Though my two doctorates and experience landed me in the arenas of education and data-sharing, I soon realized that merely sharing information was not the way to get people to embrace fact. My books and speaking (I’ve lectured at Cambridge, Columbia, Oxford, Comic-Con, etc.) now focus on how to persuade people to absorb, remember, care about, and act on new information. I teach everyone from scientists to parents about how to share information in ways that get around people’s mental blockades. I’m also a Mensan and Fulbright Specialist who writes for Psychology Today and was honored by the White House.
I wrote...
Increasing the Impact of Your Research: A Practical Guide to Sharing Your Findings and Widening Your Reach
Knowledge only has impact if it is shared widely and well. If you want to share what you know, you cannot merely state facts, because people forget most of what they read or hear, and they can even resist your information. This book empowers you to bypass such problems through communicating findings widely and effectively.
The book helps you break into the media (e.g., land interviews, be a go-to expert on the news, etc.) and share knowledge through a variety of platforms (book deals, TED Talks, conference keynotes/plenaries, podcasts, etc.). It also helps you leverage social media in practical, time-saving ways to propel your brand as an expert. Networking, winning honors, and other avenues for getting information to go viral are also covered.
We resist and “explain away” any information that makes us feel wrong, immoral, or stupid. That’s how cognitive dissonance works. It also means we overvalue information that makes us feel right, and it’s the reason things like the political divide worsen between people as they age, and worsen in our country over time. Tavris and Aronson keep their own cognitive dissonance in check in a masterful balance between both conservative and liberal examples of mental mechanics at play in real life. Though the topic-based chapters invite you to jump around, I strongly advise reading from start to finish, as not a word is to be missed. I read about this topic a lot, yet this book remains my favorite of all the books that address our biased minds.
Renowned social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson take a compelling look into how the brain is wired for self-justification. This updated edition concludes with an extended discussion of how we can live with dissonance, learn from it, and perhaps, eventually, forgive ourselves.
Why is it so hard to say “I made a mistake”—and really believe it?
When we make mistakes, cling to outdated attitudes, or mistreat other people, we must calm the cognitive dissonance that jars our feelings of self-worth. And so, unconsciously, we create fictions that absolve us of responsibility, restoring our belief that we are smart, moral,…
Haidt is the one who originally equated our reasoning brains to a rider, and our automatic, emotional brains as the massive elephant we try desperately to steer. In works like Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman helped us understand how our emotional side dominates and precedes our logical side, but here Haidt helps us better understand the evolutionary reasons and modern-day implications of the fact that we lead with our instincts and feelings and thenuse our reasoning to try to convince both ourselves and others that we actually used logic. Haidt gives a fantastic TED Talk giving us a taste of what this book covers, but you’ll want to read this book for the fascinating studies and examples.
'A landmark contribution to humanity's understanding of itself' The New York Times
Why can it sometimes feel as though half the population is living in a different moral universe? Why do ideas such as 'fairness' and 'freedom' mean such different things to different people? Why is it so hard to see things from another viewpoint? Why do we come to blows over politics and religion?
Jonathan Haidt reveals that we often find it hard to get along because our minds are hardwired to be moralistic, judgemental and self-righteous. He explores how morality evolved to enable us to form communities, and…
Brothers Chip and Dan Heath authored some of my favorite books (likeMade to Stick), so it’s no wonder I love the content of Chip Heath’s one-time mentee Berger, as well. He looks at persuasion from a variety of angles and illustrates how different approaches work when we need someone to act or think a particular way. Berger opens with a hostage standoff where a deadly outcome seems unavoidable, and he breaks down why a particular approach beat the odds. Then he does it again and again (with everything from political advertising to kids willingly eating laundry detergent) to help us understand how minds can be nudged one way or another. Even the table of contents is too irresistible to not keep turning pages.
“Jonah Berger is one of those rare thinkers who blends research-based insights with immensely practical guidance. I am grateful to be one of the many who have learned from this master teacher.”—Jim Collins, author Good to Great, coauthor Built to Last
From the author of New York Times bestsellers Contagious and Invisible Influence comes a revolutionary approach to changing anyone’s mind.
Everyone has something they want to change. Marketers want to change their customers’ minds and leaders want to change organizations. Start-ups want to change industries and nonprofits want to change the world. But change is hard. Often, we persuade…
The author won my Trekkie heart when she conducted a study proving Spock is usually wrong…particularly the more certain he is. Galef breaks down our two types of thinking and why they do what they do, and then she helps us recognize bias in our own minds (something that is far more difficult to do than we might wish). She helps us lean into this new scout mindset and feel better about leaving our soldier mindset (motivated reasoning) behind. The book is also a great companion piece to the Rationally Speaking podcast that Galef cohosts with Massimo Pigliucci. Both will help you “live long and think rationally,” as Spock might have been wiser to say.
Winner of best smart thinking book 2022 (Business Book Awards) Guardian best books of 2021
'Original, thought-provoking and a joy to read' Tim Harford
'Highly recommended. It's not easy to become (more of) a scout, but it's hard not to be inspired by this book' Rutger Bregman
When it comes to what we believe, humans see what they want to see. In other words, we have what Julia Galef calls a 'soldier' mindset. From tribalism and wishful thinking, to rationalising in our personal lives and everything in between, we are driven to defend the ideas we most want to believe…
I first fell in love with Vedantam’s way of weaving storytelling with research via his podcast Hidden Brain. When I found out he had written a book I was thrilled, and his written account of our unconscious minds did not disappoint. Vedantam doesn’t shy away from anything (terrorism, capital punishment, race, gender, politics…) in tackling why our reasons for thinking things are not what we believe them to be. He helps us understand the power (for good or for bad) of our “hidden brains” in a way you will never forget.
The hidden brain is the voice in our ear when we make the most important decisions in our lives—but we’re never aware of it. The hidden brain decides whom we fall in love with and whom we hate. It tells us to vote for the white candidate and convict the dark-skinned defendant, to hire the thin woman but pay her less than the man doing the same job. It can direct us to safety when disaster strikes and move us to extraordinary acts of altruism. But it can also be manipulated to turn an ordinary person into a suicide terrorist…
Gabrielle found her grandfather’s diaries after her mother’s death, only to discover that he had been a Nazi. Born in Berlin in 1942, she and her mother fled the city in 1945, but Api, the one surviving male member of her family, stayed behind to work as a doctor in a city 90% destroyed.
Gabrielle retraces Api’s steps in the Berlin of the 21st century, torn between her love for the man who gave her the happiest years of her childhood and trying to come to terms with his Nazi membership, German guilt, and political responsibility.
Api's Berlin Diaries: My Quest to Understand My Grandfather's Nazi Past
"This is not a book I will forget any time soon."
Story Circle Book Reviews
Moving and provocative, Api's Berlin Diaries offers a personal perspective on the fall of Berlin 1945 and the far-reaching aftershocks of the Third Reich.
After her mother's death, Robinson was thrilled to find her beloved grandfather's war diaries-only to discover that he had been a Nazi.
The award-winning memoir shows Api, a doctor in Berlin, desperately trying to help the wounded in cellars without water or light. He himself was reduced to anxiety and despair, the daily diary his main refuge. As Robinson retraces Api's…
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