A review of Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures, by Virginia Morell

Crown, 2013

304 pages

One fateful day in March 1838, a twenty-nine-year-old Charles Darwin met a female named Jenny. Observing her in her exhibit in the London Zoological Garden, Darwin noted that Jenny, a young orangutan recently acquired by the zoo, “kicked & cried, precisely like a naughty child” when a keeper teased her with an apple. Having never met an ape face to face before, Darwin wrote furiously and excitedly in his notebooks, speculating on the thoughts and feelings of Jenny the orangutan over multiple visits. “Let man visit Ouranoutang in domestication,” Darwin wrote, “hear its expressive whine, see its intelligence when spoken (to); as if it understands every word said—see its affection—to those it knew—see its passion & rage, sulkiness, & very actions of despair.” Darwin found such instances enough to convince him that animals (the “higher” ones, at least) are intelligent, that they can feel pain, jealousy, happiness, and boredom.

But Darwin had been criticized for using stories like Jenny’s as scientific evidence. They are anthropomorphic, other scientists said; they bestow non-human animals with human emotions that we cannot prove they feel. This anti-animal-mind mindset ruled psychological science for decades, and its grasp is still felt today. Full Review »

A review of How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
320 pages
Mariner/Houghton Mifflin

We all know what it’s like to agonize over a decision. It’s usually not the insignificant ones that bring us grief, but rather those poised to take us in entirely different directions: whether to attend college, if and when to marry, to move to a new city—the ones that, by opening one door, may close another door forever.

Our ability to make these decisions well determines not only the route our life takes but also the quality of our experience. So we weigh all of our options, explore all possible outcomes, and choose one path forward. But in that moment just before the path is set, what many of us wouldn’t give for even the briefest glimpse into the future.

Science writer Jonah Lehrer, while he may not possess the magical gift of foresight, does offer insight on strategies to face such decisions in his captivating and informative new book How We Decide. The idea came to Lehrer one day when he was at the supermarket. He was trying to choose between several flavor iterations of Cheerios and found himself at an impasse. Right there in the cereal aisle, he decided to investigate recent brain research in the hopes of solving the mystery of decision-making mastery. At the risk of slipping into the self-help genre, Lehrer promises in his introduction to reveal not only how we make decisions, but how we can improve in making them. Full Review »