Problem Solving Psychology

Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we are all susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes can make us poor and unhealthy. We often make bad decisions about education, personal finance, health care, family, and the environment.

As a celebrated cultural critic and a writer for national publications like The Atlantic and Harper's, Alan Jacobs has spent his adult life belonging to communities that often clash in America's culture wars. And in his years of confronting the big issues that divide us - political, social, religious - Jacobs has learned that many of our fiercest disputes occur not because we're doomed to be divided, but because the people involved simply aren't thinking.

Are you a good boss - or a great one? Get more of the management ideas you want, from the authors you trust, with HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing People (Vol. 2). We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you master the innumerable challenges of being a manager.

The biggest threat facing modern business is the sheer complexity of an uncertain future. That, and the fact that everyone is busy. Too busy for progress. Workplace cultures have become cursed with efficiency. And so when it comes to developing strategy, we default to our defaults. We favor quick fixes, easy templates, and familiar approaches, developing 'robust plans' that do little to mitigate strategic risk or generate new value. The result? The future comes, and businesses die.

Plenty of books dwell on the faults in our decision-making or offer advice on how to make better choices. The Elements of Choice goes one step further and explains how we can design better end-to-end decision-making processes. Going well beyond the familiar concepts of nudges and defaults, Eric J. Johnson offers a comprehensive, systematic guide to creating effective choice architectures, the environments in which decisions are made.

CEO, executive wellness coach, and thought leader Naz Beheshti distills the most valuable lessons she learned from her first boss and mentor, Steve Jobs, into a holistic method to live your best life. Presenting the highly effective framework that Beheshti has used with clients for over a decade, this book empowers you to fulfill your highest business, personal, and social potential.

When we choose to go to the gym at 6am, keep running that marathon, or stay up late to study, we are making conscious, value-based decisions that help us fulfill our goals. But even though we know that daily good choices add up to healthy routines and strong results, these days it’s just too easy to surrender to negative thoughts and old habits. How can we not? Enter Functional Imagery Training (FIT).

Humans have built hugely complex societies and technologies, but most of us don't even know how a pen or a toilet works. How have we achieved so much despite understanding so little? Cognitive scientists Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach argue that we survive and thrive despite our mental shortcomings because we live in a rich community of knowledge. The key to our intelligence lies in the people and things around us.

Truth: A User's Guide explores how we can guard against the noise of competing truths, in business, in our personal relationships, and within ourselves, but also how we can use them to our advantage. Written with authority and humour, this is an accessible and illuminating narrative that will find a wide audience among listeners in search of understanding why the meaning of "truth" seems to have gone completely haywire.

From uncertainty and risk to ambiguity, emotion and non-verbal behaviour, life can be like a game of poker. So approach it like one, with every day critical thinking. In The Truth Detective, journalist and competitive poker player Alex O'Brien shows how we can survive and make better life decisions using the rules of the game. In a world full of uncertainty and incomplete information, this is a book about getting to the truth.

Weaving together cutting-edge social science with riveting stories that take us from the front lines of the Volkswagen scandal to backstage at the Oscars, and from deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico to the top of Mount Everest, Chris Clearfield and András Tilcsik explain how the increasing complexity of our systems creates conditions ripe for failure and why our brains and teams can't keep up. They highlight the paradox of progress: Though modern systems have given us new capabilities, they've become vulnerable to surprising meltdowns - and even to corruption and misconduct.

Psychologist Woo-kyoung Ahn devised a course at Yale called “Thinking” to help students examine the biases that cause so many problems in their daily lives. It quickly became one of the university’s most popular courses. Now, for the first time, Ahn presents key insights from her years of teaching and research in a book for everyone. She shows how “thinking problems” stand behind a wide range of challenges, from common, self-inflicted daily aggravations to our most pressing societal issues and inequities.

In the age of Big Data we often believe that our predictions about the future are better than ever before. But as risk expert Gerd Gigerenzer shows, the surprising truth is that in the real world, we often get better results by using simple rules and considering less information. In Risk Savvy, Gigerenzer reveals that most of us, including doctors, lawyers, financial advisers, and elected officials, misunderstand statistics much more often than we think, leaving us not only misinformed, but vulnerable to exploitation.

A passionate polemic in favor of pausing to think, not blink. What do these scenarios have in common: a professional tennis player returning a serve, a woman evaluating a first date across the table, a naval officer assessing a threat to his ship, and a comedian about to reveal a punch line? In this counterintuitive and insightful work, author Frank Partnoy weaves together findings from hundreds of scientific studies and interviews with wide-ranging experts to craft a picture of effective decision making that runs contrary to our brutally fast-paced world.

Fully updated edition of the best-selling self-help book, now recommended on the national Reading Well scheme. This ever-popular guide offers a self-help programme, written by one of the UK's leading authorities on anxiety and based on CBT, for those suffering from anxiety problems. A whole range of anxieties and fears are explained, from panic attacks and phobias to obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and generalised anxiety.

In a world increasingly ruled by numbers and algorithms, award-winning journalist Chris Jones makes a compelling case for a more personal approach to analytical thinking​. The Eye Test is a necessary course correction, a call for a more balanced, personal approach to problem-solving. Award-winning journalist Chris Jones makes the case for the human element - for what smart, practiced, devoted people can bring to situations that have proved resistant to analytics.

It isn't enough to just do your job anymore. In order to thrive in today's marketplace, all of us, regardless of our role, have to be ready to generate brilliant ideas on demand. Business creativity expert Todd Henry explains how to establish effective practices that unleash your creative potential. Born out of his consultancy and his popular podcast, Henry has created a practical method for discovering your personal creative rhythm.

From pandemics to populism, AI to ISIS, wealth inequity to climate change, humanity faces unprecedented challenges that threaten our very existence. The essential tool that will enable humanity to find the best way foward is defined in Framers by internationally renowned authors Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, and Francis de Véricourt.

We know that our minds are capable of great things because, every now and then, they come out with a brilliant idea or two. However, our minds are also unpredictable, spending large stretches of time idling or distracting themselves. This is a book about how to optimize these beautiful yet fitful instruments so that they can more regularly and generously produce the sort of insights and ideas we need to fulfill our potential and achieve the contentment we deserve.

Art Thinking combines the mind-sets of art and the tools of business to protect space for open-ended exploration and manage risks on your way to success. Art Thinking takes you from "Wouldn't it be cool if...?" to realizing your highest aims, helping you build creative skills you can apply across all facets of business and life. Warm, honest, and unexpected, Art Thinking will help you reimagine your work and life-and even change the world-while enjoying the journey from point A.