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What are the best books/writings on the psychology behind human decision making and irrationality?

Answer Wiki

  • How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
  • On Being Certain by Robert Burton
  • Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
  • Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
  • Stumbling On Happiness, by Dan Gilbert
  • Sway: The Irresistable Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori and Rom Brafman
  • Robert Axelrod's, The Evolution of Cooperation (game theory & cooperative behavior)
  • Buyology by Martin Lindstrom
  • The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  • Fooled by Randomness by Nassim NicholasTaleb
  • Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz
  • The Psychology of Human Misjudgment  by Charlie Munger
  • The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making by Scott Plous
  • Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
  • Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevelin
  • Turning Numbers into Knowledge: Mastering the Art of Problem Solving
  • How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business
  • A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink
  • Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini
  • Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
  • Your Are Not So Smart, David McRaney
  • Why Smart People Do Dumb Things by Mortimer Feinberg
  • Blind Spots by Madeleine Van Hecke
  • The Invisible Gorilla by  Christopher Chabris
  • The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely
  • Drive by Daniel Pink
  • Driven by Paul Lawrence
  • Mindset by Carol Dweck
  • Sources of Power  and Street lights and Shadows by Gary Klein
34 Answers
How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
http://www.amazon.com/How-We-Dec...
A fantastic and highly readable explanation of the balance between rational and emotional decision making.

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
http://www.amazon.com/Predictabl...
Mentioned by many others. Outstanding experimentally-driven analysis of human irrationality.

Stumbling on Happiness by Dan Gilbert
http://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-...
Very engaging book, focusing mostly on how we go awry when we try to make decisions based upon our recollection of past events or beliefs about how we will feel in the future. (I also really enjoyed Haidt's Happiness Hypothesis, though it's less focused on decision making than this book is.)

On Being Certain by Robert Burton
http://www.amazon.com/Being-Cert...
A fascinating account of the neuroscience behind the feeling of "rightness" we get when we make decisions.

Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
http://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Impr...
Great book that explains the disproportionate impact that initial conditions (priming, anchoring, etc.) have on our decision making.

Sway: The Irresistable Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori and Rom Brafman
http://www.amazon.com/Sway-Irres...
Essentially, a quicker and more anecdotal version of Predictably Irrational.
Shefaly Yogendra
Shefaly Yogendra, I study decision making and have a PhD to show for it
The newest wave of decision making books are almost all focused on the irrationality aspect of human decisions, that do not seem to agree with economic models of decision making.

The latest in this ouevre is Richard Thaler's book Misbehaving -- The Making of Behavioral Economics.

The "misbehaving" in the title refers to how empirical evidence shows human beings do not behave in line with economic theory predictions/ assumptions. Thaler has a talent for hilarity, sometimes unintended but I doubt it. The book is an easy read even though it repeats many things Kahneman's and Ariely's books have already dealt with. It is also a part-memoir of his journey as an academic/ researcher in this space.

I am also reading Gerd Gigerenzer's Risk Savvy: How To Make Good Decisions.

It is a drier read albeit less dry than his earlier work Gut Feelings: Short Cuts to Better Decision Making.

Some of the other answers I have written on tricky aspects of making decisions:

Can-decision-making-be-taught?

Is it generally easier to eliminate undesirable options in decision making than to hone in on the most desirable options?

How can psychology improve our understanding of economics?
Harjeet Taggar 
Harjeet Taggar, http://harjtaggar.com
Updated answer:

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, Fast and Slow: Daniel Kahneman: 9780374275631: Amazon.com: Books


Some great books by the previous answers. A recent book by the Nobel Prize winning psychologist, Daniel Kahneman is Thinking Fast and Slow which addresses many key concepts from the field of behavioral economics. A classic book from the past is Robert Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

http://www.amazon.com/Influence-...

A pretty good and recent book is Split Second Pesuasion by Kevin Dutton which addresses key elements of persuasion represented by the acronym SPICE: Simplicity; Perceived self interest; Confidence; and empathy

http://www.amazon.com/Split-Seco...

The Teaching Company offers a great course, The Art of Strategic Decision Making. It has a great set of notes and looks at decision making from 3 perspectives: individual level; Group level; and Organizational level. On many occasions you can get the course on discount.

http://www.teach12.com/tgc/cours...

Lastly, an interesting book in the area of game theory but applicable to cooperative behavior and persuasion is Robert Axelrod's, The Evolution of Cooperation

http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-...
Nathan Ketsdever
Nathan Ketsdever, Passionate about decision making and strategy
I would add two key recommendations from this thread: What are good resources for learning about the psychology of decision making? :
  • Blackwell's Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making Edited by Koehler and Harvey  ( Nathaniel Decker )
  • Kahneman and Tversky ( Stefano Bussolon ) the former is a Nobel Prize winner
  • Also, I got Thinking, Fast and Slow for Christmas and while I think its a little inaccessible--it is interesting.  To be fair, I liked Nudge better which is about communication architecture in processes (I think this is golden for service designers as well as policy makers).  My guess is the Blackwell Handbook is even better, because it contains multiple perspectives in this field.
The following book recocommendations sum up most of the contributions on this thread to date:
  • How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
  • On Being Certain by Robert Burton
  • Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
  • Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
  • Stumbling Toward Happiness, by Dan Gilbert
  • Sway: The Irresistable Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori and Rom Brafman
  • Robert Axelrod's, The Evolution of Cooperation (game theory & cooperative behavior)
  • Buyology by Martin Lindstrom
  • Black Swan by Taleb
  • Fooled by Randomness by Taleb
  • Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz
  • The Psychology of Human Misjudgment  by Charlie Munger
  • The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making by Scott Plous
  • Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
  • Seeking Wisdom by Peter Bevelin
  • Turning Numbers into Knowledge: Mastering the Art of Problem Solving
  • How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business
  • A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink
  • Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini
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