Cognitive Science

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of the mind and intelligence — drawing on neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, computer science, and anthropology. Key areas: attention (selective focus), memory (encoding, storage, retrieval), language (Chomsky's Universal Grammar; the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis — does language shape thought?), decision-making (Daniel Kahneman's System 1/System 2 thinking), and consciousness. Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) popularized the distinction between fast, intuitive System 1 thinking (automatic, emotional, prone to biases) and slow, deliberate System 2 thinking (rational, effortful, accurate). Cognitive biases — systematic errors in thinking (confirmation bias, anchoring, availability heuristic, sunk cost fallacy) — affect everyone's reasoning and have enormous implications for economics, medicine, law, and policy. The field of behavioral economics (Kahneman, Thaler — both Nobel laureates) applies cognitive science to economic behavior.