A mostly provocative account of how inner turmoil drives us.
The latest in the TED series: a quirky exploration of the mysteries behind human motivation, in business and relationships.
Ariely (Psychology and Behavioral Economics/Duke Univ.; The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves, 2012, etc.) was always fascinated with why we pursue goals, whether for financial remuneration or personal satisfaction. “We are the CEOs of our own lives….Whatever our official job descriptions, we are all part-time motivators,” writes the author, whose interest in such issues stems from tragedy: badly burned in an accident when he was young, he’s since wondered why some are more driven to rise above such circumstances. He recalls that “the devastating role that helplessness played in my own experience…made me more deeply appreciate the challenges of being badly injured, the complexity of recovery, and the ways that my experience had deeply changed me.” Today, Ariely documents psychological experiments performed at tech companies and universities, convincing him that humans incentivize themselves and others in consistent yet enigmatic ways. He argues that workplace initiatives—e.g., restrictions regarding employee cubicles—“crush our natural motivation.” Yet financial compensation is far from an automatic cure-all; though “almost all companies use some kind of bonus…little is known about how effective bonuses really are.” At a semiconductor factory, Ariely found a promised voucher for a pizza or praise from a supervisor provoked productivity more reliably than extra money. In nonoccupational contexts, he notes, we have a “deep attachment to our own ideas,” explaining the satisfaction found in creative pursuits. We are even motivated to control our destinies after death—see: the mummified nobility of China or Egypt. Ariely writes in an approachable, chipper style, but some readers may find his ambiguous findings unsatisfying, as when he writes, “it is impossible to come up with one simple set of motivational rules.”
A mostly provocative account of how inner turmoil drives us.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2004-6
Page Count: 120
Publisher: TED/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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