PsychologyExplain Like I'm 5Intermediate
Psychology of Everyday Decisions, a free psychology course on Tomo

Psychology of Everyday Decisions

Understand the hidden cognitive shortcuts and biases that shape daily choices. Learn how your mind evaluates options, forecasts emotions, and reacts to social pressure so you can make smarter calls.

Like Duolingo, but for Psychology of Everyday Decisions. 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 Outsmarting Automatic Thinking and Mastering Emotional and Social Dynamics. It assumes you already know the basics.

12 bite-size levelsAbout 5 minutes each

Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Pavlov the Puffin, the guide who teaches the Psychology of Everyday Decisions course
Psychology of Everyday Decisions
with Pavlov the Puffin
12
Levels
2
Sections
5
Min/day
What you'll learn

Key ideas in Psychology of Everyday Decisions

  • System 1 replaces a hard target question with an easier heuristic question automatically.
  • The mind rates actual probability based on the cognitive ease of emotional retrieval.
  • Anchoring operates by activating compatible features in associative memory.
  • Selective accessibility primes the brain to look for evidence confirming the anchor.
  • Passive awareness cannot undo automatic semantic priming in associative memory.
  • Breaking an anchor requires actively generating reasons why that number is inappropriate.
  • The peak-end rule averages the emotional climax and the final moment of an event.
  • Retrospective evaluations exhibit duration neglect by ignoring the overall time elapsed.
  • Abandoning an investment forces the mind to close a mental account at a realized deficit.
  • Loss aversion makes booking a certain loss feel twice as painful as seeking potential gains.
  • Defaults convey an implicit institutional endorsement that this choice is standard.
  • Overriding a preset default requires actively expending cognitive effort.
  • Opting out frames the change as a loss or an active personal deviation from the norm.
  • Decision fatigue biases choices toward whichever option requires zero active effort.
  • Repeated trade-offs deplete executive control, favoring passive deferral over action.
  • Fatigued decision-makers accept standard defaults rather than evaluating alternatives.
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 Psychology of Everyday Decisions 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.

How Your Mind Takes Shortcuts

When you guess how often something happens, what tricks your brain the most?

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

Course map

Where Psychology of Everyday Decisions takes you

  1. 1

    Outsmarting Automatic Thinking

    • Countering Cognitive Anchors and Substitution
    • Choice Architecture and Decision Friction
  2. 2

    Mastering Emotional and Social Dynamics

    • De-biasing Affective Forecasting
    • Navigating Social Proof and Collective Distortion

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

How it's taught

You pick the voice

This course
Explain Like I'm 5

Psychology of Everyday Decisions is taught in the Explain Like I'm 5 style: no big words. promise.. 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 Psychology of Everyday Decisions today.

Download Tomo, search Psychology of Everyday Decisions, and play your first lesson in under a minute.