How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life - Hardcover

Gilovich, Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0029117054 ISBN 13: 9780029117057

Publisher: Free Pr, 1991

Synopsis

Discusses the processes through which we become convinced of the validity of questionable or false beliefs such as special psychological powers and New Age health practices

About this title

About the Author:

Thomas Gilovich is a professor of psychology at Cornell University and author of The Wisest One in the Room (with Lee Ross), How We Know What Isn’t So, Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes, and Social Psychology. He lives in Ithaca, New York.

From Kirkus Reviews:

The subtexts of this first-class critique of human (non)reason are that we all tell ourselves lies (at least some of the time)...that if you want to believe it's true, it is (faith healing, ESP)...that humans can't help seeing patterns where none exist (in clouds, in disastrous events, in gamblers' streaks). Furthermore, if you would like to learn more about how not to deceive yourself, you might take a course in one of the ``soft'' probabilistic sciences like psychology. This might be construed as self-serving, since Gilovich happens to teach psychology at Cornell. However, the point is well taken because such courses should expose students to a minimum of statistics--such as the law of regression, which says that when two variables are partially related, extremes in one variable are matched, on average, by less extreme variables in the other. (Children of tall parents are tall, but not as tall as their parents.) Gilovich attributes the general lack of appreciation of the law to ``the compelling nature of judgment by representation''--by which the predicted outcome should be as close to the data as possible: the son of a 6'5'' dad should be close to 6'5''. Gilovich also points to other pitfalls in reasoning, such as failure to record negative outcomes (how many times do you dream of an old friend and not bump into him the next day?). And he discusses deeper motives--e.g., fear of dying, prospects of power or immortality, and similar self-aggrandizing traits that fortify superstitions and the will to believe. Altogether, a satisfying splash of skepticism and reason in a world where the Lake Wobegon phenomenon--``the women are strong, the men are good-looking and all the children are above average''- -prevails. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Pr
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0029117054
• ISBN 13: 9780029117057
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 216