PsychologyThe BestieBeginner
Everyday Psychology: How the Mind Decides, a free psychology course on Tomo

Everyday Psychology: How the Mind Decides

Notice the invisible shortcuts, blind spots, and social instincts that shape your daily decisions. Learn to catch mental traps in yourself and read the hidden motivations of others.

Like Duolingo, but for Everyday Psychology: How the Mind Decides. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.

A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Inside Your Own Head and Decoding Other People. It starts from scratch.

12 bite-size levelsAbout 5 minutes each

Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Pip the Poodle, the guide who teaches the Everyday Psychology: How the Mind Decides course
Everyday Psychology: How the Mind Decides
with Pip the Poodle
12
Levels
2
Sections
5
Min/day
What you'll learn

Key ideas in Everyday Psychology: How the Mind Decides

  • Fast thinking operates effortlessly on reflex, threat detection, and pattern recognition
  • Slow thinking consumes real mental effort for calculations and weighing unfamiliar tradeoffs
  • Your mind naturally defaults to the fast shortcut unless deliberately provoked to stop
  • Vivid, emotionally charged memories pop into consciousness faster than dry statistics
  • Ease of recall tricks the brain into assuming an event happens far more frequently than it actually does
  • Driving carries a vastly higher statistical fatality rate despite feeling more controllable
  • People naturally avoid risks when outcomes are framed around what they stand to keep or gain
  • People will take erratic gambles to avoid an outcome described as an outright loss
  • The underlying facts and probabilities remain identical regardless of the wording
  • Confirmation bias leads people to actively hunt for proof that supports what they already think
  • Evidence that contradicts existing beliefs is routinely dismissed as flawed, irrelevant, or biased
  • Truly balanced inquiry requires deliberately looking for ways you might be wrong
  • Fast intuitive thinking reacts instantly and emotionally to immediate triggers
  • A brief delay starves the instant reflex of immediate action and hands control over to slow, rational deliberation
  • Deliberate pauses allow you to check for blind spots before committing to an answer
  • A sensory or emotional cue triggers the routine automatically
Why not just Google it

You've tried the other tabs

Wikipedia

Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.

YouTube

You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.

ChatGPT

One answer, then back to scrolling.

Online courses

Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.

Tomo gives Everyday Psychology: How the Mind Decides the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.

Try a question

Here's what playing it feels like

A real question from this course. Take your best guess.

Two Speeds of Thought

When does your brain shift into slow thinking?

Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.

Course map

Where Everyday Psychology: How the Mind Decides takes you

  1. 1

    Inside Your Own Head

    • Catching Your Mind's Quick Shortcuts
    • Untangling Habits and Motivation
  2. 2

    Decoding Other People

    • Seeing Past Interpersonal Blind Spots
    • Resisting the Pull of the Group

2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.

New

Tomo is in ChatGPT

Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.

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How it's taught

You pick the voice

This course
The Bestie

Everyday Psychology: How the Mind Decides is taught in the Bestie style: your friend who just gets it. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.

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Start free

Start Everyday Psychology: How the Mind Decides today.

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