Mental Models: How To Reason Better & Be Less Irrational

Human reason is a puzzling ability. As a species, we’ve invented logic, mathematics, science and philosophy. Yet we suffer from a list of cognitive biases so long that an entire Wikipedia page is devoted to categorizing them.

So which is it: are we excellent at reasoning or incurably irrational?

Psychologist Philip Johnson-Laird has spent his career working out the answer. His theory of mental models explains how we have the ability to reason correctly — and also why we frequently fail to do so.