Twenty-Five Standard Causes of Human Misjudgment

The Twenty-Five Standard Causes of Human Misjudgment is Charlie Munger’s catalog of recurring psychological biases — described in Kyle’s notes as “his famous Twenty-Five Standard Causes of Human Misjudgment.” In the Charlie Munger — Harvard Law School Fiftieth Reunion Address (Talk 5 of Poor Charlie’s Almanack), it appears under the “Psychology-Based Tendencies” heading of the closing additions, sitting alongside Munger’s other problem-solving apparatus: the Two-Track Analysis, the “Ultra-Simple, General Problem-Solving Notions” (decide the big no-brainer questions first, apply numerical fluency, invert, watch for the Lollapalooza effect), and the use of Checklists as “a permanent part of the knowledge system.”

Within that talk it functions as the psychology leg of Munger’s broader argument for Multidisciplinary Thinking — the idea that a person with “a vast set of skills over multiple disciplines… carries multiple tools and, therefore, will limit bad cognitive effects from man-with-a-hammer tendency.” The list itself is the worked inventory of those “bad cognitive effects.”

Context: “The Psychology of Human Misjudgment” is Munger’s best-known standalone talk (Talk Eleven in Poor Charlie’s Almanack), enumerating roughly twenty-five cognitive biases — among them reward/punishment superresponse, liking/loving and disliking/hating tendencies, doubt-avoidance, inconsistency-avoidance, social proof, authority-misinfluence, and the “Lollapalooza” effect of several biases compounding at once. It is a foundational text in the behavioral-finance and mental-models tradition Munger championed.

Where this appears

• Charlie Munger — Harvard Law School Fiftieth Reunion Address — listed under “Psychology-Based Tendencies” in the talk’s closing additions, beside Munger’s checklist and problem-solving notions