Good, readable pop psychology that doesn’t get too arcane but explores hidden mental corners all the same.
A pop-science tour of the brain and the “systematic mistakes we make when we attempt to change minds, as well as [an illumination of] what occurs during those instances in which we succeed.”
The mind works in strange ways, as Sharot (The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain, 2011), founder and director of the Affective Brain Lab at University College London, observes. Take a crowdfunding request to support two sick people, one pictured tube-draped in a hospital bed, the other by “a photo of a happy young woman glittering in sunlight”? Who gets the money? Yep: sex and the hint of happiness sell, even in bad times. This is a book full of tricks and stratagems to extend the reach of what good minds should do—namely lead other minds toward doing good—and sometimes the author works against received wisdom in offering them. For instance, reading between the lines, she questions the prevailing “wisdom of the crowd,” strength-in-numbers folderol of recent business and pop-psych books: “even in our world of ratings and reviews, tallying and averaging many views can lead to suboptimal solutions”—suboptimal because, to put it less nicely than she does, the human herd mentality can make us jump on any number of misguided bandwagons. Feel free to think politics there, and Sharot has some useful tips on how to prevail in political arguments by working the priors—i.e., “building on common ground instead of trying to prove others wrong.” The author works with a bit of a grab-bag approach—do we really need to be reminded of the fact that our fears of gruesome ways to die seldom match the gruesome ways to die that are statistically meaningful?—but careful readers will discern plenty of ways to sharpen their abilities to carry an argument.
Good, readable pop psychology that doesn’t get too arcane but explores hidden mental corners all the same.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62779-265-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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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