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

fulfilling prophecy called labeling theory shows how when someone believes you are a certain kind of person, you tend to live up to those expectations.

If you want a better job, a better marriage, a better teacher, a better friend—you have to act as if the thing you want out of the other person is already headed your way.

The point is this: A negative outlook will lead to negative predictions, and you will start to unconsciously manipulate your environment to deliver those predictions.

The psychologist Daniel Kahneman has much to say on this topic. He says the self that makes decisions in your life is usually the remembering one. It drags your current self around in pursuit of new memories, anticipating them based on old memories. The current self has little control over your future.

Kahneman’s research suggests there are two channels through which you decide whether or not you are happy. The current self is happy when experiencing nice things. The remembering self is happy when you look back on your life and pull up plenty of positive memories.

Life for you and many others is full of conflict between these two selves over how best to be happy. Kahneman’s research shows that happiness can’t be all one or all the other. You have to be happy in the flow of time while simultaneously creating memories you can look back on later.

An expert’s own expectation can act like Kryptonite on the expert’s superpowers. Expectation, as it turns out, is just as important as raw sensation.

Expensive wine is like anything else that is expensive: The expectation it will taste better actually makes it taste better.

People liked Coca-Cola’s advertising more than Pepsi’s, so even though they tasted pretty much the same, when they saw that bright red can with a white ribbon people chose Coke. So for the Pepsi Challenge, they removed the logos. At first, the researchers thought they should put some sort of label on the glasses. So they went with M and Q. People said they liked Pepsi, labeled M, better than Coke, labeled Q. Irritated by this, Coca-Cola did their own study and put Coke in both glasses. Again, M won the contest. It turned out it wasn’t the soda; people just liked the letter M better than the letter Q.

You might even have your own system devised to maximize your chances. You never sit in the outer seats in blackjack. You play only slot machines with real handles, or you blow on the dice before tossing them down the craps table. None of this, of course, has any real effect on the odds. The odds are fixed, but sometimes you think you can beat them,

When you watch someone play a slot machine for twenty minutes and then walk away, you might rush and take over because it seems as if the one-armed bandit is ready to pay off after so many losses, but it isn’t. This is the gambler’s fallacy, assuming the odds change based on the history of the outcomes so far. Sure, over a long enough period of time the odds will return to normal, but in the short run there is no way to outsmart random chance.

Those who are not grounded in reality, oddly enough, often achieve a lot in life simply because they believe they can and try harder than others.

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. Some things are predictable and manageable, but the farther away in time an event occurs, the less power you have over it. The farther away from your body and the more people involved, the less agency you wield. Like a billion rolls of a trillion dice, the factors at play are too complex, too random to truly manage. You can no more predict the course of your life than you could the shape of a cloud. So seek to control the small things, the things that matter, and let them pile up into a heap of happiness. In the bigger picture, control is an illusion anyway.

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.

Psychologists know most behavior is the result of a tug-of-war between external and internal forces. 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.

According to psychologist Harold Kelly, when you conjure an attribution for someone else’s actions, you consider consistency. If one of your friends gets into a fight with someone you know, you first look to see if their behavior is consistent with their past behaviors. If they are always getting into fights over petty disagreements, you place the blame on their personality. If they are usually

People are not good at heart, Zimbardo says, but because their environment encourages it. Anyone, he believes, is capable of becoming a monster if given the power and opportunity.

You shift from introvert to extrovert, from brainiac to simpleton, from charismatic to impish—depending on where you find yourself and who is watching.

The fundamental attribution error leads to labels and assumptions about who people are, but remember first impressions are mostly incorrect. Those impressions will linger until you get to know people and understand their situation and the circumstances in which their behavior is generated. Knowing this doesn’t mean you must forgive evil, but perhaps it can help prevent it.