How we decide
by Jonah Lehrer · first published 2009
63% recommend37% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Accessible neuroscience look at how emotion and logic shape decisions, with many real-world examples. It is well written and useful for anyone seeking insight into everyday choices and behavior.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
How We Decide provides insight into how people make decisions. The book approaches this question from a scientific perspective, and uses real world examples to help the reader understand.
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…article. The author, Jonah Lehrer, has an amazing book on behavior economics that I considering a must read for anyone trying to sell anything. It's been incredibly valuable to us at Wistia. It's called "How We Decide". Jonah always finds incredibly interesting ways to pull apart behavior from a neurological perspective. http://www.amazon.com/How-We-Decide-Jonah-Lehrer/dp/05472479...
on “Bother Me, I'm Thinking ” ↗…about what we will want in the future and decisions about what we want now are processed in different areas of the brain. The bug is in our brain's software, not in the Netflix algorithm. Lehrer's book "How We Decide" is a really interesting look at many of these types of bugs in our mind. I highly recommend it.
on “The fallacy in the Netflix algorithm” ↗Btw, I highly recommend the author's (Jonah Lehrer) book "How We Decide". It's well written and informative.
on “The Tiger Woods Effect: Paralysis by Analysis” ↗(The links here bring you to my notes from each book, and the ISBN number for each so you can find it easily at your favorite library/store/whatever.) How We Decide - by Jonah Lehrer: Brilliant book with one clear message: our emotional brain is faster and usually smarter than our logical brain. Our emotions are trained by years of logic and experience, retaining…
on “Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?” ↗If you're interested in stuff like this, check out 'How we decide' by Jonah Lehrer : http://www.amazon.com/How-We-Decide-Jonah-Lehrer/dp/06186201... I'm reading it now, and it's an amazingly insightful book, in that it manages to at once explain the workings of the…
on “Humans are not automatically strategic” ↗…is a poor metaphor. If you look at any neuroscience research in the area, you soon see that that good decision making is completely impossible without both, together. I highly recommend Jonah Lehrer's "How We Decide" as a highly readable book on the subject. Following emotional cues is not "short-circuiting the decision-making process", and is not in any way "fundamentally deceptive". EDIT: Not to mention that…
on “Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’” ↗This an excellent short explanation for group decision dynamics. If this subject is of interest to you I strongly recommend: How We Decide https://www.amazon.com/How-We-Decide-Jonah-Lehrer/dp/0547247... This subject, at least to me, calls into question the behavior associated with recent events. The subjects of police brutality, civil rights,…
on “The Contagion of Concern: Game theory of how anxiety spreads” ↗"How We Decide" from John Lehrer
on “Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011” ↗This jives with some of the studies mentioned in the excellent book "How We Decide". Basically, if you want to get good at something, relentlessly question your methods, benchmark yourself, and try to get better. I become a teacher of sorts about a year ago. I teach my boss's kid how…
on “What makes a great teacher?” ↗"Buyology" and "How We Decide" are both excellent books on the shortcuts the human mind takes when making decisions or evaluating the environment in general. Also, Nat Geo has a fun show called "Brain Games" along the same vein.…
on “A Magician’s Best Trick: Revealing a Basic Human Bias” ↗I liked Delivering Happiness too - a great book. For me "How We Decide" has been the best book of the year as it gave me quite some insights into human brain works and how to deal with different situations.
on “Ask HN: Best book you read in 2010 and briefly why” ↗Exactly! I was reading this book " How We Decide" (must read by the way) and one of the examples was this distinction between two groups of students who scored well in an easy test. One group was told, "Wow you must be smart" and the other "Wow, you…
on “CEOs vouch for Waiter Rule: Watch how people treat staff” ↗Also Jonah Lehrer, author of pop science books Imagine and How We Decide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah_Lehrer
on “Harvard dishonesty expert accused of dishonesty” ↗I just finished reading "How We Decide" by Jonah Lehrer. It discusses a number of similar experiments where scientists observe what parts of the brain are activated during different types of situations. According to some experiments dealing…
on “Rejection massively reduces IQ ” ↗Jonah Lehrer dives deep into this his book, How We Decide. In an interview on the question, he answered - "For the first time in human history, we can look inside our brain and see how we think. It turns out that we weren't engineered to be rational or logical…
on “Ask HN: Do you think intuition is as valuable as rational thinking?” ↗