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

by David McRaney

The Illusion of Control THE MISCONCEPTION: You know how much control you have over your surroundings. THE TRUTH: You often believe you have control over outcomes that are either random or are too complex to predict.

Your brain is always looking for patterns and sending little squirts of happy throughout your body when it finds them, but like faces in clouds, you often see patterns where none exist.

This illusion of control is pervasive enough to show up when teachers take credit for the success of their students or people in war zones start to accumulate lucky charms or engage in rituals they think will keep them alive. You ask people to send well wishes and positive thoughts when someone is sick.

As obvious as it should have been, the subjects tended to see randomness as something they could outwit. This is why you are far more likely to participate in games of chance when there are some customizable features.

remember most of the future is unforeseeable. Learn to coexist with chaos. Factor it into your plans. Accept that failure is always a possibility, even if you are one of the good guys; those who believe failure is not an option never plan for it.

The Fundamental Attribution Error THE MISCONCEPTION: Other people’s behavior is the reflection of their personality. THE TRUTH: Other people’s behavior is more the result of the situation than their disposition.

When you don’t know much about a person, when you haven’t had a chance to get to know him or her, you have a tendency to turn the person into a character. You lean on archetypes and stereotypes culled from experience and fantasy. Even though you know better, you still do it.

You put on and take off social masks all the time. You are a different person with your friends than you are with your family or your boss. Somehow, you forget that your friends, family, and boss are doing the same.

People aren’t characters without nuance who can be easily predicted. You seem like a different person at work than at home, a different character at a party than you are when you’re with your family. On paper, this seems like common sense, but you easily forget about the power of the setting when judging others.

You commit the fundamental attribution error by believing other people’s actions burgeon from the sort of people they are and have nothing to do with the setting.

When you look for a cause for another person’s actions, you find it. Rarely, though, do you first consider how powerful the situation is. You blame the person, not the environment and the influence of the person’s peers. You do this because you would like to believe your own behavior comes strictly from within.

You know this isn’t true though. You shift from introvert to extrovert, from brainiac to simpleton, from charismatic to impish—depending on where you find yourself and who is watching.