A guide to the inner workings of how decisions are made—and an essential tool kit for helping others make decisions better
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome renowned behavioral scientist Eric Johnson and award-winning author Philip Tetlock for a livestream discussion on Johnson’s new work The Elements of Choice: Why the Way We Decide Matters.
This livestream event is free and open to the public, with registration. Book sales are encouraged through the Midtown Scholar Bookstore.
A guide to the inner workings of how decisions are made—and an essential tool kit for helping others make decisions better
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.
Choice architecture is a multifaceted set of tools for anticipating how people make specific decisions. The designers of decisions need to consider all the elements involved in presenting a choice: how many options to offer, how to present them, how to account for our natural cognitive shortcuts, and much more. These levers are unappreciated, and we’re often unaware of just how much they influence our reasoning.
Johnson is the lead researcher behind some of the most well-known and cited research on decision-making. He draws on his original studies and meta-analyses of decision-building findings to reveal how the structure of choices affects outcomes.
This book is essential for businesspeople, policy makers, and anyone tasked with helping others make decisions. We are all decision designers, for ourselves and for others. Whether you’re helping students choose the right school, helping patients pick the right health insurance plan, or deciding how to invest for your own retirement, Johnson provides the tools you need to guide anyone to the decision that’s right for them.
About the Speakers:
Eric J. Johnson is Norman Eig Professor of Business, and Director of the Center for Decision Sciences at the Columbia Business School. He has been the President of the Society for Judgment and Decision-Making and the Society for Neuroeconomics. His academic awards include the Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award of the Society for Consumer Psychology, Fellow of the Association of Consumer Research, and an honorary doctorate in behavioral economics from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. His new book The Elements of Choice: Why The Way We Decide Matters is out from Riverhead Books this October.
Philip E. Tetlock is the Leonore Annenberg University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and holds appointments in the psychology and political science departments and The Wharton School.
He has published roughly 200 articles in peer-refereed journals and edited or written 10 books including his most recent book (with Dan Gardner), Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, A New York Times Bestseller and an Economist Best Book of 2015.
