Book description
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 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 stocks and shares, 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. In The Decisive Moment, 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 world's most interesting
'deciders' - from airline pilots, world famous sportsmen and hedge fund
investors to serial killers, politicians and poker players. He shows how
the fluctuations of a few dopamine neurons saved a battleship during the
Persian Gulf War, and how the fevered activity of a single brain region
led to the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Lehrer's 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?
