On second thought : [outsmarting your mind's hard-wired habits] / Wray Herbert.

Format:

Sound recording

Author/Creator:

Herbert, Wray.

Contributor:

Miller, Dan John.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Thought and thinking.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 audio file (8 hr., 36 min., 18 sec.))

Edition:

Unabridged.

Place of Publication:

Old Saybrook : Tantor, 2013.

Summary:

Our brains are marvels, hard-wired by millions of years of evolution to boast a number of mental shortcuts, biases, and tricks that allow us to negotiate our complicated lives without overthinking every choice and decision we have to make. Unfortunately, those ancient shortcuts don't always work to our advantage in our modern lives-when we don't also think slowly and rationally, those hard-wired habits can trip us up. This intriguing book helps us to understand how our minds are predisposed to think about the world-and how to avoid many of life's common mistakes.Among the surprising examples of these mental habits at work in our lives:-Experienced skiers make fatal mistakes on familiar terrain more often than less experienced ones.-Ninety-nine point nine percent of the citizens of France are registered organ donors, but only 28 percent of Americans are.-Early birds on jury duty are more likely to succumb to racial stereotypes in delivering verdicts when the day gets late.-People who are hungry for lunch will donate less money to charity.Wray Herbert introduces us to twenty of these shortcuts and biases, explaining how they affect us in the real world and how they're being studied in labs around the world.

Contents:

Part 1: The body in the world. The visceral heuristic: cold shoulders and clean hands

The visionary heuristic: hills and home runs

The momentum heuristic: intuitive physics

The fluency heuristic: the power of penmanship

The mimicry heuristic: feeling your inner ape

The mapmaker heuristic: getting away from it all

Part 2: Numbers in our neurons. The arithmetic heuristic: "for just pennies a day"

The scarcity heuristic: supply and desire

The anchor heuristic: why things cost $19.95

The calorie heuristic: "will work for food"

The decoy heuristic: please don't make me choose

The futuristic heuristic: a wrinkle in time

Part 3: how the mind makes meaning. The design heuristic: simplicity and purpose

The foraging heuristic: exploring and exploiting

The caricature heuristic: engineering prejudice

The cooties heuristic: contagion and magical thinking

The naturalist heuristic: back to the garden

The whodunit heuristic: murder and mortality

The grim reaper heuristic: loneliness and zealotry

The default heuristic: not to decide is ...

Notes:

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

ISBN:

9781400198382

1400198380

OCLC:

861219259

Publisher Number:

MWT11026530