|
8180494
|
The future is the result of actions, and actions are the result of behavior, and behavior is the result of prediction.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
3a43149
|
In science, you move closer to the truth by seeking evidence to the contrary. Perhaps the same method should inform your opinions as well.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
d25d655
|
In experiments at Baylor University where people were given Coke and Pepsi in unmarked cups and then hooked up to a brain scanner, the device clearly showed a certain number of them preferred Pepsi while tasting it. When those people were told they were drinking Pepsi, a fraction of them, the ones who had enjoyed Coke all their lives, did something unexpected. The scanner showed their brains scrambling the pleasure signals, dampening them. ..
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
6666c7a
|
Do you vote? If not, is it because you think it doesn't matter because things never change, or politicians are evil on both sides, or one vote in several million doesn't count? Yeah, that's learned helplessness.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
f2c8630
|
The real trouble begins when confirmation bias distorts your active pursuit of facts.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
642f6f4
|
THE MISCONCEPTION: Memories are played back like recordings. THE TRUTH: Memories are constructed anew each time from whatever information is currently available, which makes them highly permeable to influences from the present.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
86c6e2a
|
The Third Person Effect THE MISCONCEPTION: You believe your opinions and decisions are based on experience and facts, while those who disagree with you are falling for the lies and propaganda of sources you don't trust. THE TRUTH: Everyone believes the people they disagree with are gullible, and everyone thinks they are far less susceptible to persuasion than they truly are.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
75cbd5e
|
You make plans and decisions assuming randomness and chaos are for chumps. The illusion of control is a peculiar thing because it often leads to high self-esteem and a belief your destiny is yours for the making more than it really is. This over-optimistic view can translate into actual action, rolling with the punches and moving ahead no matter what. Often, this attitude helps lead to success. Eventually, though, most people get punched in..
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
66237d8
|
Having a dissenting opinion on movies, music, or clothes, or owning clever or obscure possessions, is the way middle-class people fight one another for status. They can't out-consume one another because they can't afford it, but they can out-taste one another.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
bb558d4
|
You can't improve the things you love if you never allow them to be imperfect. Thinking in this way, if you looked hard enough so that you saw every flaw in every example, you would soon find that nothing matched your expectations or deserved your definitions, and the membership of every group and category you hold dear would drop to zero.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
0bf83c1
|
Power breeds certainty, and certainty has no clout against the unpredictable, whether you are playing poker or running a country.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
43d7b20
|
A lot of what you presume to be evidence of your intelligence is just part of a vast cultural inheritance.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
e494ddd
|
You will soon realize you are not so smart, and thanks to a plethora of cognitive biases, faulty heuristics, and common fallacies of thought, you are probably deluding yourself minute by minute just to cope with reality.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
317888e
|
When you fear you will confirm a negative stereotype, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy not because the stereotype is true, but because you can't stop worrying that you could become an example proving it. This self-fulfilling prophecy, being only a matter of perception, can be easily sublimated. Another study by Steele measured the math abilities of men versus women. When the questions were easy, the women and men performed the same...
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
316b2c4
|
THE MISCONCEPTION: Your opinions are the result of years of rational, objective analysis. THE TRUTH: Your opinions are the result of years of paying attention to information that confirmed what you believed, while ignoring information that challenged your preconceived notions.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
e86c96f
|
You are aware only of a small amount of the total information your eyes take in, and even less is processed by your conscious mind and remembered.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
6d082ce
|
A memory is least accurate when most reflected upon, and most accurate when least pondered. Together, those two facts make eyewitness testimony basically worthless. This isn't what most people believe. Psychologists Dan Simons and Christopher Chabris published a study in 2011 revealing that 63 percent of those surveyed in the United States believe memory works like a video camera, and another 48 percent believe memories are permanent. An ad..
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
806c931
|
The idea that people would be happier if they maintained a constant state of realism is a beautiful sentiment, but Taylor and Brown found just the opposite. They presented a new theory that suggested that well-being came from unrealistic views of reality. They said you reduce the stress of terminal illness or a high-pressure job or unexpected tragedy by resorting to optimism and delusion. Your wildly inaccurate self-evaluations get you thro..
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
00cf9bb
|
Wiseman speculated that what we call luck is actually a pattern of behaviors that coincide with a style of understanding and interacting with the events and people you encounter throughout life. Unlucky people are narrowly focused, he observed. They crave security and tend to be more anxious, and instead of wading into the sea of random chance open to what may come, they remain fixated on controlling the situation, on seeking a specific goa..
