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…for most people, the cause of a mistake matters.

…people often (but not always) take on risky projects because they are overly optimistic about the odds they face.

…the financial benefits of self-employment are mediocre: given the same qualifications, people achieve higher average returns by selling their skills to employers than by setting out on their own.

…people tend to be overly optimistic about their relative standing on any activity in which they do moderately well.

…the emotional, cognitive, and social factors that support exaggerated optimism are a heady brew, which sometimes leads people to take risks that they would avoid if they knew the odds.

Unfairly imposing losses on people can be risky if the victims are in a position to retaliate.

The power of format creates opportunities for manipulation, which people with an axe to grind know how to exploit.

…people tend to be risk averse in the domain of gains and risk seeking in the domain of losses.

The sunk-cost fallacy keeps people for too long in poor jobs, unhappy marriages, and unpromising research projects.

…people expect to have stronger emotional reactions (including regret) to an outcome that is produced by action than to the same outcome when it is produced by inaction.