Wide-ranging, informative and entertaining, especially for parents and educators.
How our bodies and minds work in tandem.
“In school, in work, and in our relationships, how we act has a big effect on how we think,” writes Beilock (Psychology/Univ. of Chicago; Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To, 2010). As such, the author rejects the comparison of the human mind to a computer. “[J]ust as most software can run on any platform,” she writes, “seeing the mind as a computer…makes our body and physical experiences inconsequential, like tech support. Thinking is reduced to a programming language, the manipulation of symbols by rules, that are carried out by hardware, not influenced by it.” Supporting her argument with a combination of experimental evidence and homespun anecdotes, the author gives a new twist on the old adage, “Grin and bear it.” Botox, ordinarily injected for cosmetic purposes to obliterate frown marks, can help alleviate persisting depression. Another example is the fad of laughter clubs, where the evening starts with forced laughter that then becomes “spontaneous and contagious.” Forcing a smile or a laugh can actually help to change mood—“our body has a direct line to our mind, telling us how to feel.” Beilock cites experimental evidence on the positive effects of exercise on mood, mental acuity and preserving cognitive function as we age. Research also shows a direct link among perception, cognition and physical experience—e.g. learning to crawl is correlated to increased cognitive capability, but “baby walkers have been linked to delays in hitting cognitive milestones,” associated with learning caution; the child lacks the learning experience involved with failed attempts to walk. Evidence also shows that children enhance their reading skills by printing as well as saying the letters of the alphabet and benefit by using their fingers when mastering arithmetic.
Wide-ranging, informative and entertaining, especially for parents and educators.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1451626681
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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