between two systems: a deliberative system that assesses options with a broad, goal-based perspective, and an affective system that encompasses emotions and motivational drives. Our model provides a framework for understanding many departures from full rationality discussed in the behavioral-economics literature, and captures the familiar feeling of being "of two minds. ” By focusing on factors that moderate the relative influence of the two systems, our model generates a variety of novel testable predictions.

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Michael Shermer, one of the world’s most renowned skeptical authorities and the founder and editor-in-chief of Skeptic magazine, has built his career around debunking irrational and poorly supported beliefs. Despite his notability as a proponent of skepticism and scientific reasoning, Shermer may not be as well known for his vast knowledge of