A provocative reconsideration of the power of positive thinking.
Rosenzweig (IMD Business School, Switzerland; The Halo Effect: And the Eight Other Business Delusions that Deceive Managers, 2007) offers a different slant on how successful businessmen and other leaders assess risk.
Cognitive psychologists have accumulated convincing evidence about how many of our decisions depend on intuitive thinking, a right-brain function, rather than left-brain, rational judgment. Numerous experiments have demonstrated how a positive mindset and reliance on intuition can play an important role in success in sports, but our right-brain rapid-response system may also lead us to overoptimism and biases that cloud judgment in other situations. The author concurs with Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman that it is necessary to be wary of gut reactions when we are faced with making decisions as investors or consumers, especially in situations that leave us open to manipulation. “That makes good sense when we're asked to make a judgment about something we cannot influence,” writes Rosenzweig, but the story changes when it is up to us to make things happen. In a high-stakes, win-or-lose competitive situation, effective leaders need to evaluate intangibles. “When we can influence outcomes, positive thinking—even holding [overoptimistic] views that are somewhat exaggerated—can be beneficial,” he writes. The author provides examples taken from real-life situations involving major corporate leaders—e.g., competitive bidding for government contracts or mergers and acquisitions—in which undue caution can be more dangerous than overoptimism. Rosenzweig's title deliberately recalls the phrase coined by novelist Tom Wolfe to describe an experienced fighter pilot's willingness to take calculated risks. Overoptimistically underbidding may mean taking a loss rather than making a profit, but it can also be a spur to creative solutions that cut costs. “Strategic decisions are not made by individuals acting alone,” writes the author, “but are taken by executives acting within an organizational setting, who must mobilize others to achieve goals.”
A provocative reconsideration of the power of positive thinking.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-307-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 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
BOOK REVIEW
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Hiccups aside, a mostly valuable compendium of irrational thinking, with a handful of blanket corrective maneuvers.
A waggish, cautionary compilation of pitfalls associated with systematic cognitive errors, from novelist Dobelli.
To be human is to err, routinely and with bias. We exercise deviation from logic, writes the author, as much as, and possibly more than, we display optimal reasoning. In an effort to bring awareness to this sorry state of affairs, he has gathered here—in three-page, anecdotally saturated squibs—nearly 100 examples of muddied thinking. Many will ring familiar to readers (Dobelli’s illustrations are not startlingly original, but observant)—e.g., herd instinct and groupthink, hindsight, overconfidence, the lack of an intuitive grasp of probability or statistical reality. Others, if not new, are smartly encapsulated: social loafing, the hourly rate trap, decision fatigue, carrying on with a lost cause (the sunk-cost fallacy). Most of his points stick home: the deformation of professional thinking, of which Mark Twain said, “If your only tool is a hammer, all your problems will be nails”; multitasking is the illusion of attention with potentially dire results if you are eating a sloppy sandwich while driving on a busy street. In his quest for clarity, Dobelli mostly brings shrewdness, skepticism and wariness to bear, but he can also be opaque—e.g., shaping the details of history “into a consistent story...we speak about ‘understanding,’ but these things cannot be understood in the traditional sense. We simply build the meaning into them afterward.” Well, yes. And if we are to be wary of stories, what are we to make of his many telling anecdotes when he counsels, “Anecdotes are a particularly tricky sort of cherry picking....To rebuff an anecdote is difficult because it is a mini-story, and we know how vulnerable our brains are to those”?
Hiccups aside, a mostly valuable compendium of irrational thinking, with a handful of blanket corrective maneuvers.Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-221968-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
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