David McRaney’s first book, You Are Not So Smart, evolved from his wildly popular blog of the same name. A mix of popular psychology and trivia, McRaney’s insights have struck a chord with thousands, and his blog--and now podcasts and videos--have become an Internet phenomenon.
Like You Are Not So Smart, You Are Now Less Dumb is grounded in the idea that we all believe ourselves to be objective observers of reality--except we’re not. But that’s okay, because our delusions keep us sane. Expanding on this premise, McRaney provides eye-opening analyses of fifteen more ways we fool ourselves every day, including:
- The Misattribution of Arousal (Environmental factors have a greater affect on our emotional arousal than the person right in front of us)
- Sunk Cost Fallacy (We will engage in something we don’t enjoy just to make the time or money already invested “worth it”)
- Deindividuation (Despite our best intentions, we practically disappear when subsumed by a mob mentality)