In the 1970s, Daniel Kahneman co-founded the study of cognitive biases. Now a Nobel laureate, he summarizes his life’s work and the subfields of psychology and economics he helped create. This is an engaging book about the causes of human error, written by the field’s most prestigious researcher.

Academic

Rationality and the Reflective Mind

Keith Stanovich’s model of human bias and how it might be meliorated is perhaps the most advanced in the field, and nowhere is this model better explained and defended than in this book.

Predictably Irrational

In this New York Times bestseller, Dan Ariely humorously and accurately weaves together stories from his career as a researcher and reflections on the nature of human reasoning.

Thinking and Deciding, 4th edition

With its first edition published in 1988, Thinking and Deciding is perhaps the “standard” introductory textbook on the normative, descriptive, and prescriptive aspects of judgment and decision-making: how an ideal agent would reason, how humans do normally reason, and what humans can do to think and act more like ideal agents.

What Intelligence Tests Miss

Psychologist Keith Stanovich has spent several decades conducting experiments which show that intelligence and rationality are not the same thing, and that highly intelligent people are susceptible to many of the same biases and thinking distortions that average people are. Perhaps more importantly, he offers a unifying explanation of how bias works — and how it might be meliorated.

Rational Choice in an Uncertain World, 2nd edition

This textbook on judgment and decision is more advanced than Thinking and Deciding and covers more material.

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Human choices can be improved not only by teaching people better mental habits, but also by changing their environment. Citing decades of behavioral research, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein show that a sensible “choice architecture” can nudge people toward better decision without restricting their freedom of choice.

The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning

This excellent volume contains up-to-date chapters on nearly every major subject in the psychology of thinking and reasoning, written by some of the leading authors on each subject.

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t

Nate Silver has reliably predicted electoral results better than any other pundit. How does he do it? As his book reveals, he does it by bothering to obey the laws of probability theory; that is, by using Bayes’ Theorem to update his beliefs.

Judgment in Managerial Decision Making

This textbook is engagingly written, offers numerous illustrative examples, and does an excellent job of organizing decision science in memorable and useful ways. It is particularly useful for those who want to apply decision science to business management, but its coverage is general enough to be useful to all readers.

Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

Chip and Dan Heath explain where human decision-making often stalls out and offer habits and reframes to help you avoid cognitive derailment.

Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long

Useful ways to stay productive and focused in work environment with a focus on neuroscience so you’ll understand the why as well as the how.

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