The Decisive Brain goes on to get highly topical, by exploring how the human desire to find patterns has fed into the current financial crisis, and this emotional decisionmaking also has its weaknesses. The stock market is a random system in statistic terms. But when investors randomly make some money, instead of being happy, they tend to feel regret, that they hadn't gambled more money. So they dive in further, as do many of their compatriots. So the market surges, and keeps surging. Until bust point. Then people start to despair, and sell out "because the brain doesn't want to regret staying in".
And it looks at other situations where emotional thinking only may produce bad results (such as buying with credit cards, where the normal emotional weighting of the value of the good to you versus the loss of the lightening of your wallet is shortcircuited).
So in the end, too, this is also a self-help book, concluding with the advice:
"Whenever you make a decision, be aware of the kind of decision you are making and the kind of thought process that it requires. ... The best way to make sure you are using your brain properly is to study your brain at work, to listen to the argument inside your head."Good advice. Now all we've got to do is employ it to abolish all those error arising from the false "women equals emotional decisionmaking equals bad".Further: "The best decisionmakers don't despair [at mistakes]. Instead, they become students of error, determined to learn from what went wrong. They think about what they could have done differently so that the next time their neurons will know what to do."
Article comments
1 - Tony
I just heard the author interviewed on ABC radio (RN)- ie Australian Broadcasting Corporation- Sound like a great book.