Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Black-And-White Thinking: The Burden of a Binary Brain in a Complex World

Black-And-White Thinking: The Burden of a Binary Brain in a Complex World

Dutton, Kevin

Paperback

CognitionGeneral PsychologySelf-Help

Publisher Price: $21.00

ISBN10: 1250829453
ISBN13: 9781250829450
Publisher: Picador USA
Published: Jan 18 2022
Pages: 400
Weight: 1.06
Height: 0.89 Width: 5.38 Depth: 8.25
Language: English

A groundbreaking and timely book about how evolutionary biology can explain our black-and-white brains, and a lesson in how we can escape the pitfalls of binary thinking.

Several million years ago, natural selection equipped us with binary, black-and-white brains. Though the world was arguably simpler back then, it was in many ways much more dangerous. Not coincidentally, the binary brain was highly adept at detecting risk--the ability to analyze threats and respond to changes in the sensory environment was essential to our survival as a species.

Since then, the world has evolved--but we, for the most part, have not. Confronted with a panoply of shades of gray, our brains have a tendency to force quit to sort the things we see, hear, and experience into manageable but simplistic categories. We stereotype, pigeonhole, and, above all, draw lines where in reality there are none.

In Black-and-White Thinking, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton pulls back the curtains of the mind to reveal a new way of thinking about a problem as old as humanity itself. While our instinct for categorization often leads us astray, encouraging polarization, rigid thinking, and sometimes outright denialism, it is an essential component of the mental machinery we use to make sense of the world.

Using the latest advances in psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology, Dutton shows how we can optimize our tendency to categorize and fine-tune our minds to avoid the pitfalls of too little--and too much--complexity. He reveals the enduring importance of three super-categories--Fight versus Flight, Us versus Them, and Right versus Wrong--and argues that they remain essential not only to convincing others to change their minds but to changing the world for the better.

Black-and-White Thinking is a science-based wake-up call for an era of increasing extremism and a thought-provoking, uplifting guide to training our gray matter to see that gray really does matter.

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