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Narratives are Broad, Intuitions are Specific


A colleague recently asked me about this sentence in our 2017 article on Two Minds Theory: "people often make one type of decision based on the gist of health information presented (narrative system) but another based on specific details (intuitive system)." He questioned whether this was really true -- wouldn't the Narrative mind be the one that gets the details right, and the Intuitive mind be the one that glosses over them? I still think that my original description of the systems is right, that narratives are broad while intuitions are specific. I'm sharing my argument below.

The narrative system (Kahneman’s System II) is the logical, rational mind, so I can see why that might seem tied to specifics, while the heuristic-driven intuitive system (Kahneman’s System I) might seem more vulnerable to errors based on poor attention to data. But in fact I see the intuitive system as excessively driven by details, including some that might not be important. It tends to miss context or meaning. For example, the intuitive mind produces anchoring effects, like when the first dollar amount named in a contract discussion becomes the basis for further haggling and negotiation. The intuitive mind might say “that’s too much,” but its reaction doesn’t lead to stepping back and asking what’s a reasonable price or what others are charging for similar products/services in the community. So if I say I will charge you $1,000 to give a talk, you are likely to negotiate and I will eventually come down to a price of $800 or $900, but you probably won’t come back and counter-propose $150 based on some set of first principles. A lot of biases work this way, using first impressions or making decisions based on characteristics like color, shape, etc. that we might not even be consciously aware of. The implicit association test is about how one’s mind perceives and reacts to details (e.g., black = bad) in ways that aren’t justified and are probably outside conscious awareness. And Richard Thaler’s work is a good example of how we can “nudge” people’s behavior by manipulating the details, e.g. via product placement in a store to encourage particular types of purchases. In all of these System I examples, the details are what dominate. 

 The narrative mind, by contrast, tells a story. It’s the part of the mind that’s able to step back and say “here’s the overall goal we’re trying to accomplish, and here are some things that are getting in the way,” or the part of your mind that makes a list before you go to the store and then crosses off items as you find them. The System II story does include some details (e.g., the items on the list), but the overall narrative is what matters (“I’m going to purchase what’s on my list, and not make impulse buys”). As you walk through the store you probably aren’t mentally rehearsing the list, especially if you gave it some narrative structure beforehand by sorting items based on different sections of the store. When you get to a particular item, you might notice if they don’t have your usual brand but you will probably buy a substitute; what you wouldn’t do is say “they don’t have what I want” simply based on the color or shape of the box. The intuitive mind would do those things, while the narrative mind is able to get past them and see two different items as similar based on their shared meaning or purpose. 

 As further proof that the narrative mind is not detail-oriented, think about whether you dream in color. Most people say yes, but during the period in the mid-20th century when TV and movies were mostly black and white, most people actually said no! The truth of the matter is that I have no idea whether I dream in color, I just wake up with some idea of what I dreamed about and my brain fills in the details based on what seems to make sense. That’s what I mean by the gist. It’s also why I cn rd ths sntnc wtht vwls, because my brain is able to fill in the missing parts based on the overall sense of what’s being said. The narrative system is detail-insensitive, although it is so good at pretending it knows the details that we often miss this fact. That’s why stereotypes are pernicious – they provide such a reasonable-seeming story that we notice only those details that support it, without paying attention to those that don’t. 

I think that Kahneman misses the boat by arguing that System I is usually the source of problems, and System II is usually the solution. In my view each system has its own strengths and weaknesses, and different types of errors arise from each source.

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