How We DecideThe first book to use the unexpected discoveries of neuroscience to help us make the best decisions Since Plato, philosophers have described the decision-making process as either rational or emotional: we carefully deliberate, or we “blink” and go with our gut. But as scientists break open the mind’s black box with the latest tools of neuroscience, they’re discovering that this is not how the mind works. Our best decisions are a finely tuned blend of both feeling and reason—and the precise mix depends on the situation. When buying a house, for example, it’s best to let our unconscious mull over the many variables. But when we’re picking a stock, intuition often leads us astray. The trick is to determine when to use the different parts of the brain, and to do this, we need to think harder (and smarter) about how we think. Jonah Lehrer arms us with the tools we need, drawing on cutting-edge research as well as the real-world experiences of a wide range of “deciders”—from airplane pilots and hedge fund investors to serial killers and poker players. Lehrer shows how people are taking advantage of the new science to make better television shows, win more football games, and improve military intelligence. His goal is to answer two questions that are of interest to just about anyone, from CEOs to firefighters: How does the human mind make decisions? And how can we make those decisions better? |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - Rascalstar - LibraryThingAs Ginger Campbell of Brain Science Podcast would say, this book is for everyone who has a brain. It's easy to read and provides many real life examples and situations, exposing what we know now about ... Read full review
LibraryThing Review
User Review - MartinBodek - LibraryThing50 pages into this book and I suddenly realized why I liked it so much - his style is almost exactly that of my favorite non-fiction writer: Malcolm Gladwell. The book covers a lot of Gladwell's ... Read full review
Contents
1 The Quarterback in the Pocket | 1 |
2 The Predictions of Dopamine | 28 |
3 Fooled by a Feeling | 57 |
4 The Uses of Reason | 93 |
5 Choking on Thought | 133 |
6 The Moral Mind | 167 |
7 The Brain Is an Argument | 196 |
8 The Poker Hand | 219 |
Coda | 251 |
End Matter | 261 |
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Common terms and phrases
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Bibliographic information
| Title | How We Decide |
| Author | Jonah Lehrer |
| Edition | reprint |
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010 |
| ISBN | 0547347480, 9780547347486 |
| Length | 256 pages |
| Subjects | › Business & Economics / Decision-Making & Problem Solving |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |