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On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind's Hard-Wired Habits
by
Wray Herbert
Our lives are composed of millions of choices, ranging from trivial to life-changing and momentous. Luckily, our brains have evolved a number of mental shortcuts, biases, and tricks that allow us to quickly negotiate this endless array of decisions. We don’t want to rationally deliberate every choice we make, and thanks to these cognitive rules of thumb, we don’t need to....more
Paperback, 304 pages
Published
September 6th 2011
by Broadway Books
(first published September 10th 2010)
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I've read so much pop science on neurology that I'm always skeptical that a book will surprise and delight me with new information, and I'm delighted to say that this book does. Herbert wins by focusing on heuristics, an important idea that is usually touched on in any books that discuss how people think but rarely to this extent.
Heuristics affect people in every way from dieting to political game theory. You may have heard of this as "priming" and the most commonly repeated study is the one whe...more
Heuristics affect people in every way from dieting to political game theory. You may have heard of this as "priming" and the most commonly repeated study is the one whe...more
Fascinating and approachable
Note: this review first appeared on Amazon
This is one of those books -- like "Connected" (Christakis and Fowler) and "The Politics of Happiness" (Bok) -- that gets beneath what we think we think and helps us arrive at what we actually think and, more importantly, why we think it. "On Second Thought" is light and easy to read, which is not a critique as it is loaded with illuminating studies from the edges of this science frontier. This is a powerful and illuminating f...more
Note: this review first appeared on Amazon
This is one of those books -- like "Connected" (Christakis and Fowler) and "The Politics of Happiness" (Bok) -- that gets beneath what we think we think and helps us arrive at what we actually think and, more importantly, why we think it. "On Second Thought" is light and easy to read, which is not a critique as it is loaded with illuminating studies from the edges of this science frontier. This is a powerful and illuminating f...more
This book is about little mental short-cuts we make and are often unaware of. Explanations through Evolutionary Psych. are common. Some of them are just amusing and some are rather thought provoking. If you have an interest in psychology and how we think, or think we think, then I recommend it. The chapters are not all that related, so it is a good book to just pick up and read a bit, then lay by the side until you need some reading material. Great coffee shop book for me. Informs me of some of...more
Page 29
We “see” the world through the lens of our emotions, and our vision in turn shapes our fears, motivation, and self-esteem. Call it the visionary heuristic.
Page 70
The Greek system embodies much that is sad and unflattering about human nature, especially the cruelty of exclusion and the often desperate need to belong. Psychologists are very interested in these dynamics, because they apply beyond the frat house. Why is inclusion in groups and clubs so important to us, and what cognitive and...more
We “see” the world through the lens of our emotions, and our vision in turn shapes our fears, motivation, and self-esteem. Call it the visionary heuristic.
Page 70
The Greek system embodies much that is sad and unflattering about human nature, especially the cruelty of exclusion and the often desperate need to belong. Psychologists are very interested in these dynamics, because they apply beyond the frat house. Why is inclusion in groups and clubs so important to us, and what cognitive and...more
An easy and interesting read, though the conclusions Herbert draws from some of the studies are a little out there. Also, there's no real unifying message to the book. There's no concluding chapter to speak of, the book just ends after his chapter on how we "default."
The studies are intriguing, but being a Psychology major has made me a little wary of "taking someone's word for it" when it comes to results. Especially when the results are then used to justify some overarching message in the give...more
The studies are intriguing, but being a Psychology major has made me a little wary of "taking someone's word for it" when it comes to results. Especially when the results are then used to justify some overarching message in the give...more
Listened to this one on Audible and found it a very interesting overview of the shortcuts that our brains are hard-wired to take in different areas. Shortcuts that made sense throughout our evolution to keep us alive may not always be either valid or helpful in the modern world, and this book outlines a different category in each chapter and gives explanation and examples of each. It's meant as an introduction for the layman and is very approachable, probably not detailed enough for someone actu...more
My minor in college was philosophy, but it just as easily could have been psychology. I really enjoyed listening to this book, hearing how the brain which got the human race to where we are today is still there, perhaps impacting our everyday decisions. The book deals with human heuristics - hardwired tendencies we apparently inherit at birth. Perhaps more interesting to me because of my computer background, heuristics are techniques used in computer programming to simulate human-style reasoning...more
Really dug this book. I will say the intro threw me. It brought up a great example of people misjudging avalanches and basically said it would discuss ways to handle flaws in our thinking. While the book did a great job going over experiments on how our brain works (my cup of tea, exactly!), it didn't really stick to this thesis. The avalanche example was kind of absent too. That said, excellent quick read if you want another behavioral psychology/economics book on how your brain is fooling you.
