🧠Charlie Munger's 25 causes of human misjudgment

his own checklist for where thinking goes wrong, from the 1995 speech and Poor Charlie's Almanack. from the source, not a listicle summary of it

Reward and Punishment Superresponse Tendency

show me the incentive, i'll show you the outcome. his most quoted line, from the source

Liking/Loving Tendency

Disliking/Hating Tendency

you stop seeing the flaws in what you love and stop seeing the virtues in what you hate. same tendency pointed two directions

Doubt-Avoidance Tendency

we rush to a decision just to kill the discomfort of not having one yet

Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency

Curiosity Tendency

basically all upside, one of the few he lists with no dark side

Kantian Fairness Tendency

not fairness in general. the specific instinct to reciprocate fair treatment and punish unfair treatment even at a cost to yourself

Envy/Jealousy Tendency

Reciprocation Tendency

why free samples work. giving first creates an obligation on the other side

Influence-from-Mere-Association Tendency

Simple, Pain-Avoiding Psychological Denial

denial strong enough to override plain facts when the facts are too painful to sit with

Excessive Self-Regard Tendency

Overoptimism Tendency

Deprival-Superreaction Tendency

losing something hurts roughly twice as much as gaining the same thing helps. loss aversion, basically

Social-Proof Tendency

everyone else is doing it so it must be fine, dressed up as the elevator experiment

Contrast-Misreaction Tendency

Stress-Influence Tendency

makes fast, drastic reactions more likely. also worse ones

Availability-Misweighing Tendency

Use-It-or-Lose-It Tendency

easier said than practiced honestly. skills fade if you stop using them

Drug-Misinfluence Tendency

Senescence-Misinfluence Tendency

Authority-Misinfluence Tendency

we defer to authority past the point the authority is right. airline copilots deferring to a wrong captain is his go-to example

Twaddle Tendency

his term for wasting your own time and everyone else's on trivial talk. not in every reprint of this list, but it's in the full talk

Reason-Respecting Tendency

Lollapalooza Tendency

the finale. what happens when several of these stack at once, and why the effect isn't additive, it's compounding