“System 1 continuously generates suggestions for System 2: impressions, intuitions, intentions, and feelings.”
— and —
“If endorsed by System 2, impressions and intuitions turn into beliefs, and impulses turn into voluntary actions.”
Found these interesting statements from Kahneman about the relationship between Type 1 and Type 2 processing ‘agents’ in the brain (which he calls System 1 & 2, but other research prefers ‘types’).
It’s noted that type 1 (quick, autonomous and associative processing) is always active, generating impressions and feelings effortlessly.
It generates intuitions, impulses and instant assessments (“he looks angry”, “this is risky”, “I like this”) – and it’s involuntary and automatic.
And all going smoothly, type 2 (conscious reasoning, complex computations and more) adopts the suggestions from type 1 with little or no modification.
E.g. type 1: “he seems trustworthy” is endorsed as “I believe he is trustworthy”.
Kahneman says we “generally believe [our] impressions and act on [our] desires, and that is fine – usually”.
Type 2 processing doesn’t often intervene, except when it runs into difficult, like where System 1 does not offer an explanation.
And of further interest, Kahneman said while it may appear that the type 2 agent is usually in charge (conscious, directed control), it seems to be:
“more of an apologist for the emotions of System 1 than a critic of those emotions–an endorser rather than an enforcer”.
PS. Check out my new YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Safe_As_Pod
SafetyInsights.org 