Why is it so hard to choose what's right for us?

The history of cognitive bias.

When we're making decisions, our brains constantly fall victim to a special kind of delusion: cognitive bias. Because of them, we spend our time getting things wrong. Confirmation bias, for example, leads us to overestimate the elements that reinforce our convictions. The betting bias leads us to believe that the more we lose at a game of chance, the more likely we are to win if we keep playing.

Like dozens of others, these cognitive biases were discovered by researchers in behavioral economics. Over the past thirty years, the study of these biases has become a science, founded by Israeli-American researchers Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Thanks to their work, we are now aware of the irrationality of some of our reasoning. The bad news is that there's probably nothing we can do about it.

Running time: 5min08