How We Decide

It turns out that we weren't designed to be rational creatures. Instead, the mind is composed of a messy network of different areas, many of which are involved with the production of emotions.

Whenever someone makes a decision and tries to be reasonable and restrained, the brain is awash in feelings, driven by its inexplicable passions. These emotions secretly influence our judgment.

To make good decisions, God endows us with a brain that is enthusiastically pluralist. Sometimes, we need to reason through our options and carefully analyze the possibilities. And sometimes we need to listen to our emotions.

We always need to be thinking about how we think.

The mind contains two distinct thinking systems: one that is rational and deliberate and another that is quick, effortless and emotional. The key to making decisions is to know when to rely on which system.

The process of thinking requires feelings, for they let us understand all the information that we can't directly comprehend. Reason without emotion is impotent.

Every time you make a mistake, your brain cells automatically detect the subtle and gentle patterns and assimilate all the data that we can't consciously comprehend. Brain cells need to be continually trained and retrained, or else their predictive accuracy declines.

The desire to avoid anything that smacks of loss often shapes our behaviour, leading us to do foolish things. We try to postpone the pain for as long as possible, the result is more losses.

While reason is a powerful cognitive tool, it's dangerous to rely exclusively on the deliberations of the prefrontal cortex. When the rational brain hijacks the mind, people tend to make all sorts of decision-making mistakes.

We live in a culture that's awash in information; it's the age of Google and free information. We are constantly exceeding the capacity of our prefrontal cortices, feeding them more facts and figures than they can handle.

Morality can be a vague concept, and yet, at its simplest level, it's nothing but a series of choices about how we treat other people.

When normal people tell lies, they exhibit the symptoms of nervousness; lie detectors work by measuring these signals. But psychopaths are able to consistently fool the machines. Dishonesty doesn't make them anxious because nothing makes them anxious.

When we start censoring our minds, turning off those brain areas that contradict our assumptions, we end up ignoring relevant evidence.

Whatever your intuition then tells you is almost certainly going to be the best choice.

Mark Jung- Beeman, the scientist who studies the neuroscience of insight, has shown that people in good moods are significantly better at solving hard problems that require insight than people who are depressed.

Happy people solve nearly 20% more word puzzles than unhappy people.

When the brain areas associated with executive control aren't preoccupied with managing emotional life, the end result is that the rational brain can focus on what it needs to focus on.

Whenever possible, it's essential to extend the decision-making process and properly consider the argument unfolding inside your head. Bad decisions happen when that mental debate is cut short, when a consensus is imposed on the neural quarrel.

Emotions: are windows into the unconscious, visceral representations of all the information we process but don't perceive.

The emotional brain is useful helping us make hard decisions. Its ability to process millions of bits of data in parallel ensures that you can analyze all the relevant information when assessing alternatives.

The reason emotions are so intelligent is that they've managed to turn mistakes into educational events. You are constantly benefiting from experience, even if you're not consciously aware of the benefits.

The one thing you should always be doing is considering your emotions, thinking about why you're feeling what you're feeling. Even when you choose to ignore your emotions, they are still a valuable source of input.

The best way to make sure that you are using your brain properly is to study your brain at work, to listen to the argument inside your head.

This is the most astonishing thing about the human brain: it can always improve itself. Tomorrow, we can make better decisions.