On Second Thought
Outsmarting Your Mind's Hard-Wired Habits
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Narrated by:
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Dan John Miller
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By:
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Wray Herbert
About this listen
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.
- 99.9 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 20 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.
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Story
In The Upside of Your Dark Side, two pioneering researchers in the field of psychology show that while mindfulness, kindness, and positivity can take us far, they cannot take us all the way. Sometimes, they can even hold us back. Emotions like anger, anxiety, or doubt might be uncomfortable, but it turns out that they are also incredibly useful.
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Boring and learned nothing
- By Taryn on 07-25-16
By: Todd Kashdan, and others
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The Mind Club
- Who Thinks, What Feels, and Why It Matters
- By: Daniel M. Wegner, Kurt Gray
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Nothing seems more real than the minds of other people. When you consider what your boss is thinking or whether your spouse is happy, you are admitting them into the "mind club". It's easy to assume other humans can think and feel, but what about a cow, a computer, a corporation? What kinds of minds do they have? Daniel M. Wegner and Kurt Gray are award-winning psychologists who have discovered that minds - while incredibly important - are a matter of perception.
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Who is the self in me? Am I part of something bigger?
- By Philomath on 03-24-16
By: Daniel M. Wegner, and others
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The Upside of Irrationality
- The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home
- By: Dan Ariely
- Narrated by: Simon Jones
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In his groundbreaking book Predictably Irrational, social scientist Dan Ariely revealed the multiple biases that lead us into making unwise decisions. Now, in The Upside of Irrationality, he exposes the surprising negative and positive effects irrationality can have on our lives. Focusing on our behaviors at work and in relationships, he offers new insights and eye-opening truths about what really motivates us on the job.
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Not as good as the first
- By Stephen on 06-20-10
By: Dan Ariely
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The Rational Animal
- How Evolution Made Us Smarter Than We Think
- By: Douglas T. Kenrick, Vladas Griskevicius
- Narrated by: Tim Andres Pabon
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Why do three out of four professional football players go bankrupt? How can illiterate jungle dwellers pass a test that tricks Harvard philosophers? And why do billionaires work so hard - only to give their hard-earned money away? When it comes to making decisions, the classic view is that humans are eminently rational. But growing evidence suggests instead that our choices are often irrational, biased, and occasionally even moronic. Which view is right - or is there another possibility?
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Good book
- By Justin on 02-17-17
By: Douglas T. Kenrick, and others
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The Molecule of More
- How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity - And Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race
- By: Daniel Z. Lieberman MD, Michael E. Long
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and will Determine the Fate of the Human Race, George Washington University professor and psychiatrist Daniel Z. Lieberman, MD, and Georgetown University lecturer Michael E. Long present a potentially life-changing proposal: Much of human life has an unconsidered component that explains an array of behaviors previously thought to be unrelated, including why winners cheat, why geniuses often suffer with mental illness, why nearly all diets fail, and more.
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Did you know conservatives have more orgasms?
- By Josh on 10-21-20
By: Daniel Z. Lieberman MD, and others
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Riveted
- The Science of Why Jokes Make Us Laugh, Movies Make Us Cry, and Religion Makes Us Feel One with the Universe
- By: Jim Davies
- Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Professor Jim Davies's fascinating and highly accessible book, Riveted, reveals the evolutionary underpinnings of why we find things compelling. Drawing on work from philosophy, anthropology, religious studies, psychology, economics, computer science, and biology, Davies offers a comprehensive explanation to show that in spite of the differences between the many things that we find compelling, they have similar effects on our minds and brains.
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Fun and excellent listen!
- By Alejandro Franco on 04-13-18
By: Jim Davies
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The Self Illusion
- Why There Is No "You" Inside Your Head
- By: Bruce Hood
- Narrated by: Bruce Hood
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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The Self Illusion provides a fascinating examination of how the latest science shows that our individual concept of a self is in fact an illusion. Most of us believe that we possess a self - an internal individual who resides inside our bodies, making decisions, authoring actions and possessing free will. The feeling that a single, unified, enduring self inhabits the body is compelling and inescapable. But that sovereignty of the self is increasingly under threat from science as our understanding of the brain advances.
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Disappointing
- By David R Pinsof on 05-10-12
By: Bruce Hood
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The Mind of the Market
- Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics
- By: Michael Shermer
- Narrated by: Michael Shermer
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Abridged
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The Mind of the Market will change the way we think about the economics of everyday life. Drawing on research from neuroeconomics, Michael Shermer explores what brain scans reveal about bargaining, snap purchases, and how trust is established in business. Utilizing experiments in behavioral economics, Shermer shows why people hang on to losing stocks and failing companies, why business negotiations often disintegrate into emotional tit-for-tat disputes, and why money does not make us happy.
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Good ideas overshadowed by obnoxious polemics
- By Philo on 09-15-13
By: Michael Shermer
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Blindspot
- By: Mahzarin R. Banaji, Anthony G. Greenwald
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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I know my own mind. I am able to assess others in a fair and accurate way. These self-perceptions are challenged by leading psychologists Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald as they explore the hidden biases we all carry from a lifetime of exposure to cultural attitudes about age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, sexuality, disability status, and nationality. Blindspot is the authors’ metaphor for the portion of the mind that houses hidden biases.
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Difficult to interpret.
