Why We Choose Wrong

Name: Why We Choose Wrong
Brand: Trinity Books
SKU: TB-K0006-EN
Price: 15.3 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Clara Montiel

by Clara Montiel

Trinity Books · October 28, 2026

Why smart people make poor choices, and simple ways to choose better.

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About this book
Contents
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Details

Author	Spain Clara Montiel
Category	Making decisions / Introduction to psychology / Logical thinking
Language of the book	English
Published	October 28, 2026
Length	272 pages
Product number	TB-K0006-EN
Reading time	About 4 h 10 min (at 230 words a minute)
Print-ready PDF	A5 · interior PDF and cover PDF (with bleed: two versions, 3 mm and 3.175 mm, can be downloaded.) · 272 pages

Categories of this book

Categories Self-help and work Making decisions

Categories Learning and general knowledge Introduction to psychology

Categories Thought, philosophy and religion Logical thinking

About this book

Why do careful, intelligent people spend an hour choosing a toaster and four minutes signing a year-long contract? Why does losing something hurt more than finding the same thing feels good? Why does the first price we hear stay in our heads, and why do we keep going with plans we should have stopped long ago?

Why smart people make poor choices, and simple ways to choose better.

Why We Choose Wrong explains, in plain and friendly language, the best-known patterns that behavioral economics has found in human decisions: fast and slow thinking, loss aversion, anchoring, framing, sunk costs, present bias, choice overload, defaults, social proof, overconfidence, confirmation bias, mental accounting and the effect of hunger, tiredness and strong feelings. Each chapter begins with an everyday moment of choice, explains the idea behind it, shows it in the lives of people of different ages and situations, and ends with practical steps, a short exercise and answers to common questions.

The book is honest about the science. It says where findings are strong, where their size varies, and where famous results did not hold up when other researchers tested them again. It offers no tricks and no promises, only clear ideas and simple habits that help you notice your own patterns and design better choices for yourself.

Why We Choose Wrong
Introduction: The Choices We Make Without Noticing
How to Use This Book
Chapter 1: Why Smart People Make Poor Choices
1. An Ordinary Saturday
2. The Perfect Chooser Who Never Existed
3. Good Enough: The Limits of Time and Attention
4. Mistakes With a Pattern
5. Three Lives, Three Patterns
6. How Strong Is the Evidence?
7. Practical Steps
8. A Short Exercise: A Map of Your Week's Decisions
9. Questions People Often Ask
10. Chapter Summary
Chapter 2: Fast Thinking and Slow Thinking
1. A Puzzle in the Break Room
2. Two Speeds of the Mind
3. What the Fast Mind Does Well
4. Where the Fast Mind Slips
5. A Useful Picture, Not a Map of the Brain
6. Three Moments of Fast Thinking
7. When to Wake the Slow Mind
8. Practical Steps
9. A Short Exercise: Catching the First Answer
10. Questions People Often Ask
11. Chapter Summary
Chapter 3: Why Losing Hurts More Than Winning Feels Good
1. Found and Lost
2. Losses Loom Larger
3. Why What Is Ours Feels Special
4. How Big Is the Effect?
5. Three People Holding On
6. How Loss Aversion Is Used on Us
7. Practical Steps
8. A Short Exercise: The Box in the Cupboard
9. Questions People Often Ask
10. Chapter Summary

