About book Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World (2011)
This was a very good psychology book. It is light and funny enough to be interesting to even the most ignorant of readers but backed up with enough research and interesting facts to hook a person who already knows a lot about psychology. The author is very personable, and offers frequent humorous anecdotes illustrating his concepts. He also includes one or two “try it yourself” experiments that are super-easy to do and don't even require getting up. The book is all about how we judge people very quickly, and, while we believe we are being objective, we really aren't. It talks about falling in love, hatred, prejudice, the power of crowds, conformity, how men and women are much more alike than they are different, and the power of location. This is a way of learning a lot about some basic psychology, and interesting psychology, without it seeming like a lecture, without it being boring, and by using layperson's terms to explain everything so that anyone can grasp the concepts. It was not as good as A FIRST-RATE MADNESS by Nassir Ghaemi, M.D., which I consider to be EXCELLENT, but it still deserves a 5, because it is very good in it's own way. Nice book that makes you examine the context of a situation and really knows how to make you feel a deep sense of guilt if you don't do the right thing in a given situation.Two examples that happened to me WHILE listening to this audiobook (and occurring on separate days at the gym!):A person slammed his locker and in the process accidentally dropped his gym membership card (would mean a $5 replacement fee and quite a lot of wonderment on WHERE you lost it, I'd think), so after quickly noticing no-one else either noticed or was going to run after him to inform him, I did. Funny how I found myself justifying doing the right thing (especially the "I know I'd just be miserable if I hadn't (told you)") and in maybe a Dale Carnegie-style moment, he too found an excuse for why it dropped. Thinking on it, definitely seemed a nice interaction even if my initial sense of it was that it felt funny how I acted not expecting any feel-good righteous in doing so (seems the only moment where I felt anything close to that is in writing this), but believing I really would have an awful sense of not doing the right thing and perhaps thinking that there probably were a decent number of previous such times where I might not have either been observant or acted that I suppose this book really brought to my attention.And earlier today and of some lesser consequence, when a girl running on a treadmill dropped her smart phone (or maybe it was an ipod touch) where it of course just flew back behind her. Happening about a dozen or so footsteps before I was going to walk by. So after the initial moment, I leaned over to pick it up and handed it to her with a "Here you are." and continued on my way.(Maybe the author has the uncanny ability to set up situations for people who read his book and perhaps can also see whether they react to the best of their abilities.)The book definitely is appropriately titled as I can keep writing "situations" and "context" when describing all the passages in the book (like the famous Kitty Genovese case -- which no introductory psychology course is complete without mentioning -- or the probably British equivalent of a two year old child named James Bulger; both cases seem more like all the witnesses saw only a "snapshot" of what happened versus like a full movie... not sure whether the author expressed such language or it became implied), but also suggested that differences can't help but be noted and that prejudices aren't necessarily that we're all hateful people. (As plenty of said people would insist they're not, despite unconsciously being such.)I found this book thanks to goodreads's feature of people who enjoyed this book (Power of Habit) also enjoyed and this was one of the books mentioned. Site was right: I did enjoy this, even if not as strongly.. but still a nice read.
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Entertaining, intelligent read. I particularly liked the section on race.
—ARYN
I'm actually adding my thoughts to my own blog.
—damomma
