Seven Books on Decision Psychology You Should Read
This post was translated by AI from the original Norwegian. Read the original version
What drives our judgments, and what can we do to make better decisions? That is the concern of decision psychology.
The field became common knowledge with Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman's book "Thinking, Fast and Slow," which came out in 2011. However, you won't find that book on this list. Psychology entered a crisis right after the book's publication. Several of the most famous findings from research turned out not to hold up. The studies were redone, but the results didn't replicate. Kahneman's own research mostly held up well, but several of the studies the book builds on did not. In my opinion, it would have been proper to revise the book or withdraw it from the market.
Below you can read more about the books I recommend, but summarized, my top seven list is as follows:
Superforecasting (best)
Noise (best for the advanced)
Nudge - The Final Edition
How Change Happens
Risk Savvy (best if you liked "Thinking, Fast and Slow")
Under the Influence
Think Again (best for the beginner)
Superforecasting - The Art and Science of Prediction
Philip Tetlock & Dan Gardner, 2016
If you're only going to read one book about decision psychology, you should read this one. Accurate predictions are the core of good decisions. In this book, researcher Philip Tetlock has received help from journalist Dan Gardner to summarize the results from some completely unique research projects led by Tetlock. For decades, he has collected predictions from both experts and ordinary people. Through this work, he has mapped both how poorly we hit the mark, but also what characterizes those who hit it well.
The book covers far more than it appears, and is both easy to read and occasionally entertaining.
Nudge - The Final Edition
Cass R. Sunstein & Richard Thaler, 2021
Kindle / Audible / Storytel / Ark.no
With the exception of "Thinking, Fast and Slow," there is probably no book that has had greater impact than the original edition of Nudge, which came out in 2008. The original has also been translated to Norwegian, but that's not the one you should read. Time has passed it by. You should read this thoroughly updated version from 2021. In it, Sunstein and Thaler respond to the criticism that came in the wake of the original, and they include newer research.
Thaler received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2017 for the research behind Nudge.
How Change Happens
Cass R. Sunstein, 2019
Kindle / Audible / Storytel / Ark.no
Lawyer Cass Sunstein writes books like others write post-it notes. Last I checked, he had written 50, and three of them are on this list. Several have been fooled by the title of this book. It's not a book about how to make changes in your life, but about how changes happen at the societal level. How the Iron Curtain could fall so suddenly, while the abortion issue has divided the US for decades with no side "winning."
Risk Savvy - How to Make Good Decisions
Gerd Gigerenzer, 2013
Kindle / Audible / Storytel / Ark.no
Gigerenzer has been arguing with Daniel Kahneman since the mid-80s. His main point is that several of Kahneman's most famous experiments don't actually reveal that humans are irrational, but rather show how contrived some of the experiments are. Gigerenzer's own research has shown that our intuition is quite often trustworthy, and in this book he explains his position.
Noise - A Flaw in Human Judgment
Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein, 2021
Kindle / Audible / Storytel / Ark.no (Norwegian translation)
Noise must almost be considered the sequel to Thinking, Fast and Slow. The latter book was about the systematic errors we make. This time, it's the unsystematic variation—or noise—in decisions that is the focus. Our decisions are far more inconsistent than they should be, and in this book the authors show what causes this and how to measure the degree of it. The book is about twice as long as it needed to be, and is at times quite heavy going, but the topic is important. If you get through it, you're significantly wiser than when you started.
Under the Influence - Putting Peer Pressure to Work
Robert H. Frank, 2020
Kindle / Audible / Storytel / Ark.no
Nothing is as important for our decisions as other people. In this book, Robert H. Frank presents the research on social influence and argues that we should give it more weight when designing policy. If you're a libertarian, your blood pressure will rise at the proposals for higher taxes and more government control, but the research underlying Frank's arguments is something everyone would benefit from knowing.
Think Again - The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know
Adam Grant, 2021
Beginner and want something easy to read? Start with this one. I think Adam Grant sometimes takes too great liberties in the name of communication, but for the most part this is solid professional work and a nice introduction to the most important points from decision psychology.