Had I not been listening to this book I might have given up on it. The thing to remember is though important to understand how we might be hardwired, we have the ability to control and choose our own behaviors. Being aware of "why" I might find myself leaning towards hard wiring thinking, I still am in control. This could be the difference in my worldview that we have a Creator and not left to evolution. I am glad I did stick with it.
An easy read that goes more into what are the heuristic steps we take and how have we identified them, and less about what we should do with these. If you're looking to learn more about psychology and how your brain works, it's worth a read. I suppose knowing what the heuristics are may influence decision-making, but I don't feel like I walked away knowing how to 'out-smart' my brain.
Good quote: "The mind has a ...tendency to drift around a firm anchor, depending on the cognitive tides and currents...Our thoughts are dynamic but out mental anchors limit our choices." Another quote: "We see the world through the lens of our emotions and our vision, in turn, shapes our fears, motivation and self-esteem."
Really interesting read on how your brain works, the short cuts it takes, and why. It's a scientific book, but written so that it's both easy and fun to read. It'll make you think, and then make you think about WHY you're thinking that way.
Fascinating. I think it is useful be familiar with the way our minds tend to work on an unconscious level, since we do most of our thinking quickly and and unconsciously...the heuristics (universal and hardwired unconscious biases)discussed in this book will probably not come as a shock to intelligent people, but the extent to which these heuristics continue to influence people, and possible reasons these heuristics developed in the first place, is eye-opening and quite genuinely entertaining......more
What's not to love about a book with a chapter about "the cooties heuristic"? It is serious psychological science explained in a way that makes sence to the layperson.
Herbert does an excellent job describing complex ideas in an approachable way while at the same time citing the scientific studies. I found this an entertaining and informative book that I plan to reference in the future.
Pulp science on how the brain works. A quick read, more or less equivalent to the stuff found in the Tuesday NYT science section. Entertaining.
Great outline of 20 heuristics used. Nice to be aware of how we think things through.
A provocative look at why smart people make dumb decisions. Really really interesting.
Jan 10, 2011
Monica
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
unfinished,
psychology
Somewhat interesting, but bothersome biases and beliefs of the author got in the way.
Interesting book on heuristics, a term I can now vaguely define.
Because it reads a little bit like a laundry list of cognitive biases, this book could have a better narrative structure. Regardless, it contains fascinating examples of innate biases and possible methods of overcoming them.
Apr 26, 2012
Marcus
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
pop-science,
non-fiction
This book is full of the type of psychology studies that make me really question the validity of psychology as a scientific discipline. There is surely something to the idea that decision making process is susceptible the bad influence of evolved mental heuristics, but I feel like that concept is stretched to the breaking point here.
Several of the studies in the book are found here http://psychfiledrawer.org/ in the "couldn't replicate" category which is, in case you're wondering, not a good pla...more
Several of the studies in the book are found here http://psychfiledrawer.org/ in the "couldn't replicate" category which is, in case you're wondering, not a good pla...more
Thoroug. Relies heavily on research and conclusions to extract his observations. Well-written.
A little more interesting than Connected, this book nevertheless failed to capture my attention the way I anticipated. I felt that it took a lot of time to explain relatively simple heuristics; still it did at least do so in an entertaining way, without being as verbose as some nonfiction books that quote various and detailed studies manage to be.
This book explains the extremely interesting idea of heuristic thinking, a concept I hadn't heard of before. It explains some of the brain's hard-wired thinking patterns and how they can be helpful or disastrous depending on the situation. If you wonder about maladaptive thinking patterns you or people around you have, this book can shed some light on that.
Between a 3 and a 4, yet closer to the 4.
The heuristics explained are fascinating. I now find myself understanding why I think in certain patterns and why it is or isn't helpful. I really like the many case studies and psychologists experiments detailed in the book.
view all 4 comments
Excellent book about why we do what we do. I recommend it highly.
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