How We Decide

How We Decide
by Jonah Lehrer

How We Decide

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Book Summary Information

Author: Jonah Lehrer
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-02-09
ISBN: 0618620117
Number of pages: 302
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co

Book Reviews of How We Decide

Book Review: Interesting but loose with analysis and evidence
Summary: 4 Stars

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)

The topic is interesting: how do decisions get made, not only in the sense of what you think when you decide but in a more sausage-making sense of what goes on behind the scenes in the brain. Lehrer uses real-life examples, simple psychological experiments and very basic neurology to explain some highlights of current thinking about how the mind works and to draw out some practical lessons about decision making. Among the lessons: both reason and emotion are important; each has its strengths and weaknesses, depending on circumstances he outlines. One point he thinks will surprise many is that sometimes feelings are more accurate and helpful than rational analysis.

Some of the stories and experiments are pretty interesting in themselves. Special attention is given to cases where airline pilots have made good or bad decisions saving or costing lives. A harrowing mystery about why a radar blip was correctly intuited to be an enemy missile instead of a friendly plane is solved. Experimental results, some counterintuitive and some not, suggest expert analysis isn't always what it's cracked up to be.

The quality of the evidence and explanations for Lehrer's ideas is only so-so. While he does back up main points with evidence, and his explanations are generally easy to follow, his evidence doesn't always unambiguously support his views, and the explanations aren't always complete enough to give much additional insight over what you probably already know from experience. Sometimes references to neuroscience do no more than give a technical word for what remains an unexplained "black box."

Here are a few details about some issues I had with the book so, if you wish, you can better judge for yourself what kinds of problems it may or may not have for you.

Straw man

Perhaps in an effort to make it seem even more interesting, the basic frame of the book relies on knocking down something of a straw man, that the world has historically devalued emotion as a part of decision making. That's not really nearly as true as the book makes it seem; the emotions have always had strong support within philosophy, religion and popular culture as essential to making good decisions, even as sometimes superior to reason in doing so.

Even Plato, whom Lehrer often uses to stand for the position he's knocking down, wasn't so simple-minded about it. He did think reason should rule over emotions in some general way, but that's not necessarily in conflict with Lehrer's evidence about circumstances in which emotion works better than reason. For one thing, Plato recognized very well that human reason can and often does fail. And even in Plato's chariot metaphor that Lehrer keeps referring to (the soul is a chariot with two horses and a driver), it's the emotions (the horses), and at first particularly the brutish ones (the unruly horse), that draw the soul towards its goal of ideal truths, despite reason (the driver)--a point Lehrer doesn't mention. Plato presents the search for and recognition of the ideal as a matter of passion as much as reason, and no one has written more passionately about it. His ultimate ideal, which Lehrer and some others take to be free of emotion, is probably better understood to involve a purification of emotion (and reason) of crude earthbound elements.

Haziness

Some key concepts aren't very well worked out. Though central to the book, 'emotion' itself is never clearly defined. Lehrer sometimes treats it as what the more primitive parts of the brain contribute to consciousness (e.g. page 18) or as brain activity that isn't part of or subject to conscious reasoning (23, 26). He also treats emotion as what motivates us (18). Those are very different ideas. Lehrer may have in mind only what meets all those criteria, or he may think they amount to the same thing, though he never gives evidence for that.

Rationality isn't defined very well either. Lehrer often seems to have in mind conscious reasoning in general, but at one point he accepts the view that rationality is what's sometimes called economic rationality, the maximization of utility (it's "rational," other things being equal, to prefer $10 to $5) (page 100). Though he speaks of that as a "refinement" of the notion of rationality as logical thinking, the ideas are generally recognized to be fundamentally different.

The relation between reason and emotion is a major theme of the book; the lack of clarity about just what Lehrer thinks they are makes his ideas about their relationship harder to follow. His views seem to be in conflict. He often calls emotions irrational, but he also says they have their own logic (248), which does seem rational. He quotes 18-century philosopher David Hume that reason is "the slave of the passions" (18), and he sometimes seems to agree with what Hume meant, that reason alone cannot move us, it can only serve as a tool to help us reach goals ultimately determined by emotions. On the other hand, Lehrer also speaks of people he says are incapable of emotion (because of brain damage or disease) who nonetheless behave normally in some limited ways, suggesting people can be motivated on some other basis (or, more likely, that those people actually do have some emotions).

