Decisions, Decisions

July 23, 2010

As first-year college students, Stonehill's incoming Class of 2014 will face many tough decisions throughout their time at the College. This summer, they are learning new ways to help them become better decision-makers in their Common Intellectual Experience required reading assignment of Jonah Lehrer's How We Decide.

Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Katie Conboy spoke to the Class of 2014 about How We Decide at Summer Orientation.Visit here to read the full text of Conboy's speech.

How We Decide investigates the decision-making process and the interrelationship between reason and emotion. With his background in neuroscience, Lehrer believes the decision-making process is a mix of both feeling and reason.

Using a wide-range of decision-makers as examples, from Patriots quarterback Tom Brady to serial killer John Wayne Gacy, Lehrer draws on cutting-edge research as well as a variety of disciplines to help readers understand what goes through the human mind when making decisions.

In his review of the book, New York Times writer Steven Johnson said "explaining decision-making on the scale of neurons makes for a challenging task, but Lehrer handles it with confidence and grace. As an introduction to the cognitive struggle between the brain's "executive" rational centers and its more intuitive regions, How We Decide succeeds with great panache."

Lehrer is a Contributing Editor for Wired Magazine, Scientific American Mind Magazine and National Public Radio's Radio Lab. His first book, Proust Was a Neuroscientist, was published in 2007.

He is a graduate of Columbia University and studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He has written for The New Yorker Magazine, Nature Journal, Seed Magazine, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe.

On October 7, Lehrer will come to Stonehill to discuss the book at the annual Common Intellectual Experience lecture.

To read an interview with Lehrer from Seed Magazine, visit here.

For more information on Stonehill's First-Year Experience, visit here.

Contact

For more information, contact Communications and Media Relations at 508-565-1321.