How We Decide Review (and it's over.)

How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer was an extremely thought provoking read. Lehrer takes a physiological approach to psychology and the way that our brain makes decisions. In my opinion, he does a through job analyzing the brain and its behavior. However, he also takes it one step further by taking that knowledge and exploring how to use it to our advantage. Lehrer made me think about what I had just read – I thought about how it applied to me, such as past experiences, and how I could apply it in the future as well. His analysis and explanations were greatly helped by his effective use of examples. By picking fascinating but nonetheless relevant anecdotes, Lehrer kept me interested even through the more technical details of the brain. For example, Lehrer draws on a situation in the Gulf War to make a point about our dopamine neurons. Being interested in military history, I read and learned eagerly. I think Lehrer's inclusion of intriguing and effective examples and scenarios contributed a large part to why How We Decide was a worthy read.

While the book was extremely interesting, it was also confusing. Regardless of the useful examples that Lehrer included, it still takes time and careful reading to fully understand what he is trying to tell us. But I do not think this is the author's fault - psychology is a challenging field. Lehrer does a good job of making it as simple as possible for the reader. However, this has its own drawbacks. Lehrer may have oversimplified the facts, which raised lingering questions that he never answered. Normally, I would call this nitpicking, but being a science oriented book, How We Decide should be a tightly written and thoroughly researched book.

Reading through other reviews (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/books/review/Johnson-t.html, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/14/RV2R154OPO.DTL), I saw other people had drawn the same conclusions that I had - both reviews praised Lehrer's book as engaging, citing the vivid examples. The New York Times article, however, pointed out something I did not notice. It says that Lehrer fails to mention truly emotional decisions, such as breaking up a relationship. Personally, I think these decisions like those would be difficult to analyze under the fine microscope that Lehrer used throughout the book.

In the end, as I finished How We Decide, I came away with a fresh understanding of human nature. While I may not feel compelled to follow Lehrer's every piece of advice, it nonetheless gave me a new persepective on how humans make those decisions that they are faced with every single day. Being both interesting and informative, I would heartily recommened How We Decide to anyone who has an interest in how humans function from a psychological standpoint. It was a good read, and I am glad I read it.

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