- By Ryan Arnold on 12-21-15
By: Mahzarin R. Banaji, and others
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Cool
- How the Brain's Hidden Quest for Cool Drives Our Economy and Shapes Our World
- By: Steven Quartz, Anette Asp
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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In Cool, the neuroscientist and philosopher Steven Quartz and the political scientist Anette Asp bring together the latest findings in brain science, economics, and evolutionary biology to form a provocative theory of consumerism, revealing how the brain's "social calculator" and an instinct to rebel are the crucial missing links in understanding the motivations behind our spending habits.
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Some Useful Ideas
- By Carson on 07-20-17
By: Steven Quartz, and others
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Perception
- How Our Bodies Shape Our Minds
- By: Dennis Proffitt, Drake Baer
- Narrated by: Angela Dawe
- Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Perception marries academic rigor with mainstream accessibility. The research presented and the personalities profiled will show what it means to not only have, but be, your unique human body. The positive ramifications of viewing ourselves from this embodied perspective include greater athletic, academic, and professional achievement, more nourishing relationships, and greater personal well-being. The better we can understand what our bodies are - what they excel at, what they need, what they must avoid - the better we can live our lives.
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The body-mind connection well explained
- By Lucy A. Pithecus on 12-11-22
By: Dennis Proffitt, and others
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Moral Tribes
- Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them
- By: Joshua Greene
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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A pathbreaking neuroscientist reveals how our social instincts turn Me into Us, but turn Us against Them - and what we can do about it. The great dilemma of our shrinking world is simple: never before have those we disagree with been so present in our lives. The more globalization dissolves national borders, the more clearly we see that human beings are deeply divided on moral lines - about everything from tax codes to sexual practices to energy consumption - and that, when we really disagree, our emotions turn positively tribal.
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Good Science, Bad Philosophy
- By Jacob on 10-27-16
By: Joshua Greene
What listeners say about On Second Thought
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Joshua Kim
- 06-10-12
Main Points of On Second Thought
Wray Herbert's engaging On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind's Hard-Wired Habits has three main messages:
1. Evolved Brains: Our minds (which drive our thoughts, actions, and reactions), are evolved organs, constructed by adaptation over long periods of time to our environments.
2. Brain / Modern-Environment Mismatch: Unfortunately, our brains evolved in very different environments in which we now find ourselves. This leads to our reactions, biases, and thoughts to be too often mismatched and maladapted to circumstances in a 21st century world.
3. Choice with Knowledge: However, if we understand where our immediate reactions and thoughts come from, we can overcome irrational action and make choices that benefit our long-term goals.
Herbert is a journalist, reporting on the academic work of behavioral economists and experimental psychologists. The strength of On Second Thought is the breadth in which psychological and behavioral theory and experimental results are examined. If you are interested in the academic literature on the limits of rational behavior (as I am), then On Second Thought is both an excellent primer and synthesizer.
Dan Ariely covers much of the same ground in Predictably Irrational and the The Upside of Irrationality, but did so in a much more nuanced, intimate, curious and personal manner.
On Second Thought would have been a better book if Herbert had some questions he wanted to answer, or things he wanted to figure out about himself, and was able to weave the research on decision making into a more compelling narrative.
Despite these quibbles, On Second Thought is a worthy addition to our "dumb us" and "getting our minds around our brains" bookshelves.
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10 people found this helpful
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- Todd
- 05-09-11
Here's My Thought, "On Second Thought"
I found this book to be engaging as well as interesting. One reviewer had noted the similarities between Malcolm Gladwell books and this one.
I do agree that both author's works are captivating and explore brain science and social memes in an entertaining manner; spiced with insight, fun facts and candid stories.
I'm not sure how useful this book is, but it is a great read or listen to, in this case. This book tells of our brain's evolution and how we have become hardwired to certain decision making patterns based on psychological heuristics. After reading this book you may not be able to alter your brain's hard wiring but you will be able to (better) identify why you feel a certain way or make a decision. You'll have a better understanding of the route your mind takes to analyze choices, right or wrong.
Buy this book if you:
a) Want a good, light, non-fiction read about your brain.
b) Want to be entertained and learn something about the mechanics behind your decision making process.
This book might not be for you if you are expert in the field of cognitive brain science and seek a serious, 'just the facts' style research report.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Roy
- 10-29-10
Decision Making and the Brain
Wray Herbert in "On Second Thought" opens the reader to the world of decision making and the human brain. He reports, throughout, studies in lay terms making application along the way. Anyone who takes time to listen will learn a great deal about our decision making tendencies - many of which are counter productive. The writing is approachable for the lay person and the reading of Dan Miller is very good. "The Art of Choosing" is another volume listeners might enjoy after hearing this volume.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Road77
- 08-30-12
Got Really boring
This book lost me about halfway though. It's basically a list of different types of heuristics and then summarizes studies that back up the definition of each type. Summary after summary after summary of studies, research experiments. There is almost not practical information that I can actually put to good use. This is just a big collection of study abstracts.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Andy
- 12-23-10
Here are some interesting experiments, and btw...
I hoped this book would be good on the level of Invisible Gorilla. It was not. I as a conservative, also did not appreciate the chapter on how liberals are free thinking, brave people be nature, whereas conservatives are insecure, order hungry buffoons, who hold on to beliefs that have been debunked for decades, according to the author.
I came to this book as suggestions from reading such book as "Invisible Gorilla", "The Upside of Irrationality", "Yes", and "Switch". All of these books are great. They give information that is really interesting and useful. This one tends toward, "people like are better than people like you.
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28 people found this helpful