- 272 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
About this book
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A BookPage Best Nonfiction Book of 2024
From the bestselling author of Cultish and host of the podcast Sounds Like a Cult, a delicious blend of cultural criticism and personal narrative that explores our cognitive biases and the power, disadvantages, and highlights of magical thinking.
Utilizing the linguistic insights of her “witty and brilliant” (Blyth Roberson, author of America the Beautiful?) first book Wordslut and the sociological explorations of her breakout hit Cultish, Amanda Montell now turns her erudite eye to the inner workings of the human mind and its biases in her most personal and electrifying work yet.
“Magical thinking” can be broadly defined as the belief that one’s internal thoughts can affect unrelated events in the external world: think of the conviction that one can manifest their way out of poverty, stave off cancer with positive vibes, thwart the apocalypse by learning to can their own peaches, or transform an unhealthy relationship to a glorious one with loyalty alone. In all its forms, magical thinking works in service of restoring agency amid chaos, but in The Age of Magical Overthinking, Montell argues that in the modern information age, our brain’s coping mechanisms have been overloaded, and our irrationality turned up to an eleven.
In a series of razor sharp, deeply funny chapters, Montell delves into a cornucopia of the cognitive biases that run rampant in our brains, from how the “halo effect” cultivates worship (and hatred) of larger-than-life celebrities, to how the “sunk cost fallacy” can keep us in detrimental relationships long after we’ve realized they’re not serving us. As she illuminates these concepts with her signature brilliance and wit, Montell’s prevailing message is one of hope, empathy, and ultimately forgiveness for our anxiety-addled human selves. If you have all but lost faith in our ability to reason, Montell aims to make some sense of the senseless. To crack open a window in our minds, and let a warm breeze in. To help quiet the cacophony for a while, or even hear a melody in it.
A BookPage Best Nonfiction Book of 2024
From the bestselling author of Cultish and host of the podcast Sounds Like a Cult, a delicious blend of cultural criticism and personal narrative that explores our cognitive biases and the power, disadvantages, and highlights of magical thinking.
Utilizing the linguistic insights of her “witty and brilliant” (Blyth Roberson, author of America the Beautiful?) first book Wordslut and the sociological explorations of her breakout hit Cultish, Amanda Montell now turns her erudite eye to the inner workings of the human mind and its biases in her most personal and electrifying work yet.
“Magical thinking” can be broadly defined as the belief that one’s internal thoughts can affect unrelated events in the external world: think of the conviction that one can manifest their way out of poverty, stave off cancer with positive vibes, thwart the apocalypse by learning to can their own peaches, or transform an unhealthy relationship to a glorious one with loyalty alone. In all its forms, magical thinking works in service of restoring agency amid chaos, but in The Age of Magical Overthinking, Montell argues that in the modern information age, our brain’s coping mechanisms have been overloaded, and our irrationality turned up to an eleven.
In a series of razor sharp, deeply funny chapters, Montell delves into a cornucopia of the cognitive biases that run rampant in our brains, from how the “halo effect” cultivates worship (and hatred) of larger-than-life celebrities, to how the “sunk cost fallacy” can keep us in detrimental relationships long after we’ve realized they’re not serving us. As she illuminates these concepts with her signature brilliance and wit, Montell’s prevailing message is one of hope, empathy, and ultimately forgiveness for our anxiety-addled human selves. If you have all but lost faith in our ability to reason, Montell aims to make some sense of the senseless. To crack open a window in our minds, and let a warm breeze in. To help quiet the cacophony for a while, or even hear a melody in it.
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Yes, you can access The Age of Magical Overthinking by Amanda Montell in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Social Science Biographies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Author’s Note
- Make It Make Sense: An Intro to Magical Overthinking
- Chapter One: Are You My Mother, Taylor Swift?: A Note on the Halo Effect
- Chapter Two: I Swear I Manifested This: A Note on Proportionality Bias
- Chapter Three: A Toxic Relationship Is Just a Cult of One: A Note on the Sunk Cost Fallacy
- Chapter Four: The Shit-Talking Hypothesis: A Note on Zero-Sum Bias
- Chapter Five: What It’s Like to Die Online: A Note on Survivorship Bias
- Chapter Six: Time to Spiral: A Note on the Recency Illusion
- Chapter Seven: The Scammer Within: A Note on Overconfidence Bias
- Chapter Eight: Haters Are My Motivators: A Note on the Illusory Truth Effect
- Chapter Nine: Sorry I’m Late, Must Be Mercury in Retrograde: A Note on Confirmation Bias
- Chapter Ten: Nostalgia Porn: A Note on Declinism
- Chapter Eleven: The Life-Changing Magic of Becoming a Mediocre Crafter: A Note on the IKEA Effect
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Notes
- Index
- Copyright