Intriguing findings that should play a transformative role, not only in the field of psychology, but also in corporate...
Experimental psychologist Klein (Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making, 2009, etc.) examines the transformative role of creative insight.
The author recounts a story that a policeman told him about a routine patrol, during which his partner noticed the driver of a new BMW flicking cigarette ash on the car's upholstery and immediately realized that the vehicle was stolen. Klein decided to explore the mechanism behind such aha moments. Seeking to discover “how people come up with unexpected insights in their work,” he began to search for clues by systematically collecting human interest stories. These include accounts by firefighters who survived life-threatening situations by improvising, Dr. Michael Gottlieb's realization that the epidemic killing young gay men was an immune disorder, and financial analyst Harry Markopolos' recognition that Bernie Madoff had to be a crook. Two decades earlier, Klein was one of the pioneers in the field of “naturalist decision making, which studies the way people think in natural settings,” as opposed to contrived laboratory experiments. He used the same method to probe the creative process, and he shares a fascinating array of illustrative examples of creativity—e.g., Darwin's recognition of the role of natural selection and Daniel Boone's rescue of his daughter from Indian kidnappers. After painstaking analysis, Klein identified the three primary drivers: making unexpected connections (the policeman's observation), identifying contradictions (Markopolos smelled a fraud) and being driven to despair by an unresolved problem (Gottlieb's dying HIV patients). In each case, the bottom line was freedom to substitute out-of-the-box thinking for a preconceived, systematic approach and the willingness to take the risk of making errors.
Intriguing findings that should play a transformative role, not only in the field of psychology, but also in corporate boardrooms.Pub Date: June 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61039-251-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
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
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Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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