How we decide

Review by Choice Review

In his earlier book, Proust Was a Neuroscientist (2007), writer/editor Lehrer drew on the findings of neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and cognitive studies to shed light on the creative process. Here, using these same sources, the author examines the mind's decision-making ability. Two primary faculties are involved: the rational, logical, planning mechanisms of the prefrontal cortex; and the feelings, hunches, and intuitions orchestrated by the limbic system, dopamine neurons, and other so-called "primitive" elements of the brain. Lehrer's thesis is that although these systems are well suited to some decision tasks, they are ill suited to others and not knowing their respective strengths and weaknesses can lead to errors that are both dangerous and avoidable. His case studies and examples range from the split-second decisions of airline pilots, smoke jumpers, and antiaircraft missile commanders to the lure of slot machines and credit cards for the average person, the strategies of Texas Hold'em poker players, the performance of fifth-graders in New York City schools, and the psychopathology of serial killers. Lehrer explores such concepts as working memory, the moral mind, rational choice theory, loss aversion and negativity bias, the framing effect, and attention deficit disorder. This clear, well-written book belongs in every collection. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. R. M. Davis emeritus, Albion College

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

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Review by New York Times Review

An exploration of the brain s mechanics in the process of making decisions, with illustrative examples. MOST great stories revolve around decisions: the snap brilliance of Captain Sullenberger choosing to land his plane in the Hudson, or Dorothea's prolonged, agonizing choice of whether to forsake her husband for true love in "Middlemarch," or your parents' oft-told account of the day they decided to marry. There is something powerfully human in the act of deliberately choosing a path; other animals have drives, emotions, problem-solving skills, but none rival our capacity for self-consciously weighing all the options, imagining potential outcomes and arriving at a choice. As George W. Bush might have put it, we are a species of deciders. Jonah Lehrer's engaging new book, "How We Decide," puts our decisionmaking skills under the microscope. At 27, Lehrer is something of a popular science prodigy, having already published, in 2007, "Proust Was a Neuroscientist," which argued that great artists anticipated the insights of modern brain science. "How We Decide" tilts more decisively in the thinking-person's self-help direction, promising not only to explain how we decide, but also to help us do it better. This is not exactly uncharted terrain. Early on, Lehrer introduces his main theme: "Sometimes we need to reason through our options and carefully analyze the possibilities. And sometimes we need to listen to our emotions." Most readers at this point, I suspect, will naturally think of Malcolm Gladwell's mega-best-seller "Blink," which explored a similar boundary between reason and intuition. But a key difference between the two books quickly emerges: Gladwell's book took an external vantage point on its subject, drawing largely on observations from psychology and sociology, while Lehrer's is an inside job, zooming in on the inner workings of the brain. We learn about the nucleus accumbens, spindle cells and the prefrontal cortex. Many of the experiments he recounts involve fMRI scans of brains in the process of making decisions (which, for the record, is a little like making a decision with your head stuck in a spinning clothes dryer). Explaining decision-making on the scale of neurons makes for a challenging task, but Lehrer handles it with confidence and grace. As an introduction to the cognitive struggle between the brain's "executive" rational centers and its more intuitive regions, "How We Decide" succeeds with great panache, though readers of other popular books on this subject (Antonio Damasio's "Descartes' Error" and Daniel Goleman's "Emotional Intelligence," for example) will be familiar with a number of the classic experiments Lehrer describes. In part, the neuroscience medicine goes down so smoothly because Lehrer introduces each concept with an arresting anecdote from a