Bluntly cautionary and applicable advice on the importance of vigilance.
A guidebook for deflecting psychological manipulators.
In Surrounded by Idiots (2019), communication expert Erikson assessed (and color-coded) the most popular types of personalities. Here, the author uses a similar narrative structure and focuses on tactics to help readers avoid “play[ing] into the hands of an evil-minded psychopath.” As he shows, honing one’s recognition of these personalities is especially important because they exist in such a wide variety of settings, from ordinary, daily situations to corporate boardrooms and government offices. To some, the moniker “psychopath” may seem harsh, but Erikson is consistent in his warning that the term is fitting and that they are determined to exploit another’s weaknesses to exact harm. His text reintegrates the four-color personality model from his previous book, and Erikson educates readers on key psychopathic characteristics (superficiality, remorselessness, cunning, etc.), basic defense mechanisms against them, and how to recognize them (partners, co-workers, superiors) and diffuse deviant behavioral patterns. The author shows how to see through the deceptive fog of dangerously controlling behaviors and provides methods to rid one’s life of those whose intent is to “drag many people down with them.” Throughout, Erikson uses reality-based scenarios as examples, allowing readers to properly arm themselves against manipulative tactics by acknowledging the systematic series of common controlling techniques employed by psychopathic personalities—e.g., obfuscation or gaslighting. He also examines this conundrum through the perspective of the observer (the victim) to promote analysis of certain enabling behaviors that may make them attractive bait for hostile manipulators. Ultimately, the author settles on one key countermeasure on which to focus: self-awareness. While some readers may find that the narrative is alarmist, those fascinated by multifaceted behavior will heed Erikson’s warning about diabolically manipulative people and their presence in every corner of contemporary society.
Bluntly cautionary and applicable advice on the importance of vigilance.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-76388-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's Essentials
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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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IN THE NEWS
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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