Dave O’Reilly’s Blog

	Risk: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn’t - and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger Author: Dan Gardner Rating:
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In the tradition of Malcolm Gladwell, Gardner explores a new way of thinking about the decisions we make. We are the safest and healthiest human beings who ever lived, and yet irrational fear is growing, with deadly consequences — such as the 1,595 Americans killed when they made the mistake of switching from planes to cars after September 11. In part, this irrationality is caused by those — politicians, activists, and the media — who promote fear for their own gain. Culture also matters. But a more fundamental cause is human psychology. Working with risk science pioneer Paul Slovic, author Dan Gardner sets out to explain in a compulsively readable fashion just what that statement above means as to how we make decisions and run our lives. We learn that the brain has not one but two systems to analyze risk. One is primitive, unconscious, and intuitive. The other is conscious and rational. The two systems often agree, but occasionally they come to very different conclusions. When that happens, we can find ourselves worrying about what the statistics tell us is a trivial threat — terrorism, child abduction, cancer caused by chemical pollution — or shrugging off serious risks like obesity and smoking. Gladwell told us about “the black box” of our brains; Gardner takes us inside, helping us to understand how to deconstruct the information we’re bombarded with and respond more logically and adaptively to our world. Risk is cutting-edge reading. From the Hardcover edition.

This book is about how poor people are at assessing risk. It provides many examples of risks that people grossly overestimate the danger of; for example the chances of being killed by a terrorist or the chances of one of your children being abducted by a stranger. The chances of both of these are miniscule, but your innate estimate of the probability of such events senses the danger and rates them as more likely than they really are. This problem, of course, is not helped by sensationalist reporting in the media.

I have seen this book is favourably compared with the work of Malcom Gladwell, but I don’t think that does it justice. If you read my previous posts on Blink and The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki you can see what my problem with those types of books is.

Maybe I’m not being so critical of this book because it strikes a chord with my personal opinions on how disproportionately bad the news that we see/hear/read about is. Anyway, I enjoyed this one.

	Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Author: Malcolm Gladwell Rating:
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Blink is about the first two seconds of looking–the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of “thin slices” of behavior. The key is to rely on our “adaptive unconscious”–a 24/7 mental valet–that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea. Gladwell includes caveats about leaping to conclusions: marketers can manipulate our first impressions, high arousal moments make us “mind blind,” focusing on the wrong cue leaves us vulnerable to “the Warren Harding Effect” (i.e., voting for a handsome but hapless president). In a provocative chapter that exposes the “dark side of blink,” he illuminates the failure of rapid cognition in the tragic stakeout and murder of Amadou Diallo in the Bronx. He underlines studies about autism, facial reading and cardio uptick to urge training that enhances high-stakes decision-making. In this brilliant, cage-rattling book, one can only wish for a thicker slice of Gladwell’s ideas about what Blink Camp might look like. –Barbara Mackoff

This book is about first impressions and “knowing” something before you can really explain why you know that. Ironically enough I got a pretty bad first impression of this book; there was something funny I didn’t really like about it. The book uses examples of how experts in an area such as archaeology can get a bad feeling about something which later turns out to be right. In fact the core hypothesis of this book is almost the exact opposite of the one proposed in the widsom of crowds which says that a group of uneducated people can make a more intelligent decision than even an expert in a particular area.

I suppose the point here is that sometimes groups make better decisions and sometimes it’s the individual experts that will make the best decision. Both of these books, when you are reading them, would have you think that their way of thinking is the only way of thinking, and if you’re not doing it their way, you’re doing it wrong.

I would assert that the best way to know whether or not something is true is to take your time and conduct a series of experiments and build the body of knowledge until a scientific consensus emerges. If you can’t wait that long then at least conduct some well thought out experiments! Hurray for science!

	Quirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday Lives Author: Richard Wiseman Rating:
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This is the second book by Richard Wiseman that I have read in the past while (the other one was did you spot the gorilla?). I must say they’re both very enjoyable reads.

At the very end of this book he presents the results of an experimental dinner party where he asks people to rate how interesting they found some of the facts presented in this book. I think the contents of the list gives a great indication of the type of book this is and what it’s about. So here they are in reverse order:

10. People asked to write down a few words describing a university professor answer more Trivian Pursuit questions correctly than those describing a football hooligan.

9. Women’s personal ads would attract more replies if they were written by a man. The opposite is not true of men’s ads.

8. The mona lisa seems enigmatic because Leonardo da Vinci painted her so that her smile appears more striking when people look at her eyes than her mouth.

7. Women van drivers are more likely than others to take more than ten items through the express lane in a supermarket, break speed limits, and park in restricted areas.

6. Some seemingly ghostly experiences, such as feeling an odd sense of presence, are actually due to low-frequency sound waves produced by the wind blowing across an open window.

5. Words containing the ‘K’ sound - such as duck, quack and Krusty the Colown - are especially likely to make people laugh.

4. People born during the summer are luckier than those born in the winter - temperature differences around the time of birth makes summer-borns more optimistic and open to opportunities.

3. The best way of detecting lies is to listen rather than look - liars say less, give fewer details, and use the word ‘I’ less than people telling the truth.

2. The difference between a genuine and a fake smile is all in the eyes - in a genuine smile, the skin around the eyes crinkles, in a fake smile it remains much flatter.

1. People would rather wear a sweater that has been dropped in dog faeces and not washed, than one that has been dry-cleaned but used to belong to a mass murderer.

If you want to find out more (and there’s lots more to find out), buy the book!

