Our textbook briefly discusses the process of decision making. It is the process of choosing among a set of options. The authors of Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, took an interesting twist to this concept of psychology. They decided to show that, at root, economics is the study of incentives. One chapter uses economic theory to show cheating exists in sumo wrestling. The authors say that if people have a chance to cheat, some will. This is decision making.
Freakonomics may not seem that interesting to some students, including myself when it was introduced to me by my dad. However, after looking into the Freakonomics website, it appears to be fascinating. The authors look into correlation versus causation on a wide variety of topics. For example, how did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? These topics may not all be relevant to a college students life; however, reading this book will help us understand the way in which people make decisions. This can be applied to every aspect of college student's life. We wake up each morning and decide whether or not to go to class and each moment we make after this is made up of decisions.
If you don't have the time or money to read the book, you're in luck. They have turned the Freakonomics ideas into a movie and lucky for you again, it's on Netflix! The movie trailer can be found on YouTube and gives a quick glimpse into the use of economics to decipher decision making.
I actually did read this book in high school, and I agree that it is a very interesting spin on economics. However, now that we're taking Psy 1001, some of the correlations they present beg the question as to whether correlation equals causation. There must be more supporting evidence for a claim than just a set of correlations. If I had the time, I'm sure this would be an even more interesting read the second time around. The same can also be said about Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers. I was made to read this as a freshman in CBS, and this book was mentioned a couple times in the Lilienfeld text.