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How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer

Do you make decisions with your head or your heart? As identified by Jung, thinking and feeling are two distinct modes of functioning and, according to Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide, both have their place in the decision-making process.

Conventional wisdom has long held that rational reasoning is superior to emotion; after all it’s the ability to reason that differentiates us from our fellow creatures. Plato likened the emotions to powerful but wild horses that needed to be controlled by a charioteer, the logical mind. However, highly successful people such as Donald Trump often attribute successful decisions to ‘gut’ feeling.

How We Decide takes us through numerous entertaining case studies from quarterbacks, through aircraft system failure, to playing poker that demonstrate the strengths and flaws of each mode. For example, despite the enormous potential of the human brain, the conscious mind can hold surprisingly few variables at one time (estimates range from 4 to 9).

Selecting the right tool for the job (ie emotion or reason) can be paradoxical. Simple tasks with few variables (like buying a hairbrush) are best handled with reason as are novel situations requiring innovative solutions. For more complex multi-variable problems like choosing a house you should listen to your gut (emotions) which has done a lot of the work behind the scenes.

A couple of things about this book leave one somewhat uneasy.

First, the numerous graphic descriptions of animal experiments used to reach some of the conclusions. While vivisection can (possibly) be justified in the development of life-saving treatments it can’t really be condoned just to generate “nice to have” knowledge.

Second, Lehrer writes from the perspective of materialism, ie that physical matter is all there is and that mind is a mere function of brain. As a Spiritualist the reviewer finds this a limited approach; like examining but one of a multitude of possible dimensions, or considering just the car without the driver.

That said, How We Decide is highly readable and offers valuable insight into the various ways we make decisions. By making us aware of these usually invisible inner processes it allows our executive (soul?) to employ the most appropriate means in each circumstance, thus making the most of the great adventure that is life.

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