Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Making it Up As We Go, 29 Oct 2006
Cordelia Fine's "A Mind of its Own" reminds me a lot of Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink"--it is filled with surprising and counterintuitive observations about how the brain really works. Fine's thesis is that our brains do a fine job of deluding us--making us think that we are smart, attractive, above average, considerate, unbiased and blissfully free of the shortcomings and moral defects that plague other people. It's a good thing, too--as Fine points out in one striking paragraph, "there is a category of people who get unusually close to the truth about themselves and the world. . . . They are the clinically depressed." Ignorance really is bliss!
With a witty style, Fine reviews the psychological experiments that show that our moods and judgments can be dramatically influenced by external factors like beautiful weather or by what someone just said or did to us. Our brains make up lots of excuses after the fact to explain what we did and why, or to shift blame to others, all in an effort to make it seem that we are good people who are in control of our lives. We end up being bigoted, pigheaded, immoral and emotional, even when we think we are none of those things. On the whole, it's not a very flattering picture, although Fine does point to some encouraging studies suggesting that some of the brain's worst excesses (e.g., bigotry) can be curbed by careful attention to our thoughts--of course, in other contexts, focused thought can make things worse.
This book is full of lots of "aha!" moments, but it's not a self-help guide. The message sometimes seems to be "you're not really in conrol here--try to enjoy the ride!"
That said, I draw one very important conclusion from this entertaining book: avoid spending time with scientists who are conducting psychology experiments. These people are apparently always testing things other than what they pretend to be testing, and your brain will invariably come out of the experiment looking rather shoddy and ill-mannered. ("Not my brain!" you may protest, in which case you definitely need to read Chapter 1 of Fine's book.)
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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Funny and illuminating, 20 Nov 2006
This is an excellent book. It brings together a wealth of academic research into the way our brains work and, in particular, how we can't rely on them, and I found this fascinating and in the case of some chapters genuinely helpful and illuminating. But what sets the book apart is the fact that this material is presented so clearly and readably. And it's often very funny!
This book was strongly recommended to me by a friend, who obviously thought I needed to read it, and I'm very glad I have now read it. I in turn recommended it to a friend who is a consultant psychiatrist, and in fact he'd already read it and thought it was very good too. So it works for a top brain-doctor and for a complete layman like me. Exceptional.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A mind of its own, 10 Feb 2006
Suitable for the general reader rather than the expert (though it does provide a useful list of references), this is a light and entertaining account of findings from social psychological research on the topic of self-deception. We are told in largely non-technical language how numerous cleverly designed experiments have thrown light on the mental biases and distortions that beset our personal and social beliefs - how "vanity shields us from unpalatable truths about ourselves", how "irrationality clouds our judgment", how "emotions add a gloss of their own, colouring and confusing our opinions", and so forth. Although we can not altogether escape from these "deceptions of our wayward brains", the author concludes that knowledge of their mode of operation will help us guard against them, as will constant efforts to check the evidence on which our views are based.
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