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

Thomas Gilovich
3.95
3,155 ratings 135 reviews
Thomas Gilovich offers a wise and readable guide to the fallacy of the obvious in everyday life. When can we trust what we believe—that "teams and players have winning streaks," that "flattery works," or that "the more people who agree, the more likely they are to be right"—and when are such beliefs suspect? Thomas Gilovich offers a guide to the fallacy of the obvious in everyday life. Illustrating his points with examples, and supporting them with the latest research findings, he documents the cognitive, social, and motivational processes that distort our thoughts, beliefs, judgments and decisions. In a rapidly changing world, the biases and stereotypes that help us process an overload of complex information inevitably distort what we would like to believe is reality. Awareness of our propensity to make these systematic errors, Gilovich argues, is the first step to more effective analysis and action.
Genres: PsychologyNonfictionSciencePhilosophySkepticismSociologyBusinessSelf HelpSocial ScienceEconomics
216 Pages

Community Reviews:

5 star
1130 (36%)
4 star
1085 (34%)
3 star
668 (21%)
2 star
210 (7%)
1 star
62 (2%)

Readers also enjoyed

Other books by Thomas Gilovich

Lists with this book

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Cosmos
Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks
A Skeptic's Library
170 books127 voters
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Outliers: The Story of Success
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Greatest Psychology Books
790 books1332 voters
The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't
What We Owe the Future
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology
Passport to Magonia: On UFOs, Folklore, and Parallel Worlds
Secret Cipher of the Ufonauts
The Origins of UAPs
33 books4 voters