Books like Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior

01

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

David Eagleman · Psychology

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Stanford who argues that the conscious self is a late, small, and largely uninformed participant in the brain's activity.

Shares unconscious mind and decision-making with Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior.

02

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths · Psychology

Brian Christian is a writer and Tom Griffiths is a cognitive scientist, and together they argue that computer science has worked out rigorous solutions to many of the problems humans face every day — when to stop searching for a better option, how to manage your schedule, how to sort your memory — and that these solutions are both interesting and useful.

Both dig into decision-making.

03

The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson · Psychology

Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson argue that human behavior is much more self-interested and much less high-minded than the explanations people give for it.

A kindred psychology read.

04

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman · Psychology

Thinking, Fast and Slow is Daniel Kahneman's account of the two cognitive systems that govern human thought.

Both dig into decision-making.

05

You Are Not So Smart

David McRaney · Psychology

David McRaney is a journalist who started a blog called "You Are Not So Smart" about self-delusion in 2009, and turned it into this book in 2011.

Both dig into decision-making.

06

Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion

Paul Bloom · Psychology

Paul Bloom's argument is not that we should care less about others.

Both dig into decision-making.

07

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Malcolm Gladwell · Psychology

Blink is Malcolm Gladwell's argument that fast, unconscious decisions — the ones made in the first two seconds of encountering something — are often just as reliable as slow, deliberate analysis, and sometimes more so.

Both dig into decision-making.

08

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

Antonio Damasio · Psychology

Antonio Damasio is a neurologist at USC whose work challenges the centuries-old idea that reason and emotion are separate faculties, with reason the reliable guide and emotion the unreliable interference.

Both dig into decision-making.

09

Dollars and Sense

Dan Ariely · Psychology

Dollars and Sense is Dan Ariely and Jeff Kreisler's examination of why people consistently make bad financial decisions even when they have the information and intention to do otherwise.

Both dig into decision-making.

10

Fooled by Randomness

Nassim Nicholas Taleb · Psychology

Fooled by Randomness is Nassim Nicholas Taleb's argument that humans are wired to misread luck as skill, noise as signal, and random outcomes as the product of ability or effort.

Both dig into decision-making.

11

How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

Lisa Feldman Barrett · Psychology

Lisa Feldman Barrett is a neuroscientist and psychologist at Northeastern University who has spent thirty years studying emotion, and her conclusion challenges the most widely held view of what emotions are.

Both dig into perception.

12

Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion

Robert B. Cialdini · Psychology

Influence, New and Expanded is the 2021 revision of Robert Cialdini's foundational 1984 work on the psychology of persuasion.

Both dig into decision-making.