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A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives | |||||||
 
| 80% Recommended by our customers. Publisher: W. W. Norton Catalog: Book Release date: 2008-06-23 Media: Paperback Number of pages: 256 Ean: 9780393331639 Book Isbn: 0393331636  Tip: compare prices with similar booksAuthor:
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"Provocative enough to make you start questioning your each and every action."—Entertainment Weekly The brain's power is confirmed and touted every day in new studies and research. And yet we tend to take our brains for granted, without suspecting that those masses of hard-working neurons might not always be working for us. Cordelia Fine introduces us to a brain we might not want to meet, a brain with a mind of its own. She illustrates the brain's tendency toward self-delusion as she explores how the mind defends and glorifies the ego by twisting and warping our perceptions. Our brains employ a slew of inborn mind-bugs and prejudices, from hindsight bias to unrealistic optimism, from moral excuse-making to wishful thinking—all designed to prevent us from seeing the truth about the world and the people around us, and about ourselves. |
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 Written on August 31, 2007 Summary: Can Your Trust Yourself To... According to the story, in a survey taken several years ago, all incoming freshman at MIT were asked if they expected to graduate in the top half of their class. Ninety-seven percent responded that they did. And another piece of research in 1989 compared mathematical competence in students in eight different countries. Korean students ranked the highest in mathematical skills, while those in the United States had the lowest rating. Yet the American students had the highest overall opinion of their ability, while the Koreans who had the best results had the lowest opinion of how they had done. Most of us believe ourselves to be to be above average compared with most other people: better drivers, better at evaluating character, more ethical and capable. Indeed when people begin to feel that they are below average that alone can lead to a referral to a psychologist, for it may be a sign of depression or some other disorder. How is it that we are so good at insulating ourselves against reality? That is the core question that Cordelia Fine tries to answer in this, ahem, fine book. She details - perhaps, at times, over-details - a number of fascinating research studies into the very common problem of self-deception and self-distortion. This is a problem that stretches beyond the confines of academic psychology into psychotherapy, personal and spiritual development, relationships and even politics. She coins a nice term - our "Vain brain" - to capture the way in which we distort reality about ourselves and the ways in which the brain biases perception to favor the perceiver. It is a commonplace that when things are going well, we tend to attribute our success to our sterling qualities, while failures are more commonly a result of bad luck and trouble, the perfidy of others or that there were other "reasons" that staked the deck against us. Our brains have a remarkable ability to edit our memories and insights in such a way that it can constantly protect us from the truths that surround us. Cordelia also discusses the way in which the brain warps perceptions to match emotions. She discusses one of the most bizarre things that you will see in clinical practice: the so-called Cotard delusion in which people believe that they, or parts of their bodies, are dead. It most often occurs in psychotic depression in the elderly: the depression drives the thought that they are dead. One of the things that makes this book interesting is that Cordelia also proposes some ways of dealing with the problems of a self-deception driven by unconscious (? preconscious) processes: recognize and acknowledge your brain's scheming, and become aware of the ways in which your brain and mind play tricks upon you; develop greater self-awareness and work to see the world as it is. Though she does not explicitly say so, this is what spiritual teachers have recommended for millennia. She also mentions the way in which we can recruit our unconscious processes to fulfill unconscious aspirations. She does not go into very much detail about the "hows" of doing so, and that might be a good topic for her next book. This is a well-written, entertaining and engaging book that I recommend highly. Richard G. Petty, MD, author of Healing, Meaning and Purpose: The Magical Power of the Emerging Laws of Life Written on August 12, 2007 Summary: So That's What Experimental Psychologists Do! My own education was in the field of experimental psychology, and people are forever asking me "what do experimental psychologists do?" This is a totally fun psych book for those with no or limited exposure to the field of psychology. Ms Fine presents the reader with a large number of experiments that help us understand our individual and social personalities. The author discusses the infamous Milgram study of obedience to authority where a majority of volunteers gave other volunteers (actually experimenter confederates) what they thought were increasing amounts of electrical shock when the experimenter told them to. Inner moral virtue sometimes yields to external situations involving authority. My favorite study is the classic where a group of subjects have agreed to give a speech in another building. One