Sharp, piquant science/behavioral-economics writing.
How do people make decisions, and how has the brain evolved to make the choices that it does?
Kenrick (Psychology/Arizona State Univ.; Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life: A Psychologist Investigates How Evolution, Cognition, and Complexity are Revolutionizing our View of Human Nature, 2011) and Griskevicius (Marketing and Psychology/Univ. of Minnesota) argue that our choices reflect a deep evolutionary wisdom. “Although it feels as if there is just one single self inside your head,” they write, “your mind actually contains several different sub-selves, each with a specific evolutionary goal and a completely different set of priorities.” For the most part, the authors avoid scientific jargon and touch on game theory only when it enters into their popular bailiwick. They vigorously investigate the subselves that readers may be wary of from the outset, since it is so much more comfortable to think of ourselves as a single creature. They lay out the subselves’ interests—roughly: kin care, mate retention, mate acquisition, status, affiliation, disease avoidance and self-protection—and give evident examples of how they make us appear to be inconsistent decision-makers. But not so: Each is in service to reproduction, and if dead ends are a hearty part of the mix, then “[m]any of our seemingly irrational biases in judgment and decision making turn out to be pretty smart on closer examination.” They account for why an African president turned down food assistance that was labeled GMO and why the peacock strategy works—also why Don Juan looks good at first flush, but canny females know that he has trouble with commitment.
Sharp, piquant science/behavioral-economics writing.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-465-03242-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
A harrowing first-person, semi-fictionalized memoir of the inner life of a paranoid schizophrenic, written while its young author was in jail, mental hospitals, and halfway houses. Burke (195385) committed suicide just after completing this book, leaving a note requesting that Gates, his psychology professor at the University of New England (Australia) publish it along with a factual description of schizophrenia. Gates collaborated with Hammond, a writer and researcher at the same university, in tracing the facts of Burke's life, which are sketched in an introduction; in providing explanatory notes throughout Burke's work; and in writing a brief concluding essay on what is currently known about schizophrenia. Sandwiched between these accounts is Burke's own wild and fantastical account. It opens with a warning to readers that ``this book was written by a drug-induced alcoholic psychopathic paranoid schizophrenic with manic depression... [who] is not sure of the truth.'' In the beginning, Sphere (the author's name for himself) and his hippie companions experiment with hallucinogenic mushrooms, alcohol, and other drugs. His vivid descriptions of these experiences gradually blend into graphic accounts of his schizophrenic delusions, leaving the reader confused about what is happening in the real world and what is in the author's terribly sick mind. There's no confusion about the one point, however, which is that life for a paranoid schizophrenic is, as Burke puts it, a ``living hell.'' Burke told his psycniatrist that he was the Antichrist; he robbed a bank, believing he had been so ordered by a transmitter in his tooth. That the author chose to end his life rather than endure this hell becomes completely understandable. Researchers may continue to ponder the possible causes, forms, and treatments of schizophrenia, but in this book they have unmistakable proof of its terrors. An unforgettable picture of a soul in torment.
Pub Date: Jan. 11, 1995
ISBN: 0-465-09141-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
An intriguing but strongly one-sided account.
Although scientists and philosophers don’t pretend to understand the neurological mechanism of human consciousness, they are eager to theorize about it. Donald (Psychology/Queen’s Univ., Toronto) reviews the evidence and explains how he believes the brain converts sensory input into awareness.
He begins by denouncing his opponents. According to the author, a school of evolutionary thinkers called the neo-Darwinians views human nature as fixed in genetic concrete. It follows from this that thinking, behavior, emotions, and language are hard-wired deep in our unconscious. Consciousness facilitates the working out of these mental processes, but it otherwise has little importance. The author disagrees vehemently with these “hardliners.” He proposes instead that the human mind occupies a unique place in nature, not because of its structure but through its ability to absorb culture (i.e., the interaction of many minds): human consciousness, according to this view, is actually a hybrid product of biology and culture. As a result, the key to understanding intellect is not the design of a single brain but the synergy of many brains. Marshalling studies from neuroscience as well as behavioral research on humans and animals, the author portrays consciousness as a revolutionary development central to human evolution, and he goes on to explain how the intellect might adapt to a future of increasingly symbolic technology. Although dense with closely reasoned argument, analysis, and theory, this study rewards careful reading—but it is also a heated polemic, full of sarcasm and dripping with contempt for the neo-Darwinians (whose arguments are made to seem extreme as well as weak).
An intriguing but strongly one-sided account.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-393-04950-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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