American Scientist

WHAT WE VALUE: The Neuroscience of Choice and Change. Emily Falk. 304 pp. W. W. Norton, 2025. $29.99.

Emily Falk’s new book What We Value: The Neuroscience of Choice and Change explores the neurological mechanics of decision-making. Falk is a professor of psychology, communications, and marketing at the University of Pennsylvania, and in the book, she utilizes the neuroscience research program she directs to examine the cognitive processes that inform our everyday choices.

With so many demands competing for our attention—family, career, health, and relationships—we can struggle to prioritize what truly matters to us. It often feels easier to fall back on what’s familiar: old habits, quick fixes, or whatever feels most urgent. But Falk contends that if we better understand the neuroscience behind decision-making, we can increase the likelihood that our choices align with our values.

The first question posed by Falk is simple: Why don’t we put our time and energy into the activities and relationships that are important to us? The answer lies in what she calls the brain’s value system: a set of neural processes tasked with crunching a lot of data, including both the moral and economic value of a choice, the consequences of your past decisions, your mood, and the opinions of others around you. For example, on finding it difficult to prioritize quality time with her grandmother, Falk explains, “I understood myself as a hardworking leader in the lab I had founded, and I understood those around me as people who also prioritized work, maybe parenting, or even being up on the latest trash TV—but not hanging out with their grandmas.” These thoughts were just some of the input that contributed to Falk repeatedly choosing to focus on other parts of her life, despite knowing that visiting her grandmother was the choice that best fit with who she is and what she values.

For many people, when our value system is running on autopilot, the short-term relief we get from scrolling on our phones after a long day wins out over pulling out art supplies or organizing family game night. Falk suggests that once we take stock of our value system and better understand the brain processes involved in decision-making, we will be better able to place more weight on long-term payoffs in our value calculations.

In part one of the book, “Choice,” Falk briefly reviews decades of behavioral research. She notes that, across different studies, researchers could determine the value of each behavioral option being weighed based on activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that plays an important role in social, affective, and moral functions. Importantly, there wasn’t a set value for each option under consideration; for example, despite having a general preference for coffee, one might assign a higher subjective value to decaf tea in the late afternoon.

Falk contends that understanding this basic science can translate to better decision-making, and she highlights three places within our value systems where we can make changes that better align with our long-term goals. First, our brains can weigh only the options of which we are aware, and our choices are limited by that which we consider to be possible. Next, our brains move forward with what is deemed the highest value choice in that moment, but because we know that the subjective value of a choice can change, we also actively bring in additional perspectives that may affect our calculations. Finally, the brain carefully tracks the outcome of a choice—how rewarding it was—and Falk suggests that we can pay specific attention to the aspects of the outcome that support better choices in the future.

The main question explored in part two, “Change,” is more practical: How do we turn this insight into action? Falk provides strategies to help change the process of decision-making within a value system to favor the choices one wants to make, rather than what feels good in the moment. For example, with regard to outcomes, Falk writes that when we think about ourselves in the future, the area in the brain that is activated is the same as when we think about other people. She explains:

If Future You is more like a different person to your brain’s value system, then benefits accruing to Future You are seen as less self-relevant, and therefore less valuable, than the ones you would enjoy here and now.

To combat this phenomenon, Falk suggests one strategy of pairing a task with delayed payoff (walking on the treadmill at the gym, for example) with something immediately rewarding (listening to an audiobook).

She also introduces another neural mechanism, the self-relevance system, which she asserts is responsible for one of the biggest barriers to change: defensiveness. Falk notes that the brain’s value system and its self-relevance system are linked such that we often conflate what we value with who we are. She describes a study in which some students in a class at Cornell University were given a mug: Those with the mugs were told they could either take the mug home or sell it to their mug-less neighbors. The researchers found that those who chose to sell the mug asked for twice as much money than their neighbors were willing to pay for it and others even chose to forgo generous offers so they could keep the mug. In other words, once a mug was considered theirs, it was viewed as more valuable. This aspect of human nature may help explain why we often cling to habits that no longer serve us, simply because they’re ours.

When we interact frequently with others, our neural activity can synchronize with theirs.

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Finally, Falk explores the larger interpersonal context in which choices are made. When we interact frequently with others, our neural activity can synchronize with theirs: If we’re around people who prioritize productivity, that might steer our value calculation toward working late, rather than going home for family dinner. Falk shares research suggesting that the more time people spend together, the more their brain activity mirrors one another—though she falls short in describing how exactly this phenomenon happens. However, she posits that by surrounding ourselves with people who are already choosing actions consistent with the person we want to be, we can alter our value calculations to be in favor of our long-term goals.

What We Value challenges readers to reevaluate their decision-making process. Many of the strategies Falk describes are mainstays of cognitive behavioral therapy, which has decades of support for its effect on behavioral changes. She explains why these strategies work at the neural and cognitive level, and she bridges the gap between complex neuroscience and everyday experience through compelling anecdotes, along with clear action steps readers can practice at home. In this way, neuroscience becomes less about circuitry and more about clarity—an avenue to make daily decisions a little more deliberate and much more meaningful.