An enjoyable, exhaustive and often insightful look at what turns us on—sure to excite readers.
An in-depth look at the variety of forms in which human sexual desire manifests, based on an analysis of 500 million people and their anonymous—thus, likely truthful—online revelations.
Every day, millions of people voluntarily reveal intimate details about their sexual preferences online through search queries, adult websites, classified ads, stories and videos. During the course of their research into the nature of human sexual desire, neuroscientists Ogas and Gaddam analyzed half a billion of these and, combined with the latest findings in conceptual neuroscience, discovered that the data yielded some unexpected information about sexual preference. Some quirkier examples include the Japanese fascination with a woman's “absolute territory” (the space of exposed skin between the bottom of a skirt and the top of knee-high stockings); the fact that fantasies of older women are very popular among straight men; and that paranormal erotic literature is increasingly popular among women. Also intriguing is the authors' analysis of the relatively small divergence of sexual preference between straight and gay men (excepting the obvious masculine/feminine aspects) and the surprising discovery about which faction is most curious about transsexuals. More expected results also abound: Men are aroused visually, whereas women prefer to have their imaginations stimulated; men desire sex, and woman desire the feeling of being desired; men have a direct mind-body connection when it comes to arousal, and women experience a more complex series of thoughts and emotions, often displaying an intellectual distaste for stimuli that might simultaneously excite them physically. Perhaps partly as a result of this, there exists no pharmaceutical equivalent of Viagra for women. From cartoon porn to foot fetishes, the authors write with enthusiasm and in engaging detail, often incorporating the neuroscientific basis for results, yet retaining an accessible vernacular throughout that references pop culture as often as the laboratory.
An enjoyable, exhaustive and often insightful look at what turns us on—sure to excite readers.Pub Date: May 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-525-95209-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A lively and well-written survey, spiced up with incidents from recent headlines.
It isn’t only computers that have memory problems. Just ask anyone over a certain age—or take a look at this entertaining new book.
As the title indicates, Schachter (Psychology/Harvard Univ.) describes seven generic failings to which everyone’s memory is prone. Transience is the loss of details over time; everyone remembers last night’s dinner better than that of a week ago, and that of a year ago is often entirely forgotten. Absentmindedness is the familiar inability to remember where you left your car keys or whether you took your medicine. One of the most frustrating is blocking (the “it’s right on the tip of my tongue”) phenomenon, in which a familiar word or name refuses to emerge from memory (often coming back in the middle of the night). Also common is misattribution, for example crediting Sean Connery for a role played by some other actor. Suggestibility is the tendency to adopt and hold onto false memories suggested by some other outside influence (such as a leading question) or to recall feeling at the time of a past event an emotion only experienced much later. A variety of biases lead us to reconstruct the past to match current beliefs, or to place ourselves at the center of events in which we were minor participants. Finally, there is persistence, the inability to forget even years later some traumatic event such as a rejection or a faux pas. For each of these traits, the author suggests causes as well as potential remedies: gingko biloba for transience, for example. In a summary chapter, Schacter argues that each of these failures is in fact an aspect of some positive trait without which memory would be far less valuable.
A lively and well-written survey, spiced up with incidents from recent headlines.Pub Date: May 7, 2001
ISBN: 0-618-04019-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
To exorcise the demons of irrationality, turn to this rigorous—if overzealous—study of everyday logic. Cognitive illusions—like optical illusions—hold us in their thrall, says Piattelli-Palmarini (Cognitive Science/Institute San Raffaele, Milan). But theoretical breakthroughs in cognitive science provide revolutionary new avenues for thought. Addressing everyone who wants to make more rational decisions, Piattelli- Palmarini unveils the ``discovery'' of the ``cognitive unconscious.'' This term, with its nod to Freud, refers to the reflexive patterns of reasoning in which we engage unreflectively, even though counterintuitive but logically correct thinking would serve us better. Asked, for instance, which outcome is more likely in a coin flip, ``heads-heads-heads'' or ``heads-tails-heads- tails,'' most people use incorrect logic to conclude that the latter is more likely (in fact, ``the longer the sequence, the less probable it is''). Piattelli-Palmarini explores the ``tunnels'' of cognitive illusion, showing how familiar problems, (drawn from the realms of medicine, demography, economics, and gambling) flummox most people. Then he corrects common misapprehensions, mapping the rational terrain that lies outside these tunnels, even making an arcane but crucial fact about statistics clear to the general reader. By revealing how most respondents err in, for instance, guessing someone's profession based on a personality profile, Piattelli-Palmarini rigorously defines the rules of probability and deduction. Some will object that what he calls ``irrationality'' is itself a function of the abstraction of such problems, but he vigorously defends cognitive science against such arguments. Perhaps less defensible is his pretense that its ideas represent a revolutionary breakthrough; the issues he raises are, after all, part of a 2,000-year-old philosophical debate. Whether or not his grand claims are justified, as a primer for problem-solvers, this book has great merit.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-471-58126-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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