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A review by trevan
How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
4.0
An intriguing read, How We Decide delves into the inner workings of the human brain to reveal the reasoning behind the choices we make. I had envisioned this book to be more business related and specific to professional "decisions", but it's far from that. Lehrer tells many interesting stories of people making split decisions in the face of death, and poses many hypothetical questions about situations where the rational brain would decide one thing but the emotional brain would choose another.
The main thing I gathered from the book as a whole is that, when faced with any decision, we must first think how to think. After we decide which mode of thinking is best for the given decision, then we act. There are essentially only two decisions to make when thinking how to think: rational or emotional. Rational decisions generally should be made when weighing the positives/negatives on a small scale where are less than 4 or 5 choices (like buying a kitchen can opener). Emotional decisions should be made when there are many options (like buying a car). This is known as "listening to your gut" and was profound to me to find out how much our brain essentially knows about decisions that we don't realize because we're overshadowing our emotional "gut instinct" with emotions.
Definitely an interesting read, but sometimes a bit bland due to the amount of pure data and research. You'll get to be familiar with the prefrontal cortex area of the brain, that's for sure...
The main thing I gathered from the book as a whole is that, when faced with any decision, we must first think how to think. After we decide which mode of thinking is best for the given decision, then we act. There are essentially only two decisions to make when thinking how to think: rational or emotional. Rational decisions generally should be made when weighing the positives/negatives on a small scale where are less than 4 or 5 choices (like buying a kitchen can opener). Emotional decisions should be made when there are many options (like buying a car). This is known as "listening to your gut" and was profound to me to find out how much our brain essentially knows about decisions that we don't realize because we're overshadowing our emotional "gut instinct" with emotions.
Definitely an interesting read, but sometimes a bit bland due to the amount of pure data and research. You'll get to be familiar with the prefrontal cortex area of the brain, that's for sure...