Looseness

Lehrer's explanations are not always convincing. He often appears to merely assume things about the content or implications of an example or experiment, and sometimes the evidence isn't correct or correctly explained. The errors aren't always crucial, but they don't inspire confidence. The following are typical examples.

In relating the story of a firefighting tragedy, he first says that the firefighters who didn't follow their leader's instructions might not have heard them (96); later he assumes they failed to follow them because they were panicked (98). (I don't think one would need to not hear or be in a panic to not immediately see the point of stopping running from a fast-approaching fire!)

In arguing that moral decisions are based in emotion rather than reason, Lehrer relies on a couple thought experiments that he ignores the limitations of (and which suggest some limitations in the way he analyzes the relation between reason and emotion). In one, people are asked about an imaginary case of sibling incest in which the usual practical objections to incest are hypothesized not to apply. In the other, one must choose whether to push a fat man onto trolley tracks to stop the trolley from killing five people further down the tracks. The counterintuitive or unrealistic suppositions (e.g. incest without bad consequences, a fat man's weight stopping a trolley), the ways moral rules relate to generality and risk, whether morality properly relates to consequences or duties, among other things, make these experiments controversial, but none of this is considered. (Lehrer's analysis also appears to ignore some of the ways reason and emotion can interact, that reason can help form emotions that persist long after the reasons are forgotten, for example.)

In analyzing examples and experiments involving a choice between a sure thing and a risky alternative, Lehrer generally considers only the amount of monetary value, assuming no value for security or the thrill of risk (or for other "intangibles" like fairness). Contrary to what he assumes, it isn't necessarily irrational to choose an alternative that doesn't maximize the probable return because it's safer or because of a chance for a larger return, depending on a person's circumstances and desires. On the other hand, on one occasion he mysteriously treats choosing a gamble worth $20 (40% chance of getting $50, 60% chance of getting nothing) over a sure $20 as irrationally risky (105-6), seeming to assume security does have decisive value where no reason to think so is given. (The alternatives are both worth $20 if risk and security aren't factored in.)

Lehrer presents an experiment about "stereotype threat" as showing the achievement gap between races in standardized test scores can be explained by the effects of stereotypes (139), but the experiment actually only suggests that such stereotypes may contribute to the gap, not completely explain it. (Lehrer doesn't take into account that the racial groups in the experiment had been statistically matched in ability so that any preexisting achievement gap was artificially erased beforehand.)

In sum

If you're not too picky about details or how secure the arguments are, this is a highly readable introduction. I found the book intermittently engrossing and moderately useful but not as clear or reliable as I'd like.

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Summary of How We Decide

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 lean on which part 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 by Daniel Kahneman, Colin Camerer, and others, 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?

Product Description
The 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?

A Q&A with Jonah Lehrer, Author of How We Decide

Q: Why did you want to write a book about decision-making?

A: It all began with Cheerios. I'm an incredibly indecisive person. There I was, aimlessly wandering the cereal aisle of the supermarket, trying to choose between the apple-cinnamon and honey-nut varieties. It was an embarrassing waste of time and yet it happened to me all the time. Eventually, I decided that enough was enough: I needed to understand what was happening inside my brain as I contemplated my breakfast options. I soon realized, of course, that this new science of decision making had implications far grander than Cheerios.

Q: What are some of those implications?

A: Life is ultimately just a series of decisions, from the mundane (what should I eat for breakfast?) to the profound (what should I do with my life?). Until recently, though, we had no idea how our brain actually made these decisions. As a result, we relied on untested assumptions, such as the assumption that people were rational creatures. (This assumption goes all the way back to Plato and the ancient Greeks.) But now, for the first time in human history, we can look inside our mind and see how we actually think. It turns out that we weren't designed to be rational or logical or even particularly deliberate. Instead, our mind holds a messy network of different areas, many of which are involved with the production of emotion. Whenever we make a decision, the brain is awash in feeling, driven by its inexplicable passions. Even when we try to be reasonable and restrained, these emotional impulses secretly influence our judgment. Of course, by understanding how the human mind makes decisions--and by learning about the decision-making mistakes that we're all vulnerable to--we can learn to make better decisions.

