Hi all,
To kick off your New Year, consider reading one or more of Behavioral Scientist’s most notable books of 2025. Their list includes about 50 books on a range of topics. I have curated the top five most relevant books about human decision-making and choice. They are the following:
The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life
From the back cover: “Choice touches virtually every aspect of our lives, from what to buy and where to live to whom to love, what profession to practice, and even what to believe. But the option to choose in such matters was not something we always possessed or even aspired to. . . . The Age of Choice tells the long history of the invention of choice as the defining feature of modern freedom.” Get the book here (US) and here (UK).
Choose Wisely: Rationality, Ethics, and the Art of Decision-Making
From the back cover: “Barry Schwartz and Richard Schuldenfrei . . . show how the focus on rationality, narrowly understood, fails to fully describe how we think about our decisions, much less help us make better ones. Notably, it overlooks the positive contribution that framing—how we determine what aspects are most important to us—contributes to good decisions. Schwartz and Schuldenfrei argue that our choices should be informed by our individual ‘constellation of virtues,’ allowing for a far richer understanding of the decisions we make and helping us to live more integrated and purposeful lives.” Get the book here (US) and here (UK).
Decisions: Studying and Supporting People Facing Hard Choices
From the back cover: “Decisions describes the evolution of decision science . . . through its application to challenging personal and public policy decisions, since the inception of the field. Baruch Fischhoff covers all major topics in basic research, including how people create options, determine what matters to them, evaluate their chances of achieving those goals, and engage their emotions. He shows how those processes play out in an exceptionally wide variety of decisions regarding health, safety, the environment, disasters, and national security, among other topics. He also examines how decision-making abilities vary across individuals and across the lifespan, as well as the ethics and politics of how research is conducted and its results are shared and applied.” Get the book here (US) and here(UK).
Mindmasters
From the back cover: “Sandra Matz reveals . . . how big data offers insights into the most intimate aspects of our psyches and how these insights empower an external influence over the choices we make. This can be creepy, manipulative, and downright harmful, with scandals like that of British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica being merely the tip of the iceberg. Yet big data also holds enormous potential to help us live healthier, happier lives—for example, by improving our mental health, encouraging better financial decisions, or enabling us to break out of our echo chambers.” Get the book here (US) and here (UK).
What We Value
From the back cover: “With so many competing priorities pulling us in different directions every day–family, friends, work, our health—it can feel difficult to make decisions that are aligned with what we care about most. . . . Falk introduces readers to a new paradigm for understanding why we, and those around us, do what we do. This is the value calculation: the often-subconscious mechanism by which the brain computes our everyday choices. By learning how it works, Falk shows, we can learn to work more strategically with it—whether we want to embrace new activities and behaviors, connect more meaningfully with others, or become more effective leaders in our organizations and communities.” Get the book here(US) and here (UK).
To see the full list of notable books of 2025 from Behavioral Scientist, click here.
To kick off your New Year, consider reading one or more of Behavioral Scientist’s most notable books of 2025. Their list includes about 50 books on a range of topics. I have curated the top five most relevant books about human decision-making and choice. They are the following:
The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life
From the back cover: “Choice touches virtually every aspect of our lives, from what to buy and where to live to whom to love, what profession to practice, and even what to believe. But the option to choose in such matters was not something we always possessed or even aspired to. . . . The Age of Choice tells the long history of the invention of choice as the defining feature of modern freedom.” Get the book here (US) and here (UK).
Choose Wisely: Rationality, Ethics, and the Art of Decision-Making
From the back cover: “Barry Schwartz and Richard Schuldenfrei . . . show how the focus on rationality, narrowly understood, fails to fully describe how we think about our decisions, much less help us make better ones. Notably, it overlooks the positive contribution that framing—how we determine what aspects are most important to us—contributes to good decisions. Schwartz and Schuldenfrei argue that our choices should be informed by our individual ‘constellation of virtues,’ allowing for a far richer understanding of the decisions we make and helping us to live more integrated and purposeful lives.” Get the book here (US) and here (UK).
Decisions: Studying and Supporting People Facing Hard Choices
From the back cover: “Decisions describes the evolution of decision science . . . through its application to challenging personal and public policy decisions, since the inception of the field. Baruch Fischhoff covers all major topics in basic research, including how people create options, determine what matters to them, evaluate their chances of achieving those goals, and engage their emotions. He shows how those processes play out in an exceptionally wide variety of decisions regarding health, safety, the environment, disasters, and national security, among other topics. He also examines how decision-making abilities vary across individuals and across the lifespan, as well as the ethics and politics of how research is conducted and its results are shared and applied.” Get the book here (US) and here(UK).
Mindmasters
From the back cover: “Sandra Matz reveals . . . how big data offers insights into the most intimate aspects of our psyches and how these insights empower an external influence over the choices we make. This can be creepy, manipulative, and downright harmful, with scandals like that of British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica being merely the tip of the iceberg. Yet big data also holds enormous potential to help us live healthier, happier lives—for example, by improving our mental health, encouraging better financial decisions, or enabling us to break out of our echo chambers.” Get the book here (US) and here (UK).
What We Value
From the back cover: “With so many competing priorities pulling us in different directions every day–family, friends, work, our health—it can feel difficult to make decisions that are aligned with what we care about most. . . . Falk introduces readers to a new paradigm for understanding why we, and those around us, do what we do. This is the value calculation: the often-subconscious mechanism by which the brain computes our everyday choices. By learning how it works, Falk shows, we can learn to work more strategically with it—whether we want to embrace new activities and behaviors, connect more meaningfully with others, or become more effective leaders in our organizations and communities.” Get the book here(US) and here (UK).
To see the full list of notable books of 2025 from Behavioral Scientist, click here.