diverse array of fields: Tom Brady making a memorable pass in the 2002 Super Bowl; a Stanford particle physicist nearly winning the World Series of Poker; Al Haynes, the Sully of 1989, making a remarkable crash landing of a jetliner whose hydraulic system had failed entirely. The anecdotes are, without exception, well chosen and artfully told, but there is something in the structure of this kind of nonfiction writing that is starting to feel a little formulaic: startling mininarrative, followed by an explanation of What the Science Can Teach Us, capped by a return to the original narrative with some crucial mystery unlocked. (I say this as someone who has used the device in my own books.) It may well be that this is simply the most effective way to convey these kinds of ideas to a lay audience. But part of me hopes that a writer as gifted as Lehrer will help push us into some new formal technique in future efforts. A book that promises to improve our decision-making, however, should be judged on more than its narrative devices. The central question with one like "How We Decide" is, Do you get something out of it? It's fascinating to learn about the reward circuitry of the brain, but on some basic level, we know that we seek out rewards and feel depressed when we don't get them. Learning that this process is modulated by the neurochemical dopamine doesn't, on the face of it, help us in our pursuit of those rewards. But Lehrer's insights, fortunately, go well beyond the name-that-neurotransmitter trivia. He's insightful and engaging on "negativity bias" and "loss aversion": the propensity of the human brain to register bad news more strongly than good. (Negativity bias, for instance, explains why in the average marital relationship it takes five compliments to make up for a single cutting remark.) He has a wonderful section on creativity and working memory, which ends with the lovely epigram: "From the perspective of the brain, new ideas are merely several old thoughts that occur at the exact same time." FOR this reader, though, the most provocative sections of "How We Decide" involve sociopolitical issues more than personal ones. A recurring theme is how certain innate bugs in our decision-making apparatus led to our current financial crisis. We may be heavily "loss averse," but only in the short run: a long list of experiments have shown that completely distinct parts of the brain are activated if the potential loss lies in the mid- or long-term future, making us more susceptible to the siren song of the LCD TV or McMansion. So many of the financial schemes that led us astray over the past decade exploit precisely these defects in our decision-making tools. "Paying with plastic fundamentally changes the way we spend money, altering the calculus of our financial decisions," Lehrer writes. "When you buy something with cash, the purchase involves an actual loss - your wallet is literally lighter. Credit cards, however, make the transaction abstract." Proust may have been a neuroscientist, but so were the subprime mortgage lenders. These are scientific insights that should be instructive to us as individuals, of course, but they also have great import to us as a society, as we think about the new forms of regulation that are going to have to be invented in the coming years to prevent another crisis. "How We Decide" has one odd omission. For a book that plumbs the mysteries of the emotional brain, it has almost nothing to say about the decisions that most of us would conventionally describe as "emotional." We hear about aviation heroism and poker strategies, and we hear numerous accounts of buying consumer goods. But there's barely a mention of a whole class of choices that are suffused with emotion: whether to break up with a long-standing partner, or to scold a disobedient child, or to let an old friend know that you feel betrayed by something he's said. For most of us, I suspect, these are the decisions that matter the most in our lives, and yet "How We Decide" is strangely silent about them. Perhaps Jonah Lehrer will use his considerable talents to tackle these most human of decisions in another volume. Until then, we've still got "Middlemarch." Proust may well have been a neuroscientist, but so were the subprime mortgage lenders. Steven Johnson's most recent book is "The Invention of Air: A Story of Faith, Science, Revolution, and the Birth of America."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]