	How the Mind Works Author: Steven Pinker Rating:
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In this extraordinary bestseller, Steven Pinker, one of the world’s leading cognitive scientists, does for the rest of the mind what he did for language in his 1994 book, The Language Instinct. He explains what the mind is, how it evolved, and how it allows us to see, think, feel, laugh, interact, enjoy the arts, and ponder the mysteries of life. And he does it with the wit that prompted Mark Ridley to write in the New York Times Book Review, “No other science writer makes me laugh so much. . . . [Pinker] deserves the superlatives that are lavished on him.” The arguments in the book are as bold as its title. Pinker rehabilitates some unfashionable ideas, such as that the mind is a computer and that human nature was shaped by natural selection, and challenges fashionable ones, such as that passionate emotions are irrational, that parents socialize their children, and that nature is good and modern society corrupting.

This is a fantastic book about cognitive and evolutionary psychology. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in these fields. It provides a great introduction to a large number of topics and an excellent set of references for further reading. At almost 600 pages it’s a fairly substantial undertaking, but well worth sticking with!

	How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life Author: Thomas Gilovich Rating:
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This is another great book on the fallibility of human reason and how we our tricked by out cognitive processes into believing things about the world that aren’t true. It’s quite similar to Trick or Treatment, but with a much broader scope.

A very good popular psychology book that I would recommend to people interested in skepticism and the psychological basis for flawed reasoning.

	Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial Author: Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst Rating:
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This is a brilliant book for anyone who is interested in really finding out about the effectiveness of alternative ‘treatments’. The book starts with an discussion of the process of clinical trials; used to assess the effectiveness of a treatment. After that acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic and herbal remedies are examined in detail and a summary of all evidence for and against their effectiveness. At the end of the book is an appendix with 30 other alternative treatments examined and summarised.

Buy this book if you’re in you’re thinking of getting an alternative treatment regardless of whether you are receiving conventional treatment at the same time or not!!! Some alternative treatments can inhibit or interfere with the effectiveness of conventional treatments. Other alternative therapists advise their patients not to take conventional medicine at the same time. It’s always best to inform yourself to the maximum extent of your ability before entrusting yourself to any medical professional; either conventional or alternative.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough!

	Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment Author: Martin Seligman Rating:
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Over a decade ago, Martin Seligman charted a new approach to living with “flexible optimism.” Now, in his most stimulating and persuasive book to date, the bestselling author of Learned Optimism introduces the revolutionary, scientifically based idea of “Positive Psychology.” Positive Psychology focuses on strengths rather than weaknesses, asserting that happiness is not the result of good genes or luck. Seligman teaches readers that happiness can be cultivated by identifying and using many of the strengths and traits that they already possess - including kindness, originality, humor, optimism, and generosity. By frequently calling upon their “signature strengths” in all the crucial realms of life, readers will not only develop natural buffers against misfortune and the experience of negative emotion, they will move their lives up to a new, more positive plane. Drawing on groundbreaking psychological research, Seligman shows how Positive Psychology is shifting the profession’s paradigm away from its narrow-minded focus on pathology, victimology, and mental illness to positive emotion, virtue and strength, and positive institutions. Our signature strengths can be nurtured throughout our lives, with benefits to our health, relationships, and careers. Seligman provides the Signature Strengths Survey along with a variety of brief tests that can be used to measure how much positive emotion readers experience, in order to help determine what their highest strengths are. The life-changing lesson of Authentic Happiness is that by identifying the very best in ourselves, we can improve the world around us and achieve new and sustainable levels of authentic contentment, gratification, and meaning.

This is a very interesting book that contains a lot of information about what psychology can tell a person about how to maximise happiness in their lives. I find it encouraging that some psychologists are taking the field in that direction; because it’s just as important to prevent mental illness through positive state of mind as it is to have good techniques for curing mental illness when it occurs.

I have given this book 4 stars rather than 5 because I have a niggling worry that it’s a self-help book. I think this book would benefit from distancing itself from the self-help movement which is as a general rule, a load of scam artists stealing vulnerable people’s money. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t fall into this category of book; some of the examples and studies mentioned in the book are ones that I was already aware of because of my casual research in psychology, so I believe that there is more of a basis to this book than the typical self-help book.

Anyway, it’s certainly worth taking a read for yourself.

	Understanding Children’s Development (Basic Psychology) Author: Mark Blades Rating:
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This leading child development text, widely acclaimed for its international coverage and its rigorous research-based approach, has been thoroughly revised and updated: Provides international coverage. Takes a rigorous research-based approach. Now includes an additional chapter on prenatal development and birth. Student-friendly features include detailed case studies, suggestions for further reading, and ideas for classroom discussion. Useful online support material, including multiple choice questions, to accompany this text is available at www.blackwellpublishing.com/ucd.

This is an undergraduate university textbook so it was a bit of an undertaking to read, however I enjoyed it immensely. It provides some great detail into the current state of the art of developmental psychology and insight into children’s thought processes.

This is not a practical guide of any sort, in case anyone buys this thinking it’s a book of advice for parents on raising their children (not that I think parents shouldn’t read it)! The content of this book is much more abstract and scientific.

1987 documentary by Richard Dawkins about the prisoner’s dilemma with many examples from both nature and human history (e.g. reciprocal ‘live and let live’ arrangements in the trenches in world war one). The sound is a bit out of sync with the video, but it’s still definitely worth a look.

Very interesting BBC documentary about the differences in the brains and brain chemistry of men and women.