Snap Judgment:When to Trust Your Instincts, When to Ignore Them, and How to Avoid Making Big Mistakes with Your Money

There are certain areas in life where quick, human-oriented decision systems, such as intuition, work well. For example, the psychological responses that early man used to make the instant choice to run away from a mammoth can also serve people well when they smell smoke on the upper floors of a hotel. However, snap judgments and first impressions are poorly suited for calculating odds and probabilities, compounding interest, or forecasting the future behavior of the stock market.

In our summary of Snap Judgment: When to Trust Your Instincts, When to Ignore Them, and How to Avoid Making Big Mistakes with Your Money, David E. Adler delves into the psychology of financial decisions. He explores how our instincts and intuitive judgments intersect with financial markets, as well as other areas of contemporary life.

Drawing on the latest research, Adler reveals the predictable ways in which human perceptions and emotions cloud financial judgments. Adler has written for Barron’s, Institutional Investor, The New Republic, Psychology Today, and Financial Planner, where he is a contributing writer focusing on high net worth investing. He also produced the documentary Financial Insecurity: America’s Crisis in Healthcare and Retirement, which aired on PBS stations.

In Snap Judgment, Adler helps us examine decision-making in many areas of finance. He teaches us how to identify circumstances where we should trust our gut versus situations where we need to do everything in our power to ignore that feeling.