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Review by Booklist Review

Various arenas such as athletics, finance, or combat illustrate Lehrer's popular presentation of the neurobiology of decision making. Noting the traditional distinction between reason and emotion, Lehrer (Proust Was a Neuroscientist, 2007) readably impresses the point that emotion triggers quick decisions where time is critical, such as whether a quarterback should throw a pass or whether an officer should fire a missile at an unidentified target. Their real-life stories of how a good feeling committed them to action leads Lehrer into the anatomical substrates in play. Touching on the brain's outer layer, the cortex, the neurochemical dopamine, and regions such as the amygdala, Lehrer describes what cognitive scientists think happens at a neural level. What about situations where time is less pressing and seems to allow rationality space to operate? Lehrer relates reason's limitations, which bamboozle users of credit cards, patrons of casinos, and players of the TV game show Deal or No Deal. Despair not, however, that Lehrer chains people to their emotions: his tips about understanding their role in decisions provide reassuring conclusions.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2009 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

With a casual style and frequent use of anecdotes, this pop neuropsychological book imparts complex information in easy-to-take audio doses. The book explains how the conscious, rational part of the brain and the pattern-seeking "instinctual" system participate in decision making-and which system is most reliable in various situations. David Colacci has an engaging, relaxed delivery that enhances the book's accessibility. The only jarring note: Colacci provides different voices for the people interviewed in the text, which feels odd given that Lehrer, not Colacci, did the interviewing, and Colacci could have no idea what these real people actually sound like. However, this is the most minor quibble with this intriguing peek into the complex mystery of our own mental functioning. A Houghton Mifflin hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 24). (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Rhodes scholar Lehrer (Proust Was a Neuroscientist) takes listeners on a journey through how the human brain makes decisions, exploring factors that influence decision-making and combining medical diagnostic data with real-life examples. While Malcolm Gladwell's Blink discussed from afar how reason and intuition influence snap decisions, Lehrer's book digs more deeply into new research from the fields of psychology, sociology, and neuroscience to provide an erudite, scholarly view of the inner workings of the human brain as it makes decisions. Audie Award nominee David Colacci's (The Suspect) evenhanded delivery will help listeners of this often technical material stay focused. For interested lay readers as well as students and professors of psychology/psychiatry. [Audio clip available through brillianceaudio.com.-Ed.]-Dale Farris, Groves, TX (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A Gladwellian exploration of the brain's inner workings during the decision-making process. Given the recent deluge of pop-science books, readers may find it difficult to make a selection. Enter Seed and Scientific American contributor Lehrer's second book (Proust Was a Neuroscientist, 2007), a laudable attempt to help people understand how their brains make decisionsand hopefully, improve the process. On the former point, the book is a treasure trove of scientific data, clinical research and real-life examples of decision-making processes. On the latter point, however, it leaves something to be desired. At its best, Lehrer's narrative is a compelling mixture of recently discovered facts and intriguing theories about the differences between the rational and emotional centers of the brain. The author's research indicates, somewhat counterintuitively, that the emotional areas are the primary drivers when making complex decisions that involve multiple variables, such as purchasing a house or car. Lehrer also looks at anecdotal evidence of those theories in action, ranging from the incredible efforts of a pilot to land a plane after its hydraulic systems failed (a prime example of using the reason center of the brain to conquer fear and take action) to clinical experiments involving tests to see how long unsupervised four-year-olds can resist a marshmallow (not very, in most cases). In its most effective chapters, the book ties research to practical applications, such as a 401(k) program designed to overcome our irrational need for immediate reward (to the detriment of long-term saving) by deferring the start of the program until a few months after employment begins. Other sections lack the same practical applicability, and the vague generality of much of the decision-making advice feels more therapist than scientist. May not facilitate great improvements in decision-making, but the Cliff Clavins of the world will exult in the factoids and anecdotes. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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The quick decisions made by a quarterback on a football field provide a window into the inner workings of the brain. In the space of a few frenetic seconds, before a linebacker crushes him into the ground, an NFL quarterback has to make a series of hard choices. The pocket is collapsing around him -- the pocket begins to collapse before it exists -- but he can't flinch or wince. His eyes must stay focused downfield, looking for some meaningful sign amid the action, an open man on a crowded field. Throwing the ball is the easy part. These passing decisions happen so fast they don't even seem like decisions. We are used to seeing football on television, captured by the cameras far above the grassy stage. From this distant perspective, the players appear to be moving in some sort of violent ballet; the sport looks exquisitely choreographed. You can see the receivers spread the zone and watch the pocket slowly disintegrate. It's easy to detect the weak spots of the defense and find the target with man-on-man coverage. You can tell which linebackers bought the play-action fake and see the cornerback racing in on the blitz. When you watch the game from this omniscient angle -- coaches call it "the eye in the sky" -- it appears as if the quarterback is simply following orders, as if he knows where he is going to throw the ball before the play begins. But this view of the game is deeply misleading. After the ball is snapped, the ordered sequence of neat X's and O's that fill the spiral-bound playbook degenerates into a street brawl. There's a symphony of grunts and groans and the meaty echoes of fat men hitting hard ground. Receivers get pushed off their routes, passing angles get cut off, and inside blitzes derail the best intentions. The offensive line is an