group is told that if they leave now they will just get there on time. Another group was told they had plenty of time, and the third group was told they had to hurry as they will probably be late. On the way over to the next building each individual passed a man lying against a wall who seemed to be in considerable pain. Only 10% of the "late" group stopped to help. Only the "lots of time" group showed a stopping rate of over 50%. The kicker here is that these volunteers were students at Princeton Theological Seminary who had agreed to give a talk on the Good Samaritan. Do our inner values or attitudes always convert to behavior? Evidently not. There's lots of good stuff on how we frequently delude ourselves into thinking we are doing a lot better than we really are - after all if we didn't we'd probably get depressed. Ms Fine has an extremely interesting section on "priming" in regard to stereotypes and prejudice. In one experiment one group of men were shown a group of ads that presented women as sex objects while another group were shown ads with no women in them. Individuals in each group were then asked to interview a female job applicant. Those who had seen the sexist ads just prior to the interview sat closer to the applicant, flirted more, and asked sexually inappropriate questions. How easily we can be influenced to display bigoted behavior. This is definitely not one of those "new age" books that unfortunately tend to fill the Psychology section of most book stores. It is informative and entertaining, and will give you a good introduction to psychological research. I should point out that several of the older studies, like Milgram's, couldn't be undertaken today as current day experimental ethics rules won't allow them. Then, of course, there's the old joke that these studies tell us a lot about college sophomores (probably the biggest source of volunteers), but what about the rest of us? Ms Fine also slips in some anecdotes about her experiences with her husband. They are generally quite amusing, but I can't help but think that she is giving us a cry for help. Written on March 20, 2007 Summary: Read this and go UMM! Everyone that reads this book will relate to it, on a very real level. You will find yourself thinking "How does she know all this about me?" Sometimes funny, sometimes a little scary, and definatly entertaining. Everyone that survives deppression should read this book and keep it very close for reference. I say 'survives' rather than suffer because suffering suggests that we, I, feel negative affects when really they are only socially negative. Read the first chapter of the book and you will understand exactly what I mean. For people who have friends who live with deppression, and have difficulty dealing with, understanding what is going on for them will get a great insight as to what is actually happening. Hopefully this will be enough to begin understanding, bridging the gaps. To quote a great quote, Tell me and I may forget, Show me and I may remember, Involve me and I will understand. This book will involve everyone! Written on January 25, 2007 Summary: Insightful but relies on college perception A fascinating and ego bruising journey through our self-centered brains in which Cordelia Fine lays bare our `true human nature' to protect our identity constructs and fantasy beliefs and our need to be `right'. However, the reliance on college population studies undermines the validity of generalization to every brain. Different personal, cultural, and religious experiences of individuals, particularly in later stages of development would provide a wider range of responses and reactions than the her overreliance on the narrow college populations in her book. That said it is an important work that punctures the veil of an altruistic human nature and frames a much more complicated and ambiguous human nature that can only further our understanding of the "real" human brain. Written on January 20, 2007 Summary: A funny thing happened while I was thinking... The funny thing is the thought itself. Self-delusion is a keystone of human cognition and Cordelia Fine has described our sad state with great humor. Even though I got much of this from my undergraduate psych classes, Fine is such a wit and pulls the material together in such an engaging manner that I just loved reading the book. I disagree with an earlier reviewer's suggestion that Kida's "Don't Believe Everything You Think" is a better book. I appreciated Kida's book a lot and it has a different goal for the reader. But as a writer I enjoyed Fine's delightful wit more. Both writers have something to offer towards a better understanding of human behavior. |
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| Our price | $10.85 | $13.59 | $9.72 | $13.59 | $12.24 | $16.47 |
| List price | $15.95 | $19.98 | $15.00 | $19.98 | $18.00 | $24.95 |
| Lowest used price | $8.44 | $8.99 | $8.46 | $10.70 | $11.39 | $12.99 |
| Lowest new price | $8.90 | $12.66 | $8.73 | $10.75 | $10.03 | $13.80 |
| Catalog | Book | Book | Book | Book | Book | Book |
| Release date | 2008-06-23 | 2006-05-02 | 2008-03 | 2007-04-26 | 2008-01-22 | 2008-02-05 |
| Media | Paperback | Paperback | Paperback | Paperback | Paperback | Hardcover |
| Number of pages | 256 | 286 | 304 | 250 | 576 | 272 |
| Ean | 9780393331639 | 9781591024088 | 9780156033909 | 9781591025092 | 9780812974447 | 9780312359201 |
| Book Isbn | 0393331636 | 1591024080 | 0156033909 | 1591025095 | 0812974441 | 0312359209 |
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