An accessible, empathetic book.
A close look at a widespread human behavior.
Behavioral scientist Slepian, a professor of leadership and ethics at Columbia, draws on his research with some 50,000 participants in 26 countries as well as copious studies by other researchers to examine why, how, and to what effect people keep secrets. Distinguishing between secrecy and privacy, he considers secrecy “as an intention to hold specific information back, and privacy as a reflection of how much you broadcast personal information.” Among the many issues that people hide are sexual behavior, infidelity, financial problems, and drug use. While some secrets may feel burdensome, others may not. “Some of life’s most joyous and momentous occasions,” Slepian notes, “start off as secrets we keep in order to reveal: the gifts we give, pregnancies, marriage proposals, and more.” The author is most concerned, though, with secrets that make people feel helpless, alone, and unsupported. The negative impact of secrets, he writes, “comes from having those secrets occupy our thoughts.” Perceiving a secret as immoral generates feelings of shame; “the more it feels solitary and personal, the more it feels isolating. And the more it is based on emotion rather than logic, the less insight you feel you have into it.” Slepian suggests three coping strategies for gaining insight: realizing that past mistakes are in the past and need not blight the present; realizing that keeping a secret may benefit others and so have a positive value; and acknowledging that the secret may benefit you. Sometimes, he asserts, sharing our inner worlds helps to form and maintain relationships, “but sometimes we hold back in order to protect those relationships as well,” or to enjoy an activity—a hobby, for example—without worrying about others’ judgment. Nevertheless, Slepian advises, “If you have a secret that is bothering you, consider sharing it with someone you trust.”
An accessible, empathetic book.Pub Date: June 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-23721-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
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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The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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