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
6036289
|
THE MISCONCEPTION: You procrastinate because you are lazy and can't manage your time well. THE TRUTH: Procrastination is fueled by weakness in the face of impulse and a failure to think about thinking.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
e31b141
|
Even as the brain is dying, it refuses to stop generating a narrative, the scaffolding upon which it weaves cause and effect, memory and experience, feeling and cognition. Narrative is so important to survival that it is literally the last thing you give up before becoming a sack of meat.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
3a7915c
|
The tendency to believe vague statements designed to appeal to just about anyone is called the Forer effect, and psychologists point to this phenomenon to explain why people fall for pseudoscience like biorhythms, iridology, and phrenology, or mysticism like astrology, numerology, and tarot cards.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
f87b6d9
|
Education is as much about learning what you don't know as it is about adding to what you do.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
427b144
|
Failing often is the only way to ever get the things you want out of life.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
cfc8106
|
THE MISCONCEPTION: Your fight-or-flight instincts kick in and you panic when disaster strikes. THE TRUTH: You often become abnormally calm and pretend everything is normal in a crisis.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
d759570
|
You are a story you tell yourself.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
50c4e95
|
Self-esteem is mostly self-delusion, but it serves a purpose. You are biologically driven to think highly of yourself in order to avoid stagnation. If you were to stop and truly examine your faults and failures, you would become paralyzed by fear and doubt.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
19fb06a
|
THE MISCONCEPTION: When you can't explain something, you focus on what you can prove. THE TRUTH: When you are unsure of something, you are more likely to accept strange explanations.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
603781f
|
It is the result of thinking, not the process if thinking, that occurs spontaneously in consciousness.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
fbaa18f
|
If you neglect your personal space and allow chaos and clutter to creep in, it will affect you, and perhaps encourage further neglect. Positive feedback loops should improve your life, not detract from it. You can't prime yourself directly, but you can create environments conducive to the mental states you wish to achieve.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
c5e83cb
|
In 2008, Lawrence Williams and John Bargh conducted a study where they had people meet strangers. One group held a cup of warm coffee, and the other group held iced coffee. Later, when asked to rate the stranger's personality, the people who held the warm coffee said they found the stranger to be nice, generous, and caring. The other group said the same person was difficult, standoffish, hard to talk to. In another round of research subject..
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
8f40649
|
THE MISCONCEPTION: The larger the consensus, the more likely it is correct. THE TRUTH: A belief is not more likely to be accurate just because many people share it.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
0d4b8dd
|
THE MISCONCEPTION: You know when you are lying to yourself. THE TRUTH: You are often ignorant of your motivations and create fictional narratives to explain your decisions, emotions, and history without realizing it.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
a30b903
|
THE MISCONCEPTION: You are more concerned with the validity of information than the person delivering it. THE TRUTH: The status and credentials of an individual greatly influence your perception of that individual's message.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
d5617ee
|
THE MISCONCEPTION: You rationally analyze all factors before making a choice or determining value. THE TRUTH: Your first perception lingers in your mind, affecting later perceptions and decisions.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
4afbcaf
|
You might be a great judge of character, but you need to be a great judge of evidence to avoid delusion.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
b130238
|
THE MISCONCEPTION: When someone is hurt, people rush to their aid. THE TRUTH: The more people who witness a person in distress, the less likely it is that any one person will help.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
624aa0d
|
People who use the number of friends they have on Facebook as a metric of their social standing are fooling themselves. You can share videos of fainting goats with hundreds of acquaintances and thousands of followers, but you can trust a secret only with a handful of true friends.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
dc7e716
|
Catharsis THE MISCONCEPTION: Venting your anger is an effective way to reduce stress and prevent lashing out at friends and family. THE TRUTH: Venting increases aggressive behavior over time.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
85de618
|
You are unaware of the constant nudging you receive from ideas formed in your unconscious mind.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
37790ec
|
The psychologist Jonathan Haidt says many people who don't consciously believe in karma still believe deep down in some version of it, calling it whatever seems appropriate in their own culture. They see systems like welfare or affirmative action as disrupting the balance of the natural world. Slackers, they think, would get what they deserve if the government kept their noses out of it. Their bad karma would come around to crush them, but ..
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
58fe689
|
The research shows that groups of friends who allow members to disagree and still be friends are more likely to come to better decisions. So the next time you are in a group of people trying to reach consensus, be the asshole. Every group needs one, and it might as well be you.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
fd96def
|
THE MISCONCEPTION: In all you do, you strive for success. THE TRUTH: You often create conditions for failure ahead of time to protect your ego.
|
|
|
David McRaney |
|
5112215
|
Hundreds of experiments into the misinformation effect have been conducted, and people have been convinced of all sorts of things. Screwdrivers become wrenches, white men become black men, and experiences involving other people get traded back and forth. In one study, [Elizabeth] Loftus convinced people they were once lost in a shopping mall as a child. She had subjects read four essays provided by family members, but the one about getting ..
|
|
|
David McRaney |