I had a long career as a management consultant, advising business leaders about their most important choices. One question never stopped bothering me: why do really, really great businesspeople sometimes make really, really bad decisions? After 25 years, I finally decided that this question was interesting enough that I wanted to become a professor in order to study it. So that’s what I do now – and I write about what I find.
I wrote...
You're About to Make a Terrible Mistake: How Biases Distort Decision-Making and What You Can Do to Fight Them
This book made me leave a career in consulting and become a professor. Kahneman not only won the Nobel prize in economics without being an economist, he also has a gift for making you feel you understand psychological research even if you're not a psychologist. Thinking, Fast and Slow, the book that made "bias" a term everyone recognizes, is unquestionably the first book anyone with an interest in behavioral science and decision-making should read, and perhaps the last one, too. I re-read it at least once a year and always find something I had not paid enough attention to.
The phenomenal international bestseller - 2 million copies sold - that will change the way you make decisions
'A lifetime's worth of wisdom' Steven D. Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics 'There have been many good books on human rationality and irrationality, but only one masterpiece. That masterpiece is Thinking, Fast and Slow' Financial Times
Why is there more chance we'll believe something if it's in a bold type face? Why are judges more likely to deny parole before lunch? Why do we assume a good-looking person will be more competent? The answer lies in the two ways we make choices: fast,…
After "bias," what is the second-most-popular behavioral science buzzword? Nudge, of course. Some think nudges are a brilliant invention; others claim they're a tool for cynical manipulation. Whether you are in one camp or in the other, the place to start is the book that made the case for "libertarian paternalism," now in a new, "final" edition. If you think you already know what nudges are, you may be surprised to find that "choice architecture," as Thaler and Sunstein call it, is a much more subtle art than you think.
*Once again a New York Times bestseller! First the original edition, and now the new Final Edition*
An essential new edition revised and updated from cover to cover of one of the most important books of the last two decades, by Nobel Prize winner Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
More than 2 million copies sold
Since the original publication of Nudge more than a decade ago, the title has entered the vocabulary of businesspeople, policy makers, engaged citizens, and consumers everywhere. The book has given rise to more than 400 "nudge units" in governments around the world and…
Katy Milkman's 2021 book tackles the question that every self-help book since the invention of the genre has attempted to answer: how to (really, finally, durably) start doing what you want to do and stop doing what you don't. So, what is Milkman's secret weapon? Behavioral science, of course. In her view, whether a strategy for change works or not is not a matter of belief or personal experience – it is an empirical question to be tested by research. Personally, I think How to Change is the last self-help book I will ever need.
'Game-changing. Katy Milkman shows in this book that we can all be a super human' Angela Duckworth, bestselling author of Grit
How to Change is a powerful, groundbreaking blueprint to help you - and anyone you manage, teach or coach - to achieve personal and professional goals, from the master of human nature and behaviour change and Choiceology podcast host Professor Katy Milkman.
Award-winning Wharton Professor Katy Milkman has devoted her career to the study of behaviour change. An engineer by training, she approaches all challenges as problems to be solved and, with this mind-set, has drilled into the roadblocks…
Even if you don't know anything about behavioral science, you know about confirmation bias, arguably the most insidious of our cognitive limitations. Simply put, people ignore or discount information that contradicts their beliefs, threatens their interests, or challenges their loyalties. Sure, we often spot this problem in others. But we also need to become aware of it – and to address it – in ourselves. In this book, Galef shows you, with practical, inspiring examples, how you can become a better, clearer, more rational thinker. This is the first book on thinking that I recommend to my students.
Winner of best smart thinking book 2022 (Business Book Awards) Guardian best books of 2021
'Original, thought-provoking and a joy to read' Tim Harford
'Highly recommended. It's not easy to become (more of) a scout, but it's hard not to be inspired by this book' Rutger Bregman
When it comes to what we believe, humans see what they want to see. In other words, we have what Julia Galef calls a 'soldier' mindset. From tribalism and wishful thinking, to rationalising in our personal lives and everything in between, we are driven to defend the ideas we most want to believe…
Cialdini's classic has sometimes been described as a "manipulation textbook." Indeed, the persuasion techniques it presents (with a treasure trove of examples and fascinating stories) are astoundingly powerful. The first time I read it, I often thought: "I hope this book does not end up in the wrong hands." With over 5 million copies in print, however, that ship has sailed: anyone who has not read Influence is at risk of being manipulated by a cunning salesman who has. Just as importantly, anyone who reads it will find many ethical applications of the book's insights.
The foundational and wildly popular go-to resource for influence and persuasion-a renowned international bestseller, with over 5 million copies sold-now revised adding: new research, new insights, new examples, and online applications.
In the new edition of this highly acclaimed bestseller, Robert Cialdini-New York Times bestselling author of Pre-Suasion and the seminal expert in the fields of influence and persuasion-explains the psychology of why people say yes and how to apply these insights ethically in business and everyday settings. Using memorable stories and relatable examples, Cialdini makes this crucially important subject surprisingly easy. With Cialdini as a guide, you don't have…
Reading was a childhood passion of mine. My mother was a librarian and got me interested in reading early in life. When John F. Kennedy was running for president and after his assassination, I became intensely interested in politics. In addition to reading history and political biographies, I consumed newspapers and television news. It is this background that I have drawn upon over the decades that has added value to my research.
It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.
Long before Trump, each of these phenomena grew in importance. The John Birch Society and McCarthyism became powerful forces; Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first “personal president” to rise above the party; and the development of what Harry Truman called “the big lie,” where outrageous falsehoods came to be believed. Trump…
Grand Old Unraveling: The Republican Party, Donald Trump, and the Rise of Authoritarianism
It didn't begin with Donald Trump. The unraveling of the Grand Old Party has been decades in the making. Since the time of FDR, the Republican Party has been home to conspiracy thinking, including a belief that lost elections were rigged. And when Republicans later won the White House, the party elevated their presidents to heroic status-a predisposition that eventually posed a threat to democracy. Building on his esteemed 2016 book, What Happened to the Republican Party?, John Kenneth White proposes to explain why this happened-not just the election of Trump but the authoritarian shift in the party as a…
We all make decisions all the time. It’s so natural that we hardly stop to think about it. Yet even the best business leaders make frequent, predictable errors. Indeed, for some types of business decisions, error is not the exception: it is the rule.
In You’re About to Make a Terrible Mistake! you’ll discover dozens of stories that illustrate the most common decision-making traps. And whether your organization is a fledgling nonprofit or a multinational corporation, you’ll find some detailed, practical advice on how to avoid these mistakes and make better decisions.
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