Another Book Review (#3)

The book is called How We Decide, written by Jonah Lehrer. I lost count of how many people asked me, while reading, "so how did you decide to read the book? hehe." Grow some originality. The topic was fascinating, if the title became a bit of a joke. Following are some of the finer points.

For most of human history, reason has been considered superior to emotion. Science has now shown this to be untrue: emotion is necessary for reasoning and decision-making. People who experience damage to the orbitofrontal cortex (the part of the brain most responsible for our emotions) have an inability to make decisions. This is, in fact, completely false. "From the perspective of the human brain, Homo sapiens is the most emotional animal of all" (18). In fact, it is most often the strength of our emotions that allows us to make the best decisions.

"For the human mind, bad is stronger than good. This is why in marital interactions, it generally takes at least five kind comments to compensate for one critical comment" (81). We humans experience something called a negativity bias, which is the fancy schmancy science-y way of saying exactly the same thing. Good to know.

Avoid over-thinking: this can be one of my downfalls. "It's dangerous to rely exclusively on [reason]. When the rational brain hijacks the mind, people tend to make all sorts of decision-making mistakes. [...] Instead of going with the option that feels the best, a person starts going with the option that sounds the best, even if it's a very bad idea" (140). Most often, decision-making is a battle between different parts of the brain. To completely ignore one part and rely solely on another is to fail our evolutionary background. Being able to think about our thinking process is one of the greatest strengths of our brains and allows us to (hopefully) avoid making mistakes. As it happens, emotions are better at assessing our inherent preferences than conscious thinking is.

To put it mildly, my honey and I aren't in agreement with regard to politics. He's from Texas (read: conservative) and I'm from California (definitely liberal). I love him anyway, but I'm always secretly hoping he'll see the light and come over from the dark side (I'm sure he feels the same about me). According to one study, "the reason knowing more about politics doesn't erase partisan bias is that voters tend to assimilate only those facts that confirm what they already believe. If a piece of information doesn't follow Republican talking points [...] then the information is conveniently ignored. Voters think that they're thinking, but what they're really doing is inventing facts or ignoring fats so that they can rationalize decisions they've already made" (206). Alrighty, then. Apparently, I can't change his mind any more than he can change mine. Deep down, I already knew this.

One more thing. "People in good moods are significantly better at solving hard problems that require insight than people who are cranky and depressed" (246). Insight, incidentally, occurs when the brain connects old thoughts or ideas in new ways. Basically, relax, don't stress, and good things will happen. Cheers!