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Decisions about Decisions
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Decisions about Decisions

Practical Reason in Ordinary Life

Cass R. Sunstein
Cambridge UP, 2023
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Analytical
  • Scientific
  • Overview

Recommendation

Cass R. Sunstein is a reliable, smart, and prolific author who often writes in depth about how people think. He co-authored Nudge and has written many perceptive books. Here, Sunstein provides a set of useful decision-making strategies, including schemes that eliminate routine decisions, dig out relevant information, neutralize unconscious biases that can undermine your judgment, and let you off the hook when you should delegate a decision to experts or algorithms. Sunstein offers a detailed, sometimes technical tour of a range of tools to help you avoid decision paralysis, make smart decisions, or, in some cases, circumvent the need for a decision altogether.

Summary

Decision-making can evoke strong emotions; emotions influence judgment.

People have devised a number of strategies to mitigate the emotional stress of making a decision. These “second-order” decision-making strategies are templates for resolving various types of dilemmas. For example, one strategy suggests avoiding personal decision-making altogether by leaving the choice up to chance, such as using lotteries to choose people for jury duty.

People also avoid making decisions by setting up rules that predetermine their options. For example, you might establish a rule that you will always follow your doctor’s advice on health issues, instead of being indecisive. Another strategy involves breaking a problem into steps and creating a sequence of smaller decisions about each one.

Decision-making can be straightforward.

Experts in economics, politics, and psychology view decision-making as a straightforward process: they often advise examining the pros and cons of various proposals and applying that data to choose an option. In daily use, people also turn to a range of second-order strategies that ...

About the Author

Cass R. Sunstein is the founder and director of Harvard Law School’s Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy, and former head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He has authored or co-authored many books including Nudge: Improving Decisions About Money, Health, and the Environment; Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment; Wiser: Getting Beyond Group Think to Make Groups Smarter; How to Become Famous: Lost Einsteins, Forgotten Superstars, and How the Beatles Came to Be, and more.

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