How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer

In the time it takes you to read this sentence, a NFL quarterback could scan the field, find an open man and throw for a 50-yard touchdown. A mother at a supermarket could choose Knott's strawberry jam over a jar of Smucker's. A player on Deal or No Deal could risk it all on suitcase number five.

From sports to grocery shopping to gambling, we make a staggering number of split-second decisions every day. Many of these decisions seem unconscious: We open the fridge and take out a Coke. We get up for Calculus section when our alarm clock rings (or we don't). But how do we make decisions? And how can we make those decisions better?

These are the two questions that Jonah Lehrer, popular science writer and author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist, asks in his new book, How We Decide. Using anecdotes, psychology experiments and cutting-edge neuroscience research, Lehrer argues that by thinking harder about how we think, we can make better decisions. Lehrer writes that the best decisions are not always deliberate and rational; rather, they are "a finely tuned blend of feeling and reason."

After 260 pages of case studies and stories of real-life "deciders," it's not exactly the revolutionary, satisfying pay-off the reader is looking for. But this seems to be Lehrer's point: There is no "secret-recipe" for making better decisions.

Part case study compilation, part Neuroscience 101, part self-help book, part pop culture study - How We Decide shouldn't work. And, somehow, it does. Thanks to Lehrer's enthusiasm, clarity and sense of humor, the reader feels grounded even as the book jumps from Plato to the neurology of psychopaths to the New England Patriots. In the end, How We Decide delivers a lesson we all need to hear again: Pay attention.

Lehrer begins by introducing us to Plato's metaphorical model of the divided mind, in which the rational brain is a charioteer who keeps his dangerous, emotional horse in check. Immediately Lehrer takes a hard stance: "There's only one problem with this assumption of human rationality: It's wrong." With gusto, Lehrer immediately plunges into a story about a man named Elliot, who lost the ability to feel emotions after doctors cut a tumor from the frontal lobe of his brain.

Following Plato's model, Elliot would be an ideal decision maker - purely rational, never swayed by jealousy, anger or desire. But in fact, just the opposite was true: Elliot became pathologically indecisive. After his surgery, Elliot gave every irrelevant decision undue weight. When Elliot signed a form he would spend hours choosing which color pen to use.

When deciding where to eat lunch, he drove from restaurant to restaurant, debating the merits of every menu, seating plan and wait staff. Elliot's story shows that when we lack emotions we don't make better decisions - we can't make up our mind at all.

As the book unfolds, Lehrer tries to further break down the divide between our rational and emotional minds. From psychology experiments with rigged card decks to a man who survives a fire by lighting another fire with a spare match, Lehrer argues that every decision requires a different mix of rational and emotional thought. He concludes with a list of basic things we can all do to make better decisions, including "think about thinking" and "entertain competing hypotheses."

In writing a book about the decision-making process, Lehrer seems to have bitten off more than he can chew. Because neuroscience is such a fast-paced field, many of the studies Lehrer discusses were completed within the last 10 years. Who's to say that the research in his book won't be eclipsed within the next few months? When asked about this possibility, Lehrer was modest about his intents: "Everyone struggles with it. As a writer, what you try to distill are the core ideas. For me, the key challenge was finding those endurable things."

If anyone is qualified to talk about the intersection of our emotional, artistic side and our mathematical rationality, Lehrer is. A double-major in Neuroscience and English from Columbia University, Lehrer has worked in the lab of the Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel, studied literature at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and worked as a line cook in the famed Le Cirque.

One of the most exciting things about both of Lehrer's books is his ability to draw from his experiences as both a scientist and an artist. In Proust was a Neuroscientist, Lehrer examines the work of famous artists to show how their work anticipated the discoveries of modern neuroscience. Similarly, in How We Decide, Lehrer argues that emotional reasoning is actually integral to our decision-making process.

There is a divide (particularly obvious on college campuses) between science and art. Lehrer earnestly discussed this disunion: "artists take a defensive crouch - as if talking about the brain will devalue a Jackson Pollock or a Jane Austen. Scientists, on the other hand, adopt a condescending pose." To illustrate this, Lehrer quoted physicist Richard Feynman: "Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds." One of Lehrer's goals in both of his books is to make us question our deeply held beliefs about the values of emotion and reason.

So what's next for Lehrer? He's interested in exploring the science behind creativity. "We're just beginning to empirically investigate it," Lehrer said. "The book would allow me to get back to art." Until then, he's busy contributing to publications such as Nature and The Boston Globe, editing the Mind Matters blog for Scientific American, and, of course, promoting his new book.

Meanwhile, we can all make an easy decision: Pick up a copy of How We Decide.