You are Not So Smart

Why Your Memory is Mostly Fiction, Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself

David McRaney

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN:
  9781780741048
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Humanism in Philosophy

Think you’re rational? Think again...

‘Want to get smarter quickly? Read this book.’ David Eagleman, author of The Brain: The Story of You

How many of your Facebook friends do you think you know? Would you help a stranger in need? Do you know why you’re so in love with your new smartphone? The truth is: you’re probably wrong. You are not so smart.

In this international bestseller, award-winning journalist David McRaney examines the assorted ways we mislead ourselves every single day. A psychology course with all the boring bits taken out, prepare for a whirlwind tour of the latest research in the subject, fused with a healthy dose of humour and wit. You’ll discover just how irrational you really are, which delusions keep you sane, how to boost your productivity, and why you’ve never kept a New Year’s resolution.

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‘A much-needed field guide to the limits of our so-called consciousness. McRaney presents a witty case for just how witless we all are.’ William Poundstone, author of How to Predict the Unpredictable

‘Simply wonderful. An engaging and useful guide to how our brilliant brains can go badly wrong.' Richard Wiseman, author of 59 Seconds

‘You Are Not So Smart is a dose of psychology research served in tasty anecdotes that will make you better understand both yourself and the rest of us. It turns out we're much more irrational than most of us think, so give yourself every advantage you can and read this book.’ Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Contents
• Introduction You
• 1 Priming
• 2 Confabulation
• 3 Confirmation Bias
• 4 Hindsight Bias
• 5 The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy
• 6 Procrastination
• 7 Normalcy Bias
• 8 Introspection
• 9 The Availability Heuristic
• 10 The Bystander Effect
• 11 The Dunning-Kruger Effect
• 12 Apophenia
• 13 Brand Loyalty
• 14 The Argument from Authority
• 15 The Argument from Ignorance
• 16 The Straw Man Fallacy
• 17 The Ad Hominem Fallacy
• 18 The Just-World Fallacy
• 19 The Public Goods Game
• 20 The Ultimatum Game
• 21 Subjective Validation
• 22 Cult Indoctrination
• 23 Groupthink
• 24 Supernormal Releasers
• 25 The Affect Heuristic
• 26 Dunbar’s Number
• 27 Selling Out
• 28 Self-Serving Bias
• 29 The Spotlight Effect
• 30 The Third Person Effect
• 31 Catharsis
• 32 The Misinformation Effect
• 33 Conformity
• 34 Extinction Burst
• 35 Social Loafing
• 36 The Illusion of Transparency
• 37 Learned Helplessness
• 38 Embodied Cognition
• 39 The Anchoring Effect
• 40 Attention
• 41 Self-Handicapping
• 42 Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
• 43 The Moment
• 44 Consistency Bias
• 45 The Representativeness Heuristic
• 46 Expectation
• 47 The Illusion of Control
• 48 The Fundamental Attribution Error
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography