The great majority of medical diagnoses are made using automatic, fast, and frugal cognitive
processes; they are correct most of the time. This analytic review concerns the exceptions:
the times when these cognitive processes fail and the final diagnosis is wrong. We argue
that physicians in general underappreciate the likelihood that their diagnoses are incorrect
and that this tendency to overconfidence is related to both intrinsic and systematically
reinforced factors. Given that physicians overall are highly dedicated and well-intentioned …