Go to Hachette Book Group home

Search

Site Preferences

Show prices in:

Promotion

Sign up for our newsletter to get 20% off sitewide!

By clicking “Accept,” you agree to the use of cookies and similar technologies on your device as set forth in our Cookie Policy and our Privacy Policy. Please note that certain cookies are essential for this website to function properly and do not require user consent to be deployed.

Feeling Smart

Why Our Emotions Are More Rational Than We Think

Feeling Smart Open the full-size image

Contributors

By Eyal Winter

Formats and Prices

Price

$14.99

Price

$19.99 CAD

Format

Format:

  1. ebook $14.99 $19.99 CAD
  2. Hardcover $29.00 $37.00 CAD

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around December 30, 2014. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

Also available from:

Which is smarter — your head or your gut? It’s a familiar refrain: you’re getting too emotional. Try and think rationally. But is it always good advice?

In this surprising book, Eyal Winter asks a simple question: why do we have emotions? If they lead to such bad decisions, why hasn’t evolution long since made emotions irrelevant? The answer is that, even though they may not behave in a purely logical manner, our emotions frequently lead us to better, safer, more optimal outcomes.

In fact, as Winter discovers, there is often logic in emotion, and emotion in logic. For instance, many mutually beneficial commitments — such as marriage, or being a member of a team — are only possible when underscored by emotion rather than deliberate thought. The difference between pleasurable music and bad noise is mathematically precise; yet it is also something we feel at an instinctive level. And even though people are usually overconfident — how can we all be above average? — we often benefit from our arrogance.

Feeling Smart brings together game theory, evolution, and behavioral science to produce a surprising and very persuasive defense of how we think, even when we don’t.

Genre:

On Sale
Dec 30, 2014
Page Count
288 pages
Publisher
PublicAffairs
ISBN-13
9781610394918

You May Also Like

The Power of Instinct
The Power of Instinct $30.00 $39.00 CAD
Nobody’s Fool
Nobody’s Fool $30.00 $38.00 CAD
Noise
Noise $22.99 $29.99 CAD
The Devil Never Sleeps
The Devil Never Sleeps $29.00 $37.00 CAD
Think Like a Rocket Scientist
Think Like a Rocket Scientist $19.99 $25.99 CAD

Eyal Winter

About the Author

Eyal Winter is professor of economics and director of the Center for the Study of Rationality at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, one of the world’s leading institutions in the academic study of decision making. He served as chairman of the economics department at Hebrew University and was the 2011 recipient of the Humboldt Prize, awarded by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany. He has lectured at over 130 universities in 26 countries around the world, including Harvard University, Stanford University, Princeton University, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Cambridge.

Learn more about this author