my mind on books

Somehow I missed this book when it came out last February: I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World by James Geary (Harper, 2011)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

From President Obama’s political rhetoric to the housing bubble bust, James Geary proves in this fascinating and entertaining book that every aspect of our experience is molded by metaphor.

“It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!” This is one of Shakespeare’s most famous lines and one of the most well-known metaphors in literature. But metaphor is much more than a mere literary device employed by love-struck poets when they refer to their girlfriends as interstellar masses of incandescent gas. It is also intensely yet inconspicuously present in everything from ordinary conversation and commercial messaging to news reports and political speeches. Metaphor is at work in all fields of human endeavor, including economics, business, science, and psychology.

In I Is an Other, James Geary takes readers from Aristotle’s investigation of metaphor right up to the latest neuroscientific insights into how metaphor works in the brain. Along the way, he demonstrates how metaphor affects financial decision making, how metaphor lurks behind effective advertisements, how metaphor inspires learning and discovery, and how metaphor can be used as a tool to achieve emotional insight and psychological change. Geary also explores how a life without metaphor, as experienced by some people with autism spectrum disorders, significantly changes the way a person interacts with the world. As Geary demonstrates, metaphor has leaped off the page and landed with a mighty splash right in the middle of our stream of consciousness.

Witty, persuasive, and original, I Is an Other showcases how a simple way with words, which in the past was considered a tool only for poets, is really a driving force in our society. This book will open your eyes to the secret life of metaphor and its role in swinging elections, moving markets, and powerfully influencing daily life.

Preview of Kindle edition:

See also: Author’s website, TED talk:

Yuck!: The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust by Daniel Kelly (MIT Press, 2011)

(amazon.co.uk – 22 July)

Product description from the publisher:

People can be disgusted by the concrete and by the abstract–by an object they find physically repellent or by an ideology or value system they find morally abhorrent. Different things will disgust different people, depending on individual sensibilities or cultural backgrounds. In Yuck!, Daniel Kelly investigates the character and evolution of disgust, with an emphasis on understanding the role this emotion has come to play in our social and moral lives. Disgust has recently been riding a swell of scholarly attention, especially from those in the cognitive sciences and those in the humanities in the midst of the “affective turn.” Kelly surveys the empirical literature and experimental results relevant to disgust and proposes a cognitive model that can accommodate what we now know about it. He offers a new account of the evolution of disgust that builds on the model and argues that expressions of disgust are part of a sophisticated but largely automatic signaling system that humans use to transmit information about what to avoid in the local environment. Drawing on gene culture coevolutionary theory, Kelly argues that disgust was co-opted to play certain roles in our moral psychology. He shows that many of the puzzling features of moral repugnance tinged with disgust are by-products of the imperfect fit between a cognitive system that evolved to protect against poisons and parasites and the social and moral issues on which it has been brought to bear. Kelly’s account of this emotion provides a powerful argument against invoking disgust in the service of moral justification.

See also: Author interview on “Life Matters,” ABC Radio National (Australia)

more books on “disgust” at amazon.com

Expected release date is next Tuesday, June 14, for The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain by Tali Sharot (Pantheon, 2011)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

From one of the most innovative neuroscientists at work today, an investigation into the bias toward optimism that exists on a neural level in our brains and plays a major part in determining how we live our lives.

Psychologists have long been aware that most people maintain an often irrationally positive outlook on life. In fact, optimism may be crucial to our existence. Tali Sharot’s experiments, research, and findings in cognitive science have contributed to an increased understanding of the biological basis of optimism. In this fascinating exploration, she takes an in-depth, clarifying look at how the brain generates hope and what happens when it fails; how the brains of optimists and pessimists differ; why we are terrible at predicting what will make us happy; how emotions strengthen our ability to recollect; how anticipation and dread affect us; and how our optimistic illusions affect our financial, professional, and emotional decisions.

With its cutting-edge science and its wide-ranging and accessible narrative, The Optimism Bias provides us with startling new insight into the workings of the brain.

See also: Author’s website, Time Magazine article

Three titles to look forward to in October:

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker (Viking Adult, October 4, 2011)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk – 6 Oct 2011)

Product description from the publisher:

The author of The New York Times bestseller The Stuff of Thought offers a controversial history of violence.

Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species’s existence. For most of history, war, slavery, infanticide, child abuse, assassinations, pogroms, gruesome punishments, deadly quarrels, and genocide were ordinary features of life. But today, Pinker shows (with the help of more than a hundred graphs and maps) all these forms of violence have dwindled and are widely condemned. How has this happened?