unpredictable wrestling match. Before the quarterback can make an effective decision, he needs to assimilate all of this new information and be aware of the approximate location of every player on the field. The savage chaos of the game, the way every play is a mixture of careful planning and risky improvisation, is what makes the job of an NFL quarterback so difficult. Even while he's immersed in the violence -- the defensive line clawing at his body -- the quarterback has to stand still and concentrate. He needs to look past the mayhem and make sense of all the moving bodies. Where is his receiver going? Will the safety break toward the ball? Is the linebacker going to drop back into coverage? Did his tight end pick up the blitz? Before a pass can be thrown -- before the open man can be found -- all of these questions need to be answered. Each pass is really a guess, a hypothesis launched into the air, but the best quarterbacks find ways to make better guesses. What separates Tom Brady and Joe Montana and Peyton Manning and John Elway and the other great quarterbacks of the modern NFL era from the rest is their ability to find the right receiver at the right time. (The Patriots like to pass out of a five-wide formation, which means that Brady often checks off five different receivers before he decides where to throw the ball.) No other team sport is so dependent on the judgment of a single player. NFL scouts take the decision-making skills of quarterbacks very seriously. The league requires that every player in the draft take the Wonderlic intelligence test, which is essentially a shorter version of the standard IQ test. The test is twelve minutes long and consists of fifty questions that get progressively harder as the test goes along. Here's an example of an easy Wonderlic question: "Paper sells for 21 cents per pad. What will four pads cost?" And here's a hard Wonderlic question: "Three individuals form a partnership and agree to divide the profits equally. X invests $9,000, Y invests $7,000, Z invests $4,000. If the profits are $4,800, how much less does X receive than if the profits were divided in proportion to the amount invested?" The underlying thesis of the Wonderlic test is that players who are better at math and logic problems will make better decisions in the pocket. At first glance, this seems like a reasonable assumption. No other position in sports requires such extreme cognitive talents. Successful quarterbacks need to memorize hundreds of offensive plays and dozens of different defensive formations. They need to spend hours studying game tape of their opponents and be able to put that knowledge to use on the field. In many instances, quarterbacks are even responsible for changing plays at the line of scrimmage. They are like coaches with shoulder pads. As a result, an NFL team starts to get nervous when a quarterback's score on the Wonderlic test is too far below the average for the position. For quarterbacks, the average is 25. (In comparison, the average score for computer programmers is 28. Janitors, on average, score 15, as do running backs.) Vince Young, the star quarterback from the University of Texas, reportedly scored a 6 on the test, which led many teams to publicly question his ability to succeed in the NFL. But Young ended up excelling in the pros. And he isn't the only quarterback who achieved success despite a poor Wonderlic score. Dan Marino scored 14. Brett Favre's Wonderlic score was 22, and Randall Cunningham and Terry Bradshaw both scored 15. All of these quarterbacks have been or will be inducted into the Hall of Fame. (In recent years, Favre has surpassed many of the passing records once held by Marino, such as most passing yards and touchdowns in a career.) Furthermore, several quarterbacks with unusually high Wonderlic scores -- players like Alex Smith and Matt Leinart, who both scored above 35 on the test and were top-ten picks in the 2005 NFL draft -- have struggled in the NFL, largely because they make poor decisions on the field. The reason there is virtually no correlation between the results of the Wonderlic and the success of quarterbacks in the NFL is that finding the open man involves a very different set of decision-making skills than solving an algebra problem. While quarterbacks need to grapple with complexity -- the typical offensive playbook is several inches thick -- they don't make sense of the football field the way they make sense of questions on a multiple-choice exam. The Wonderlic measures a specific kind of thought process, but the best quarterbacks don't think in the pocket. There isn't time. Take that pass to Troy Brown. Brady's decision depended on a long list of variables. He needed to know that the linebacker wouldn't fall back into coverage and that there were no cornerbacks in the area waiting for an interception. After that, he had to calculate the ideal place to hit Brown with the ball so that Brown would have plenty of room to run after the catch. Then he needed to figure out how to make a throw without hitting the defensive lineman blocking his passing lane. If Brady were forced to consciously analyze this decision -- if he treated it like a question on the Wonderlic test -- then every pass would require a lot of complicated trigonometry as he computed his passing angles on the plane of the football field. But how can you contemplate the math when five angry linemen are running straight at you? The answer is simple: you can't. If a quarterback hesitates for even a split second, he is going to get sacked. So how does a quarterback do it? How does he make a decision? It's like asking a baseball player why he decided to swing the bat at a particular pitch: the velocity of the game makes thought impossible. Brady can afford to give each receiver only a split second of attention before he has to move on to the next. As soon as he glances at a body in motion, he must immediately decide if that body will be open a few seconds in the future. As a result, a quarterback is forced to evaluate each of his passing alternatives without knowing how he's evaluating them. Brady chooses a target without understanding why exactly he's settled on that target. Did he pass to Troy Brown with twenty-nine seconds remaining in the Super Bowl because the middle linebacker had ceded too much space, or because the cornerbacks were following the other receivers downfield and leaving a small gap in the center of the field? Or did Brady settle on Brown because all the other passing options were tightly covered, and he knew that he needed a long completion? The quarterback can't answer these questions. It's as if his mind is making decisions without him. Even quarterbacks are mystified by their talents. "I don't know how I know where to pass," Brady says. "There are no firm rules. You just feel like you're going to the right place . . . And that's where I throw it." Excerpted from How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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