Q: Can neuroscience really teach us how to make better decisions?

A: My answer is a qualified yes. Despite the claims of many self-help books, there is no secret recipe for decision-making, no single strategy that can work in every situation. The real world is just too complex. The thought process that excels in the supermarket won't pass muster in the Oval Office. Therefore natural selection endowed us with a brain that is enthusiastically pluralist. Sometimes we need to reason through our options and carefully analyze the possibilities. And sometimes we need to listen to our emotions and gut instinct. The secret, of course, is knowing when to use different styles of thought--when to trust feelings and when to exercise reason. In my book, I devoted a chapter to looking at the world through the prism of the game of poker and found that, in poker as in life, two broad categories of decisions exist: math problems and mysteries. The first step to making the right decision, then, is accurately diagnosing the problem and figuring out which brain system to rely on. Should we trust our intuition or calculate the probabilities? We always need to be thinking about how we think.

Q: Are you a good poker player?

A: When I was in Vegas, hanging out with some of best poker players in the world, I convinced myself that I'd absorbed the tricks of the trade, that I could use their advice to win some money. So I went to a low-stakes table at the Rio, put $300 on the line, and waited for the chips to accumulate. Instead, I lost all my money in less than an hour. It was an expensive but valuable lesson: there's a big difference between understanding how experts think and being able to think like an expert.

Q: Why write this book now?

A: Neuroscience can seem abstract, a science preoccupied with questions about the cellular details of perception and the memory of fruit flies. In recent years, however, the field has been invaded by some practical thinkers. These scientists want to use the nifty experimental tools of modern neuroscience to explore some of the mysteries of everyday life. How should we choose a cereal? What areas of the brain are triggered in the shopping mall? Why do smart people accumulate credit card debt and take out subprime mortgages? How can you use the brain to explain financial bubbles? For the first time, these incredibly relevant questions have rigorously scientific answers. It all goes back to that classical Greek aphorism: Know thyself. I'd argue that the discoveries of modern neuroscience allow us to know ourselves (and our decisions!) in an entirely new way.

Q: How We Decide draws from the latest research in neuroscience yet also analyzes some crucial moments in the lives of a variety of "deciders," from the football star Tom Brady to a soap opera director. Why did you take this approach?

A: Herbert Simon, the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist, famously compared our mind to a pair of scissors. One blade, he said, represented the brain. The other blade was the specific environment in which our brain was operating. If you want to understand the function of scissors, Simon said, then you have to look at both blades simultaneously. What I wanted to do in How We Decide was venture out of the lab and into the real world so that I could see the scissors at work. I discuss some ingenious experiments in this book, but let's face it: the science lab is a startlingly artificial place. And so, wherever possible, I tried to explore these scientific theories in the context of everyday life. Instead of just writing about hyperbolic discounting and the feebleness of the prefrontal cortex, I spent time with a debt counselor in the Bronx. When I became interested in the anatomy of insight (where do our good ideas come from?) I interviewed a pilot whose epiphany in the cockpit saved hundreds of lives. That's when you really begin to appreciate the power of this new science--when you can use its ideas to explain all sorts of important phenomena, such as the risky behavior of teenagers, the amorality of psychopaths, and the tendency of some athletes to choke under pressure.

Q: What do you do in the cereal aisle now?

A: I was about halfway through writing the book when I got some great advice from a scientist. I was telling him about my Cheerios dilemma when he abruptly interrupted me: "The secret to happiness," he said,"is not wasting time on irrelevant decisions." Of course, this sage advice didn't help me figure out what kind of cereal I actually wanted to eat for breakfast. So I did the only logical thing: I bought my three favorite Cheerios varieties and combined them all in my cereal bowl. Problem solved.

(Photo © Nina Subin, 2008)

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