The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds

“At the bottom of the transformation in decision making in professional sports—but not only in professional sports—were ideas about the human mind, and how it functioned when it faced uncertain situations. These ideas had taken some time to seep into the culture, but now they were in the air we breathed.”

Lewis highlights the impact of Danny and Amos’s groundbreaking work by providing a culturally relevant example of how the implications of their research have touched an array of different fields. In this passage from the first chapter, Lewis argues that Danny and Amos’s work has essentially become part of the American psyche.

“Freud was in the air but Danny didn’t want anyone lying on his couch, and he really didn’t want to lie upon anyone else’s.”

Lewis emphasizes Danny’s aversion to working as a clinical psychologist. Danny’s fascination with psychology derived from this desire to better understand human nature as a whole, as opposed to closely analyzing a single individual.

“If you can’t observe what is happening in the mind, how can you even pretend to make a study of it?”

This quote refers to the dilemma that faced many psychologists in the 1950s. Despite a desire to hold psychology to high standards of scientific study, the human mind was still so elusive and incomprehensible that many gave up on the idea of studying the human mind altogether.