A strong argument for more thoughtfully presenting options to yield better choices.
A look at how people make decisions based on the ways in which choices are laid out before them, which are all too often haphazard.
External factors, writes Johnson, the director of the Center for Decision Sciences at Columbia Business School, influence how we make choices, but we give too little attention to “choice architecture, the many aspects of how a choice is posed that can be manipulated, intentionally or inadvertently, to influence the decisions we make.” When asked to make choices among health insurance plans on the open market, for instance, most people struggled with navigating costs versus benefits, perceived or real. In part, this is because there are so many confusing options, and in part, because people misunderstand the meanings of terms such as deductible and copay. On that note, Johnson writes, “People are much more willing to pay for insurance against a vivid risk, like cancer, than they are willing to pay for insurance that covers all diseases.” It’s not just patients, either. Doctors prescribe brand-name medications, against insurers’ pleas that they prescribe generics, because the brand names are easier to remember. A solution: When a doctor types in “Allegra,” say, the software should be programmed to translate that to “fexofenadine hydrochloride,” a choice the doctor rarely overrides with the command, “Dispense as written.” These design choices are often small but meaningful, though sometimes fraught with political weight—e.g., whose name goes first on an election ballot? Choice architecture, Johnson concludes, can be used for good, to emphasize the benefits of choosing greener sources of energy; and of course it can be used poorly, amplifying the effects of inequality. What remains is to teach designers and choosers alike that choice architecture plays a role in “changing plausible paths and changing how preferences are assembled.” The only flaw in the book—another architectural choice, one might say—is that it runs too long with overlapping case studies. Still, it’s illuminating throughout.
A strong argument for more thoughtfully presenting options to yield better choices.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-08443-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.
Helbig and Norman present a game plan for making leadership more responsively human.
In this expanded update to The Psychological Safety Playbook: Lead More Powerfully by Being More Human (2023), the authors provide “practical strategies for responding to resistance, sparking change, embodying the change we want to see, and moving forward deliberately,” specifically in a business setting. They suggest ways to encourage what they call “changemakers” through the use of five key “plays” from their playbook: Communicate Courageously, Master the Art of Listening, Manage Your Reactions (“shift from automatic reaction to conscious response to stay better connected to yourself and others”), Embrace Risk and Failure, and Design Inclusive Rituals. The goal is to ensure that organizational cultures promote psychological safety, guided by leaders who “walk the talk” by emphasizing their own humanity at every turn. (“We must be the first to share our own failures with our teams, which will start to make it possible for others to do the same.”) This call for example-setting is sounded throughout the book as Helbig and Norman urge their target audience (leaders and would-be leaders) to go beyond mere instruction and instead embody the qualities they want to see in their subordinates, such as continuous learning, active curiosity, and self-reflection. Each chapter includes a detailed “Recommended Reading” section and text with extensive numbered and bulleted points formatted to make the core concepts more immediately digestible. The authors effectively employ clear and empathetic prose to assure readers that psychological safety is slow to build and quick to break, observing that such safety requires steady attention and delivers outsize payoffs as a result. They refreshingly ground a great deal of the material in psychology and neuroscience, pointing out, for instance, that research has demonstrated that the parasympathetic nervous system responds to honest appreciation, which improves creative thinking. Some wistful readers might consider some of the authors’ suggestions beyond the reach of their own organizations, as when group facilitators are advised to “gently intervene when someone dominates the conversation,” but hope springs eternal.
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9798993550503
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Crazy Idea Press
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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