About book You Can Beat Your Brain: How To Turn Your Enemies Into Friends, How To Make Better Decisions, And Other Ways To Be Less Dumb (2013)
I listened to the audiobook version of You Are Now Less Dumb: How To Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself. I loved it so much that I plan to get the Kindle version so that I can reference it. That’s one of the pitfalls of listening to non-fiction, it is hard to remember specific details without having it in writing to go back to. This book will definitely go down as one of my favorite non-fiction books of the year. The basic premise of the book is that even though you think you are in control of your actions, so much of what you do is based on environmental triggers and basic human tendencies. After reading this book, you will start second guessing things that you thought to be true about yourself. It is not a stuffy book, and the author has a wonderful dry sense of humor, making the book entertaining as well as informative. Each chapter starts with a basic assumption that you probably believe about yourself and others. The author then tears that assumption apart with scientific evidence and studies. I took little cryptic notes on my phone to help me remember things I wanted to share… one of them read: coffee cups, lab coats and arousal. I have no idea what I wanted to remember about the coffee cups, but I do remember the lab coats and the arousal. The lab coats had to do with the chapter about how what you wear can influence your behavior. One study showed that people who were wearing lab coats that they thought to be doctor’s coats actually performed better on intellectual tasks than those individuals wearing the same coats, but were told they were painter’s coats! As a former middle school teacher, I can verify that the student’s behavior on dress down days was definitely different than on dress code days. The study on arousal was also very interesting. When you are placed in a scary situation, your heightened emotions are similar to those emotions you experience when feeling aroused by someone. In a study, they had two bridges, one scary and swinging, and one not. In the middle of each bridge, they placed a woman who was to ask the men a series of questions. The exact same woman was on both bridges. The men who were on the scary bridge all rated the woman more attractive than the men who were on the easy bridge! The book is filled with interesting facts and evidence that shows you really just how little you are actually in control of responses. So much of what we do is triggered by environmental factors and beyond our control! A fascinating book. The author has another book out called You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You’re Deluding Yourself, I will definitely be reading that one too! Each chapter in this book reads like a blunt slap in the face. And it's for your own good, like when you find out that you're living in the Matrix, or that you are actually Tyler Durden. Blunt, no less.It's very fun and written in an engaging way, which makes up for the pain. And it tells you all about the lies we have to tell ourselves at every second just to survive, and why we tell them (and sometimes, need them).It's also got some great food for thought on why we develop mob mentality, and how to avoid it.Very well researched, and always making an effort to quote science (clarifying which studies are still inconclusive), the only off-putting thing about this book was hearing it on Audible - the reader sounds like some TV host from the 60s, which doesn't match the youthful - and often jokey - tone of the book.Awesome!
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In actuality this deserves 3 1/2 stars. Was really interesting.
—regie