Chapter 4: The First Number You Hear
1. A Vase at the Weekend Market
2. What an Anchor Does
3. Why the Mind Holds On
4. Where Anchors Hide
5. Experts Are Not Immune
6. Four Lives and Their Anchors
7. Practical Steps
8. When Anchors Help
9. A Short Exercise: Your Own Number First
10. Questions People Often Ask
11. Chapter Summary
Chapter 5: Same Facts, Different Words
1. Two Yoghurts on a Shelf
2. The Classic Experiment
3. Three Kinds of Frames
4. How Big Are Framing Effects?
5. Numbers That Mislead Without Lying
6. Frames in Three Lives
7. The Frames We Use on Ourselves
8. Practical Steps
9. A Short Exercise: Two Ways to Tell It
10. Questions People Often Ask
11. Chapter Summary
Chapter 6: Why We Keep Going When We Should Stop
1. Two Hours Into a Bad Film
2. What a Sunk Cost Is
3. Why Stopping Feels So Hard
4. When Keeping Going Is Wise
5. Three Lives, Three Decisions
6. When Groups Cannot Stop
7. Practical Steps
8. A Gentle Word About Regret
9. A Short Exercise: The Two-Column Review
10. Questions People Often Ask
11. Chapter Summary
Chapter 7: The Pull of Now
1. Tomorrow, Definitely Tomorrow
2. Present Bias
3. The Stranger Called Your Future Self
4. Waiting for the Second Treat
5. Three Lives and the Pull of Now
6. Why "Just Try Harder" Rarely Works
7. Practical Steps
8. Kindness to Your Present Self
9. A Short Exercise: A Letter From Next Year
10. Questions People Often Ask
11. Chapter Summary
Chapter 8: When Too Many Options Wear Us Out
1. Forty-Five Minutes of Scrolling
2. The Jam Table
3. What Later Research Found
4. Why Many Options Can Be Tiring
5. Maximizers and Satisficers
6. Three Lives Among Many Options
7. More Choice Can Be Good
8. Practical Steps
9. A Short Exercise: The Good Enough List
10. Questions People Often Ask
11. Chapter Summary
Chapter 9: The Quiet Power of Defaults
1. The Form on the First Day
2. What Happens If You Do Nothing
3. Why Defaults Stick
4. Nudges: Arranging Choices on Purpose
5. How Strong Are Nudges, Really?
6. When Defaults Work Against Us
7. Three Lives and Their Defaults
8. Setting Your Own Defaults
9. Practical Steps
10. A Short Exercise: The Default Audit
11. Questions People Often Ask
12. Chapter Summary
Chapter 10: Following the Crowd
1. Two Food Stalls
2. Social Proof
3. The Lines on the Card
4. What Most People Do
5. When the Crowd Is Wise, and When It Is Not
6. Three Lives in the Crowd
7. The Courage to Be First
8. Practical Steps
9. A Short Exercise: Independent First
10. Questions People Often Ask
11. Chapter Summary
Chapter 11: Too Sure of Ourselves
1. One Weekend, Five Weekends
2. Three Kinds of Overconfidence
3. The Planning Fallacy
4. The Inside View and the Outside View
5. Looking Back With Too Much Certainty
6. The Good Side of Confidence
7. Three Lives and Their Plans
8. Practical Steps
9. A Short Exercise: The Prediction Diary
10. Questions People Often Ask
11. Chapter Summary
Chapter 12: Seeing What We Expect to See
1. The Neighbour Who Did Not Wave
2. Confirmation Bias
3. Why We Protect Our Beliefs
4. The Availability Heuristic
5. The Halo Effect
6. Three Lives and What They Noticed
7. Changing Your Mind Well
8. Practical Steps
9. A Short Exercise: The Other Side Notebook
10. Questions People Often Ask
11. Chapter Summary
Chapter 13: Money in Mental Boxes
1. The Envelope From Grandmother
2. Mental Accounting
3. How the Boxes Shape Spending
4. When Boxes Help
5. Three Lives and Their Boxes
6. The Whole Picture
7. Time Has Boxes Too
8. Practical Steps
9. A Short Exercise: One Month, One Page
10. Questions People Often Ask
11. Chapter Summary
Chapter 14: When Feelings, Hunger and Tiredness Decide
1. The Message at Eleven at Night
2. Hot States and Cold States
3. Hunger, Shopping and Projection
4. How Emotions Change What We Choose
5. Is Willpower a Tank That Runs Empty?
6. Three Lives and Their States
7. The Pause
8. Practical Steps
9. A Short Exercise: The State Diary
10. Questions People Often Ask
11. Chapter Summary
Chapter 15: Designing Better Choices for Yourself
1. A Decision at the Kitchen Table
2. You Are Your Own Choice Architect
3. A Routine for Important Decisions
4. Imagining Failure in Advance
5. Checking Your State and Your Reasons
6. Separating Decisions From Outcomes
7. Three More Lives, Three Designs
8. The Patterns of This Book, in One Place
9. Practical Steps
10. A Short Exercise: Your Personal Decision Card
11. Questions People Often Ask
12. Chapter Summary
Closing Words
Key Terms in This Book
A Note on the Evidence
About the Author
Colophon

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