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Taste in an Age of Endless Choice

Tom Vanderbilt

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781471100048
• eBook ISBN:
  9781471100079
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology

‘A luminously intelligent exploration of the paradoxes of pleasure' – Guardian

Everyone knows his or her favourite colour, the foods we most enjoy, and which season of The Sopranos deserves the most stars on Netflix. But what does it really mean when we like something? How do we decide what's good? Is it something biological? What is the role of our personal experiences in shaping our tastes? And how do businesses make use of this information? Comprehensively researched and singularly insightful, You May Also Like delves deep into psychology, marketing and neuroscience to answer these complex and fascinating questions.

From the tangled underpinnings of our food choices, to the discrete dynamics of the pop charts and our playlists, to our non-stop procession of 'thumbs' and 'likes' and 'stars,' to our insecurity before unfamiliar works of art, the book explores how we form our preferences - and how they shape us. It explains how difficult it is, even for experts, to pinpoint exactly what makes something good or enjoyable, and how the success of companies like Netflix, Spotify and Yelp! depends on the complicated task of predicting what we will enjoy. Like Traffic, this book takes us on a fascinating and consistently surprising intellectual journey that helps us better understand how we perceive and appreciate the world around us.

Table of contents

• Cover
• ALSO BY TOM VANDERBILT
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Contents
• INTRODUCTION: WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE COLOR (AND WHY DO YOU EVEN HAVE ONE)?
• CHAPTER 1: WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE? THINKING ABOUT OUR TASTE FOR FOOD
• CHAPTER 2: THE FAULT IS NOT IN OUR STARS, BUT IN OURSELVES. LIKING IN A NETWORKED AGE
• CHAPTER 3: HOW PREDICTABLE IS OUR TASTE? WHAT YOUR PLAYLIST SAYS ABOUT YOU (AND WHAT YOU SAY ABOUT YOUR PLAYLIST)
• CHAPTER 4: HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT WE LIKE? THE ECSTASIES AND ANXIETIES OF ART
• CHAPTER 5: WHY (AND HOW) TASTES CHANGE
• CHAPTER 6: BEER, CATS, AND DIRT. HOW DO EXPERTS DECIDE WHAT’S GOOD?
• CONCLUSION: TASTING NOTES. HOW TO LIKE
• NOTES
• INDEX
• A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• A NOTE ON THE TYPE