THINKING ABOUT THINKING
It shows how people make judgments based on incomplete and ambiguous information... about cognitive biases... for predictable mental errors caused by simplified information processing strategies. (Heuer Junior) Of the diverse problems that impede accurate intelligence analysis, those inherent in human mental processes are surely among the most important and most diicult to deal with. Intelligence analysis is fundamentally a mental process, but understanding this process is hindered by the lack of conscious awareness of the workings of our own minds. A basic inding of cognitive psychology is that people have no conscious experience of most of what happens in the human mind. Many functions associated with perception, memory, and information processing are conducted prior to and independently of any conscious direction. What appears spontaneously in consciousness is the result of thinking, not the process of thinking. Weaknesses and biases inherent in human thinking processes can be demon...