4 results for "Cognitive Psychology"

Thinking in bets: making smarter decisions when you don't have all the facts

Duke, Annie
"Poker champion turned business consultant Annie Duke teaches you how to get comfortable with uncertainty and make better decisions as a result. In Super Bowl XLIX, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll made one of the most controversial calls in football history: With 26 seconds remaining, and trailing by four at the Patriots' one-yard line, he called for a pass instead of a hand off to his star running back. The pass was intercepted and the Seahawks lost. Critics called it the dumbest play in history. But was the call really that bad? Or did Carroll actually make a great move that was ruined by bad luck? Even the best decision doesn't yield the best outcome every time. There's always an element of luck that you can't control, and there is always information that is hidden from view. So the key to long-term success (and avoiding worrying yourself to death) is to think in bets: How sure am I? What are the possible ways things could turn out? What decision has the highest odds of success? Did I land in the unlucky 10% on the strategy that works 90% of the time? Or is my success attributable to dumb luck rather than great decision making? Annie Duke, a former World Series of Poker champion turned business consultant, draws on examples from business, sports, politics, and (of course) poker to share tools anyone can use to embrace uncertainty and make better decisions. For most people, it's difficult to say "I'm not sure" in a world that values and, even, rewards the appearance of certainty. But professional poker players are comfortable with the fact that great decisions don't always lead to great outcomes and bad decisions don't always lead to bad outcomes. By shifting your thinking from a need for certainty to a goal of accurately assessing what you know and what you don't, you'll be less vulnerable to reactive emotions, knee-jerk biases, and destructive habits in your decision making. You'll become more confident, calm, compassionate and successful in the long run"--
Portfolio/Penguin 2018 276 pages

The diet trap solution: train your brain to lose weight and keep it off for good

Beck, Judith S.
The New York Times bestselling author of The Beck Diet Solution teams up with her daughter and colleague at the Beck Institute for Cognitive Behavior to teach readers how to think their way thin, offering practical, proven tools for escaping common diet traps for good. Most diet programs work at first. But then life happens—stress, bad habits, holidays, travel—and we revert to bad habits, and the weight comes back. In this invaluable book, Dr. Judith Beck offers the solution to break free from these common diet traps and keep the weight off for life. Dr. Beck explains that when it comes to losing weight, it’s not just about what we eat. It’s also about how we think. To consistently eat differently, we must learn to think differently. Diets fail us because they don’t offer effective strategies for overcoming the common traps—emotional eating, social pressure, dining out—that can derail us. Now, she and her daughter, Deborah Beck Busis, share the techniques they have successfully used with thousands of clients, revealing how to overcome the thoughts and behaviors that have held us back. With The Diet Trap Solution, readers on any diet regimen can learn to identify their specific diet traps and create action plans to strengthen their “resistance muscle”—making losing weight easy, sustainable, and enjoyable.
HarperOne, an Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2015-04-21 248 pages

Mind change: how digital technologies are leaving their mark on our brains

Greenfield, Susan
"Google. Facebook. Twitter. Repeat. We live in a world unimaginable even a few decades ago, one like no other in human history. It's a parallel world where we can be on the move in the real world, yet always hooked into an alternative time and place. And although it's a two-dimensional world of sight and sound, it offers instant information, connected identities, and constant novelty. In this world, our screen technologies are increasingly where we work, where we unwind, where we relieve our boredom and where we learn. The subsequent transformation in how we live and think is a vitally important issue, perhaps even the most important issue of our time. When toddlers are given iPads, and adults spend ten hours a day staring at a screen, can we afford to assume that our brave new screen technologies are harmless tools? Blending a wide range of scientific studies, news events, and cultural criticism with brio and verve, Mind Change presents an incisive snapshot of the global 'now.' Greenfield examines how the dawn of the Digital Age has already altered our cultural landscape, fueled an epidemic of oversharing, and transformed how we learn, remember and spread information -- and how these innovations are changing our physical brains. A warning cry, a shot across the bow, and a call to action, Mind Change explores the social, cultural and physiological ramifications of our new digital lifestyle"--
Random House 2015-02-10 348 pages

The science of perception and memory: a pragmatic guide for the justice system

Reisberg, Daniel
"A robbery victim tries to remember how the crime unfolded and who was present at the scene. A medical patient recalls the doctor saying that the pain in her side wasn't worrisome, and now that the tumor is much larger, she's suing. An investigation of insider trading hinges on someone's memory of exactly what was said at a particular business meeting. In these and countless other examples, our ability to remember our experiences is crucial for the justice system. The problem, though, is that perception and memory are fallible. How often do our eyes or memories deceive us? Is there some way to avoid these errors, perhaps by gathering our memory-based evidence in just the right way? Can we specify the circumstances in which perceptual or memory errors are more or less likely to occur? Professor Daniel Reisberg tackles these questions, drawing on the available science and also his experience in training attorneys. He provides detailed pragmatic advice that will prove helpful to law enforcement, prosecutors, defenders, and anyone else who hopes to maximize the quality of the evidence available to the courts--whether the evidence is coming from witnesses, victims, or defendants. This book is carefully rooted in research but written in a way that will make it fully accessible to non-scientists working in the justice system. Early chapters provide an overview of the relevant science--including how the research proceeds--and a broad portrait of how perception and memory function. Later chapters offer practical solutions for navigating situations involving eyewitness identifications, remembered conversations, evidence obtained from interviews with children, confession evidence and, along with it, the risks of false confession"--
Oxford University Press 2014 368 pages