Black and White Thinking: How to outsmart the brain, celebrate nuance, and learn to think in technicolour - Softcover

Dutton, Professor Kevin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0552175366 ISBN 13: 9780552175364

Publisher: Penguin, 2022

Synopsis

A Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Daniel Pink and Adam Grant NEXT BIG IDEA book club read about how to avoid the pitfalls of too little, and too much, complexity.

'Essential insights into the character of human choice and decision-making.' ROBERT CIALDINI, bestselling author of Influence
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In this groundbreaking exploration of how our brains work, psychologist Professor Kevin Dutton explains that by understanding the nature of our hardwired black and white thinking we are better equipped to negotiate life's grey zones and make subtler and smarter decisions.

Our brains are hardwired to sort, categorize and draw lines. It's how we navigate the kaleidoscope of everyday information. Yet imagine failing an exam by a mere 1 per cent. Or being caught speeding at just 1 mph over the speed limit. We have to draw the line somewhere, we say. But lines can be unhelpful or even dangerous when drawn where they aren't wanted, or in too thick a hand.

By thinking in terms of ' 'them' or 'us' and 'this' or 'that' we isolate ourselves from ideas we don't agree with and people who are not the same as us. We fail to listen to the other side of the argument and beliefs become polarized. Intolerance and extremism flourish. The human race has survived by making binary decisions, but such thinking might also destroy us. We may be programmed to think in black and white but rainbow thinking is the key to our cognitive future.
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'Fascinating, important and entirely convincing.' SIR PHILIP PULLMAN

About this title

About the Author

Dr Kevin Dutton is a researcher at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, and a member of the Oxford Centre for Emotions and Affective Neuroscience (OCEAN) research group. He regularly publishes in leading international scientific journals and speaks at conferences around the world. He is the author of the acclaimed Flipnosis: The Art of Split-Second Persuasion.

From the Back Cover

A groundbreaking and timely book about how evolutionary biology can explain our black-and-white brains, and a lesson in how we can escape the pitfalls of binary thinking.

We isolate ourselves from people who are not the same as us.
We refuse to listen to the other side of the argument.
We think in black and white - them or us, left or right, Leave or Remain - and dangerous possibilities arise. The Alt Right. ISIS. Brexit. Trump.

Our hardwired binary brains have led to increasingly polarized beliefs and a rising tide of religious intolerance and political extremism. But by understanding our evolutionary programming we can learn how to see the grey areas and make rational sense of a complex world. In this alarm call for a better future, Oxford University psychologist Dr Kevin Dutton argues for a world in which we make subtler - and far better - decisions.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0552175366
• ISBN 13: 9780552175364
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400