You Are Not So Smart
David McRaney
Gotham
Nonfiction, Psychology
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Description
You're not like those other people - the ones who are swayed by advertizing and political posturing, who jump to conclusions, who are willfully
blind to their own weaknesses, who are capable of acts of unthinkable callousness or cruelty. You know what's going on. You are in control of your
life and your future. Sure, you make a few mistakes, but you learned from them, and will never repeat them.
If you think all that, you are not so smart. But don't worry. Nobody else is that smart, either.
McRaney outlines 48 common intrinsic faults in human thinking that skew our perceptions, handicap our growth, and hinder logical thought processes,
most of them hardwired into our brains... yes, even yours.
Review
This is an interesting - if often depressing - look at how little control we have over our mental processes and behaviors. No, we're not mindless automata enslaved by our ancestral subconscious brains, but we still have a lot of unacknowledged clutter in the attic... much of which we cannot eliminate. The articles are short, rarely longer than three pages, and make their points without too much psychological jargon.