Psychology - Right the reads

Yes, habits do lead to success or failure!

Psychology is the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behaviour in a given context. So, I always felt that if I can understand this science, I would know why some people behave in a particular way and how we can influence them.

With this as my motivation, I started reading certain types of Psychology books. While these books are not pure theory on Psychology, they can be termed as books on the application part of it. In this direction, I read the book Thinking, Fast and Slow (Author: Daniel Kahneman, Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux). When I read this book, I realized that it is one of the best books on how we think and act. This book introduced me to the concept that humans have two systems, the one that acts fast (this is what we could call as the ‘gut feel’) and the one that is slow and very effort-intensive (rational part/ reasoning part/ the higher order part). This book gave numerous example about how we tend to act unknowingly. How on certain occasions, we move from System 1 to System 2. When we are driving on a highway with no traffic, we are mostly on System 1 and we don’t find it difficult to converse with the co-passengers. However, when we are going in city traffic, we would use more of System 2 and during those times, we don’t actually pay attention to the co-passengers. We tend to remember certain experiences as more painful and certain other equally painful ones as less painful. Shouldn’t there be some reason for that odd behaviour? Yes, it depends on how the experience ended (less/ more painful). For more details, read the book. While it is a bulky one (pages: 499), it is filled not only with theories but also with examples and stories, making it an easy read.

Subsequently, I read the book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Authors: Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Publisher: Yale University Press) this actually dealt on a similar subject as the above one. It dealt more on how we can influence people’s choices. One amazing example I can recollect now is, how reducing the distance between each white stripe on the road will NUDGE the driver to reduce his vehicle’s speed. This book deals with such simple NUDGES that can be used to influence people’s actions/ choices. The book also cautions that these ideas can be misused!

The most recent read in this filed was The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (Author: Charles Duhigg, Publisher: Random House). This book, I would say, has a different style of narration. It has all elements of a movie, editing, suspense, building up of a thrilling climax, etc. Probably because, the author is a Journalist and not a subject expert, it looks different. This doesn’t mean the previous books are any bad reads! They are equally gripping. This book gives multiple examples of successful and failed people, organizations. It also talks about how a habit forms and how one can break bad or unwanted habits.

I think these three books talk about the same things about a human, the higher order self (System 2) and the lower order self (System 1). We often hear that “the habits are deep rooted”, “bad habits die hard”, etc. It is true, they are deep rooted literally too; they sit in our basal ganglia (the central part of the brain). Call it the System 1 or the basal ganglia it is the core part of our brain. A few million years ago, we (rather the species from which we evolved) had only this part. Gradually, as we started doing more complex things (due to the complex environment that evolved around our), these brains developed cortex, which is where the higher order self (System 2) resides. It has been a truly edifying experience reading these books.

Being aware of these things would not only help us improve our awareness of our involuntary actions and reactions but also help us change such reactions, wherever deemed necessary. The next one I plan to read in this direction is Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious (Author: Timothy D. Wilson, Publisher: Harvard University Press).

I am reading these books to develop a deeper understanding of human psychology that would help me be a better banker, engineer, innovator and businessperson. Instead of asking "when would you read these books", I now ask "why would you read these books?"