[Cognitive traps and clinical decisions].

We are fallible, we have limited computational capabilities, limited access to information, little memory. Moreover, in everyday life, we feel joy, fear, anger, and other emotions that influence our decisions in a little, "calculated" way. Not everyone, however, is also aware that the mistakes we make are often systematic and therefore, in particular circumstances, are foreseeable. Doctors and patients are constantly called upon to make decisions. They need to identify relevant information (for example, the symptoms or outcome of an examination), formulate a judgment (for example a diagnosis), choose an action course among the various possible ones based on one's own preferences (e.g. medication or surgery), so act. The exact size of the medical error is unknown, but probably huge. In fact, the more we investigate and the more we find. Often these mistakes depend on the cognitive process. Any (rational) decision requires, in particular, an assessment of the possible effects of the action it implements; for example how much pleasure or pain it will cause us. In the medical field, too, the principle of informed consent provides that the patient's preferences and values are to guide clinical choices. Yet, not always the preferences that people express before making an experience match with their preferences after living that experience. Some ingenious experiments suggest (in a seemingly paradoxical way) that before a direct experience, people prefer less pain; after that experience they prefer more, but with a better memory.