Long Read: How People Think

Morgan Housel | 38 minutes

Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash

One hundred billion people have walked this planet.
Nearly eight billion of them are alive today.

Each has a story, few have a microphone.

Each has seen something different and thought something unique. Most know something you can’t fathom, and you have experienced stuff they wouldn’t believe.

But so many behaviors are universal across generations and geographies. Circumstances change, but people’s reactions don’t. Technologies evolve, but insecurities, blind spots, and gullibility rarely does.

This article describes 17 of what I think are the most common and influential aspects of how people think.

Snippets

Most of the world does not exist on a linear curve.
Linear relationships only exist for mindless, rote, repetitive tasks—driving a car, filling out reams of paperwork, cleaning the bathroom, etc.

- Mark Manson, Why the Best Things in Life Are All Backwards

There’s an old, and well-known theory in the social sciences, called Contact Hypothesis.
It suggests that tensions rise in humans when there is isolation between groups, and decreases when there is intermingling.

- Sean Kernan, There Was an Actual Chimpanzee War in the 1970s

Merry Christmas to you and yours :)