Omniquest Selection Fall 2013

Our Fall 2013 Omniquest book is Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. A Nobel laureate in economics and professor emeritus at Princeton, Kahneman’s groundbreaking work in psychology challenges the rational model of judgment and decision making. Thinking, Fast and Slow is a culmination of many years of research, and takes the reader on a thought-provoking journey into the human mind which is sure to help us better understand the way we think, learn, and make decisions.

A review from The Economist summarized: “Profound… As Copernicus removed the Earth from the center of the universe and Darwin knocked humans off their biological perch, Mr. Kahneman has shown that we are not the paragons of reason we assume ourselves to be.”

Kahneman introduces a two-system approach to judgment and choice. System 1 operates quickly and automatically with very little effort. System 1 thinking is fast, intuitive, automatic and emotional. System 2, on the other hand, is engaged as you focus on specific details or complexities. System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Through the remainder of the book, Kahneman explores: the impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies; the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future; the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation. Each of these can be truly understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble.

Selected by the New York Times, The Economist and The Wall Street Journal as one of the best books of 2011, it is sure to resonate with students, faculty and staff. We hope you will all enjoy the read as well as the many lessons to be learned as we are Thinking, Fast and Slow.