A review of Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking.
Anyone who does a lot of public speaking knows there are certain questions that inevitably arise from the audience in a Q&A session. In my case, lecturing on pseudoscience and the paranormal, I am almost always asked: (continue reading…)
topics in this post: emotions, intuition, psychology, thin slicing
A review of Robin Waterfield’s Hidden Depths: The Story of Hypnosis.
In the early 1980s I began a personal odyssey into altered states of consciousness. Because I thought I might like to use my brain again, I eschewed mind-altering substances and instead opted for (continue reading…)
topics in this post: altered states of consciousness, hypnosis, Mesmer, mind, psychology
A review of David G. Myers’ Intuition: It’s Powers and Perils.
Imagine yourself a contestant on the classic television game show Let’s Make a Deal. You must choose one of three doors, behind one of which is a brand new automobile (while the other two harbor goats). You choose door number one. Host Monty Hall, who knows what is behind all the doors, shows you what’s behind door number two, a goat, then inquires: would you like keep the door you chose or switch? It’s 50/50 so it doesn’t matter, right? (continue reading…)
topics in this post: intuition, Myers, psychology, thin slicing
In April 1999, when I was on a lecture tour for my book Why People Believe Weird Things, the psychologist Robert Sternberg attended my presentation at Yale University. His response to the lecture was both enlightening and troubling. It is certainly entertaining to hear about other people’s weird beliefs, Sternberg reflected, because we are confident that we would never be so foolish. But why do smart people fall for such things? Sternberg’s challenge led to a second edition of my book, with a new chapter expounding on my answer to his question: Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons. (continue reading…)
topics in this post: cognitive biases, mind, pseudoscience, psychology, skepticism
A review of Andrew Newberg, Eugene D’Aquili, and Vince Rause’s Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief.
About ten years ago I began research on the question of why people believe in God, I asked a colleague in a religious studies program to recommend the latest path-breaking scientific work in this area. (continue reading…)
topics in this post: God, psychology, psychology of religion, religion, science