About 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
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Gotham (October 27, 2011)
An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise.
You believe you are a rational, logical being who sees the world as it really is, but journalist David McRaney is here to tell you that you’re as deluded as the rest of us. But that’s OK- delusions keep us sane. You Are Not So Smart is a celebration of self-delusion. It’s like a psychology class, with all the boring parts taken out, and with no homework.
Based on the popular blog of the same name, You Are Not So Smart collects more than 46 of the lies we tell ourselves everyday, including:
- Dunbar’s Number – Humans evolved to live in bands of roughly 150 individuals, the brain cannot handle more than that number. If you have more than 150 Facebook friends, they are surely not all real friends.
- Hindsight bias – When we learn something new, we reassure ourselves that we knew it all along.
- Confirmation bias – Our brains resist new ideas, instead paying attention only to findings that reinforce our preconceived notions.
- Brand loyalty – We reach for the same brand not because we trust its quality but because we want to reassure ourselves that we made a smart choice the last time we bought it.
Packed with interesting sidebars and quick guides on cognition and common fallacies, You Are Not So Smart is a fascinating synthesis of cutting-edge psychology research to turn our minds inside out.
About David McRaney
A two-time winner of the William Randolph Hearst Award, journalist David McRaney writes the blog YouAreNotSoSmart.com. The blog receives between 17,000 and 25,000 hits a day and there are currently over 6,000 subscribers to the site’s RSS feed with each new post immediately getting read by about 10,000 people. He is a journalist and a self-described psychology nerd. He lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
David McRaney’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:
Monday, October 17th: Sara’s Organized Chaos
Tuesday, October 18th: Simply Stacie
Wednesday, October 19th: Luxury Reading
Thursday, October 20th: Girls Gone Reading
Friday, October 21st: Patricia’s Wisdom
Monday, October 24th: Overstuffed
Tuesday, October 25th: Today’s Path
Wednesday, October 26th: Unabridged Chick
Thursday, October 27th: 1330V
Wednesday, November 2nd: He Geek/She Geek
Thursday, November 3rd: Acting Balanced
Monday, November 7th: Bibliosue
Wednesday, November 9th: EvolutionYou.net
Thursday, November 10th: A Bookish Affair