“Our perceptions of value may be unconscious,” writes the author, a corporate conference circuit veteran, “but they are extraordinarily powerful.” Once we have an established notion of something, he observes, we tend to color subsequent impressions with that idea, and changing this perspective can be seemingly impossible. McQueen has spent two decades researching trends and technology, and he’s consistently returned to the same question: What stops people from changing, even when they know they should? In these pages, he examines the many ways in which people develop preferences and make decisions. In his view, these processes are governed by the “Instinctive Mind,” which is intuitive and emotional, and the “Inquiring Mind,” which is logical and evaluative. The Instinctive Mind, he writes, is fond of labels and can be untrustworthy, but he stresses that it’s nevertheless sometimes better at making decisions. The key to clear decision-making, the author asserts, is to strike an effecti...