This groundbreaking book continues Pinker’s exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly nonviolent world. The key, he explains, is to understand our intrinsic motives- the inner demons that incline us toward violence and the better angels that steer us away-and how changing circumstances have allowed our better angels to prevail. Exploding fatalist myths about humankind’s inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious and provocative book is sure to be hotly debated in living rooms and the Pentagon alike, and will challenge and change the way we think about our society.

The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True by Richard Dawkins, illustrated by Dave McKean (Free Press, October 4, 2011)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk – 15 Sep 2011)

Product description from the publisher:

Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene revolutionized the way we see natural selection. His blockbuster The God Delusion provoked worldwide debate. Now this master science writer has teamed up with David McKean, a master of the graphic novel, to create a new genre: the graphic science book.

The Magic of Reality

Science is our most precise and powerful tool for making sense of the world. Before we developed the scientific method, we created rich mythologies to explain the unknown. The pressing questions that primitive men and women asked are the same ones we ask as children. Who was the first person? What is the sun? The myths that address these questions are beautiful, but in every case their beauty is exceeded by the scientific truth.

With characteristic clarity and verve, Dawkins uses each chapter to answer one of these big questions. Looking first at some of the myths that arose to answer the question, he then, with the help of McKean’s marvelous full-color illustrations, dazzles us with the facts. He looks at the building blocks of matter, the first humans, the sun—explaining the life and death of stars; why there’s a night and a day—ranging from our solar system to the inner workings of our planet; what a rainbow really is—going from the rainbow in your backyard to the age of the universe; and finally, he poses a question that still baffles scientists: When did everything begin? This is a frame-by-frame look at the infinite beauty behind everyday phenomenon.

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, October 25, 2011)

(amazon.co.uk – 3 Nov 2011)

Product description from the publisher:

Daniel Kahneman, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his seminal work in psychology that challenged the rational model of judgment and decision making, is one of our most important thinkers. His ideas have had a profound and widely regarded impact on many disciplines – including economics, business, law and philosophy – and have been hugely influential on Daniel Ariely, Richard Thaler, Steven Pinker, Jonah Lehrer, and Daniel Gilbert, among many other well-known writers. But, until now, he has never brought together his many years of research and thinking in one book.

In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman introduces the “machinery of the mind.” Two systems drive the way we think and make choices: System One is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System Two is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Examining how both systems function within the mind, Kahneman exposes the extraordinary capabilities and also the faults and biases of fast thinking, and the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions on our thoughts and our choices. The role of optimism in opening up a new business and the importance of luck in a successful corporate strategy, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future and the psychological pitfalls of playing the stock market – each of these can only be understood by knowing how the two systems work together to shape our judgments and decision making.

Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman shows where we can trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choice are made in both our business and personal lives – and how we can guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Kahneman will change the way you think about thinking.

The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature by Gad Saad (Prometheus Books, 2011)

(amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

* What do all successful fast-food restaurants have in common?
* Why do men’s testosterone levels rise when they drive a Ferrari or a Porsche?
* Why are women more likely to become compulsive shoppers and men more likely to become addicted to pornography?
* How does the fashion industry play on our innate need to belong?

The answer to all of these intriguing questions is “the consuming instinct,” the underlying evolutionary basis for most of our consumer behavior.

In this highly informative and entertaining book, Dr. Gad Saad, the founder of the vibrant new field of evolutionary consumption, illuminates the relevance of our biological heritage to our daily lives as consumers. While culture is important, Dr. Saad shows that innate evolutionary forces deeply influence the foods we eat, the gifts we offer, the cosmetics and clothing styles we choose to make ourselves more attractive to potential mates, and even the cultural products that stimulate our imaginations (such as art, music, and religion).

The Consuming Instinct demonstrates that most acts of consumption can be mapped onto four key Darwinian drives—namely, survival (we prefer foods high in calories); reproduction (we use products as sexual signals); kin selection (we naturally exchange gifts with family members); and reciprocal altruism (we enjoy offering gifts to close friends). The author further highlights the analogous behaviors that exist between human consumers and a wide range of animals.

For anyone interested in the biological basis of human behavior or simply in what makes consumers tick—marketing professionals, advertisers, psychology mavens, and consumers themselves—The Consuming Instinct is a fascinating read.

See also: Author’s blog at Psychology Today