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The Weird Science of Psychology: 90 True Stories About Cognitive Bias, Persuasion and Why People Do What They Do. A Fun Facts Book for Curious Adults
Paperback
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Publisher: Independently Published
Pages: 110
Weight: 0.35
Height: 0.23 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
You think you weigh the evidence. You think you judge people on what they do. You think your memories are recordings of things that happened.
None of that is quite true, and this book is ninety short pieces on exactly how it goes wrong.
Why the first number you hear rewrites every estimate that follows. Mention a price, even an absurd one, and it becomes the reference point for everyone in the room. Knowing the number is manipulated does not stop it working.
Why you lose your temper fastest with the people you love most. You are not less patient with them. You are less afraid of losing them, and by evening you have run out of the effort it takes to filter.
Why silence wins negotiations. Your brain hates a vacuum and moves to fill it. Whoever can sit through the pause lets the other person talk themselves into a concession.
Why groups follow whoever decides first, right or wrong. Uncertainty is uncomfortable, a fast decision reads as confidence, and confidence gets mistaken for competence almost every time.
Why you give excellent advice and take terrible advice. Distance makes you lucid. The same problem, in your own life, gets tangled up in everything you feel about it.
Six chapters. Ninety mechanisms. Two minutes each.- The Illusions Your Brain Runs
- Why You Make Bad Decisions
- What Actually Influences People
- Relationships and Emotions
- Irrational Behavior
- Using Psychology Every Day
Every piece follows the same structure: a situation you will recognize immediately, a clear explanation of the mechanism underneath it, and one line you can repeat at a dinner table tonight. No jargon, no theory, no chapter you have to finish before the next one makes sense.
Read it in order, or open it anywhere.Three pages while the coffee brews. Ten minutes on a train. A page before bed. This book was built for the way people actually read, and it works just as well left on a coffee table for somebody else to pick up.
Perfect for: anyone who likes knowing why people behave the way they do, readers of popular psychology and behavioral science, managers and negotiators, people who want to be harder to manipulate, and anyone who has ever run out of things to say at dinner.
Fair warning. After this you will start catching yourself. You will notice the moment your brain simplifies too fast, defends an opinion it stopped believing, or invents a reason for something you had already decided. That is the point.
Part of the Dinner Party Genius series. Each volume stands alone. Together, they change the way you look at the world.
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