For those of you always happy to learn more about the decision-making process (isn't that true of all conflict professionals?), here's a new book for you: The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives.
Right now you can click to listen to an NPR interview of the author Shankar Vedantam; it is the 11:00 segment.
And here are two reviews and an excerpt for you below.
From The Washington Post's review of the book:
In "The Hidden Brain," Vedantam reviews this new science and applies it speculatively to practical circumstances in which our subconscious leanings might mislead us. How investors choose stocks, how soldiers obey leaders in battle, how spouses respond in arguments -- these consequential behaviors can be shaped by automatic mental routines that preempt our reason. ...
From the book review "The Out-of-Sight Mind" (New York Times):
Invisible forces that control our behavior have inspired our best story tellers, from Euripides to Steven Spielberg. Whether we’re yanked around by jealous gods, Oedipal urges or poltergeists, the idea that we feel powerless to direct our own actions has a visceral appeal, one exploited by Shankar Vedantam in “The Hidden Brain,” his exploration of the unconscious mind.
Most previous popular treatments of subliminal forces haven’t been data driven. Vedantam, who until recently wrote
the Department of Human Behavior column for The Washington Post, hopes to fill that gap. His entertaining romp through covert influences on human behavior began as a series of columns, and true to its genesis, it reads as vivid reportage overlaid with a sampling of science. Ranging widely from the role of social conformity in violence to snapshots of racial and gender prejudice, Vedantam draws expansive arcs between findings from social psychology and the nation’s sensibilities and voting patterns. “Unconscious bias reaches into every corner of your life,” he writes, thanks to a “hidden brain” generally inaccessible through introspection. ...
Finally, here's the book excerpt: "Beyond Comprehension: We know that genocide and famine are greater tragedies than a lost dog. At least, we think we do"(Washington Post).
Nore (added January 27, 2009): Here's another NPR interview of Shankar Vedantam: "How 'The Hidden Brain' Does The Thinking For Us."
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