The Social Animal
Recently, I read David Brooks’s The Social Animal, an interesting survey of the best current research on psychology, sociology and culture. Though a best-seller, this book received some mixed critical reviews when it came out in 2011. Knowing Brooks to be a...
Blink and You’ll Miss It: Intuitive Thought, Decision and Action
A Student of Intuitive Thought David Brooks is a columnist for the New York Times, and (in my opinion) an acute social and political observer. He is not an academic, but is very well read in psychology and sociology. He wrote a book in 2011 called The Social Animal...
Me For a Member: Cognitive Dissonance and Rationalization
“I would never belong to any club that would have me for a member.” –Groucho Marx A group of mediocre, boring people get together and decide that they want to form a club that features strong barriers to entry; very few other people can get in...
The Personal Myth
“It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble, it’s the things we do know that just ain’t so.” –Mark Twain One very interesting dimension to personality has to do with the stories that we tell ourselves. Research has...