Why We Do What We Do
Discover the hidden psychological forces driving everyday human choices. Spot your brain's invisible mental shortcuts, decode the power of social pressure, and understand what really guides human behavior.
Like Duolingo, but for Why We Do What We Do. 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 Decoding Your Own Mind and Navigating Social Forces and Behavior. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in Why We Do What We Do
- The brain runs routine daily decisions on an automatic, fast-thinking autopilot to conserve energy
- Deliberate, slow analysis only engages when a situation feels novel, complex, or demanding
- Autopilot relies on learned patterns and quick shortcuts rather than step-by-step logic
- The mind estimates risk by how easily a vivid story or graphic image comes to mind
- Sensational, memorable events feel frequent even when actual statistics show they are extremely rare
- Objective odds rarely match our intuitive, gut-level sense of danger
- Beliefs act as psychological filters that highlight supporting facts and downplay counter-evidence
- Contradicting data gets brushed off as an exception, a fluke, or flawed data
- People selectively gather and recall details that validate what they already suspect
- The human mind experiences the pain of a loss far more intensely than the joy of an equivalent gain
- Stating the exact same reality in terms of 'what you keep' leads to safer, more accepting choices
- The very first price or number encountered anchors our judgment of value
- Later estimates adjust only slightly away from that starting point rather than evaluating true worth independently
- Even irrelevant or deliberately inflated reference points successfully distort what feels reasonable
- Memory does not store fixed video clips; it stores scattered fragments
- Every act of remembering actively reassembles those fragments, leaving room for gaps to be filled in with current beliefs
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives Why We Do What We Do 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.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
When does your brain turn off fast autopilot and start thinking slowly and carefully?
Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.
Where Why We Do What We Do takes you
- 1
Decoding Your Own Mind
- Catching Your Brain's Invisible Shortcuts
- Understanding How Memory Rewrites the Past
- 2
Navigating Social Forces and Behavior
- Seeing Why Situations Overpower Personality
- Shaping Habits with Behavioral Psychology
2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
Tomo is in ChatGPT
Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.
Add Tomo to ChatGPT- What to ask
- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
- What you get
- Quick questions with instant feedback, hearts and stars, ready to play in about a minute.
- Where it goes
- No sign-up to start. Connect your Tomo account and your streak carries on in the app.
You pick the voice
Why We Do What We Do 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 Why We Do What We Do today.
Download Tomo, search Why We Do What We Do, and play your first lesson in under a minute.