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 [NOOK Book]

( 22 )

Overview

An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise, based on the popular blog of the same name. 

Whether you’re deciding which smartphone to purchase or which politician to believe, you think you are a rational being whose every decision is based on cool, detached logic. But here’s the truth: You are not so smart. You’re just as deluded as the ...
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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

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More About This Book

Overview

An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise, based on the popular blog of the same name. 

Whether you’re deciding which smartphone to purchase or which politician to believe, you think you are a rational being whose every decision is based on cool, detached logic. But here’s the truth: You are not so smart. You’re just as deluded as the rest of us—but that’s okay, because being deluded is part of being human.

Growing out of David McRaney’s popular blog, You Are Not So Smart reveals that every decision we make, every thought we contemplate, and every emotion we feel comes with a story we tell ourselves to explain them. But often these stories aren’t true. Each short chapter—covering topics such as Learned Helplessness, Selling Out, and the Illusion of Transparency—is like a psychology course with all the boring parts taken out.

Bringing together popular science and psychology with humor and wit, You Are Not So Smart is a celebration of our irrational, thoroughly human behavior.
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Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

This book's subtitle assertions mark just the beginning of its counterintuitive lessons. David McRaney's You Are Not So Smart is a savvy pop psychology tutorial on little-known concepts such as the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, the Backfire Effect, the Theory of Learned Helplessness, and the Just World Fallacy. A winning guide to common fallacies for the libraries of authors like Malcolm Gladwell.

Publishers Weekly
McRaney, a Hattiesburg, Miss., resident and two-time winner of the William Randolph Hearst Award, writes simplified descriptions of psychology experiments on his blog youarenotsosmart.com. He soon found success, receiving between 17,000 to 25,000 hits a day with 6,000 subscribers to the site’s RSS feed. Now McRaney’s past blog posts resurface in this collection, which he describes as “a compendium of information about self-delusion and the wonderful ways we succumb to it.” The format first presents “The Misconception” (“You are a strong individual who doesn’t conform unless forced to”) and “The Truth” (“It takes little more than an authority figure or social pressure to get you to obey, because conformity is a survival instinct”). The “Conformity” chapter describes how hoax phone calls convinced fast-food managers to strip-search employees, followed by the famous Stanley Milgram obedience experiment in which unsuspecting subjects delivered electric shocks to a screaming actor. Other brief essays cover quitting an addiction cold turkey, first impressions, behavior as a reflection of personality, blind taste tests, and self-fulfilling prophecies. In popularizing these experiments, extracted from psychology books and journals, McRaney is poised to follow in the footsteps of folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand, who also mined academic publications when he popularized urban legends in a series of books. (Nov. 1)
Lifehacker.com
You Are Not So Smart is the go-to blog for understanding why we all do silly things.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781101545355
  • Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
  • Publication date: 10/27/2011
  • Sold by: Penguin Group
  • Format: eBook
  • Pages: 320
  • Sales rank: 30,813
  • File size: 475 KB

Meet the Author

David McRaney is a journalist who loves psychology, technology and the internet. Before going to college, he tried waiting tables, working construction, selling leather coats, building and installing electrical control panels, and owning pet stores. As a journalist, McRaney cut his teeth covering Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast and in the Pine Belt for several newspapers. Since then he has been a beat reporter, an editor, a photographer and everything in between.

He is now employed as director of new media for a broadcast television company where he also produced a television show focusing on the music of the Deep South.

He is married to Amanda McRaney and they live in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

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Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4.5
( 22 )
Rating Distribution

5 Star

(12)

4 Star

(8)

3 Star

(2)

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See All Sort by: Showing 1 – 20 of 22 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted October 27, 2011

    Great book!

    I'm so glad I bought this book. I couldn't put it down once I started reading. The author explains everything in ways that make you remember what he talks about, and applies it to situations you can understand. Very entertaining, interesting, and great conversation starters .

    3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted June 14, 2012

    Great review for thought 'fallacies'

    Without getting too deep into the book McRaney covers a lot of information in short tidy chapters. Some may think his explanations are a bit short on some subjects but I think the books purpose is to make you realize you have a lot of built in or developed biases in your thought processes. Further study can be in the notes in the back of the book. Would definitely recommend it as a beginning read and then follow up with with whatever you are more interested in from the bibliography.

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 3, 2011

    Interesting and insightful...

    A fun review of the current studies of human behavioral science.

    2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 1, 2011

    Great stuff

    This book was interesting and entertaining. Some of the chapters dealt with common issues like learned helplessness or priming but it was still fun to read. The book is written well and reviews a lot of social psychology principles and research. I only wish i had enough focus to remember and effectively use these ideas.

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 13, 2012

    Funny and interesting

    Good size chapters that will drive some humbleness into life. I often had to quit reading from time to time for a little self reflection.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 1, 2013

    It'll Blow yo It'll Blow Your Mind

    Worth the money! A deep look into the real world we live in and telling us why we do what we do.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted February 4, 2013

    It is a good book overall and I enjoyed it, but what annoyed me

    It is a good book overall and I enjoyed it, but what annoyed me was his lack of exact information. He would use vague
    statistics like "people would react [in this way] somewhat more often." It was a good book but would be better if it was 
    backed up with exact information.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 20, 2013

    Resourceful, humorous, and meaningful. Nicely organized into cha

    Resourceful, humorous, and meaningful. Nicely organized into chapters with a different topic. Does not make the audience feel totally stupid, rather McRaney points out the delusions, explains, ensures the everyone is just most likely thinking of the same thing, and offers advice on how to improve. 

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  • Posted September 14, 2012

    more from this reviewer

    Psychology and design for the non-psychologist

    An excellent book which had been recommended to me by a fellow software designer.

    If you're interested in an overview of how we behave in ways we don't always perceive then this book is jam-packed with anecdotes and examples of experiments and research into thinking and behavior without being too stuffy or scientific.

    Useful for all sorts of readers from those with an academic interest to folk simply wanting to delight in reading such oddities as why you should never sit in a room with a briefcase and a big office desk when trying to negotiate a better deal from a supplier. No...really.

    Great stuff - definitely recommend it.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted August 17, 2012

    Enjoyed

    Very enlightening book.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 20, 2012

    Great reading!

    I enjoyed reading this on my Nook and now want to buy it in paperback to use it as a reference. I will be thinking about the information and looking back on it for years to come. If you like to think about thinking - this book is for you!!

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 8, 2012

    Thought it was different......

    Was not what I had expected, however it was interesting.

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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    Posted November 1, 2012

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    Posted November 14, 2011

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    Posted March 4, 2012

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    Posted March 23, 2012

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    Posted November 6, 2011

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    Posted December 17, 2011

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    Posted February 19, 2012

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