Snap Judgment: When to Trust Your Instincts, When to Ignore Them, and How to Avoid Making Big Mistakes with Your Money

Introduction: Second Thoughts About First Impressions

I can resist everything except temptation.

—Oscar Wilde

This book is about the psychology of financial decisions. It is about how our instincts and intuitive judgments intersect with financial markets, as well as other areas of contemporary life, to produce decisions that are not in our best interests. It argues that our “intuition,” the psychological responses celebrated in books like Blink, may be a useful guide when falling in love, but when it comes to investing, fully trusting your gut is pretty much a disaster. It will only lead you astray when choosing a stock or predicting the end of a real-estate boom. Snap judgments and first impressions are poorly suited for calculating odds and ...