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What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite: Updated and Revised - Paperback | Diverse Reads

What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite: Updated and Revised

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This book reveals a remarkable paradox: what your brain wants is frequently not what your brain needs. In fact, much of what makes our brains "happy" leads to errors, biases, and distortions, which cloud our judgment and muddle our decision making. Science writer David DiSalvo presents evidence from evolutionary and social psychology, cognitive science, neurology, and even marketing and economics. And he interviews many of the top thinkers in psychology and neuroscience today. From this research-based platform, DiSalvo draws out insights that we can use to identify our brains' foibles and turn our awareness into edifying action. Ultimately, he argues, the research does not serve up ready-made answers, but provides us with actionable clues for overcoming the plight of our advanced brains and, consequently, living more fulfilled lives. Newly revised to include the latest research on the workings of the brain, What Makes Your Brain Happy is an essential tool for understanding yourself.

ISBN-13: 9781633883499

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers - Inc.

Publication Date: 02-13-2018

Pages: 335

Product Dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)

David DiSalvo is a science, technology, and culture writer and the author of Brain Changer and The Brain in Your Kitchen (eBook). His work appears in Scientific American Mind, Psychology Today, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, Salon, Esquire, Mental Floss, and other publications. He is also the writer behind the well-regarded science blogs Neuronarrative and Neuropsyched.

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Preface to the New Edition
(Continues…)


Excerpted from "What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite"
by .
Copyright © 2018 David Disalvo.
Excerpted by permission of Prometheus Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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Table of Contents

Foreword 9

Preface to the New Edition 15

Introduction: Hacking the Cognitive Compass 17

Part 1 Certainty and the Seduction of Chance

Chapter 1 Adventures in Certainty 29

Chapter 2 Seductive Patterns and Smoking Monkeys 57

Part 2 Drifting, Discounting, and Escaping

Chapter 3 Why a Happy Brain Discounts the Future 71

Chapter 4 The Magnetism of Autopilot 79

Chapter 5 Immersion and the Great Escape 89

Part 3 Motivation, Restraint, and Regret

Chapter 6 Revving Your Engine in Idle 105

Chapter 7 Writing Promises on an Etch-a-Sketch 119

Chapter 8 Want, Get, Regret, Repeat 133

Part 4 Social Ebbs and Influential Flows

Chapter 9 Socializing with Monkeys Like Us 145

Chapter 10 The Great Truth Rub-Off 157

Chapter 11 How Your Brain Catches Psychosocial Colds 171

Chapter 12 The Hidden Power of Stuff 183

Part 5 Memory and Modeling

Chapter 13 Your Mind in Rewrites 103

Chapter 14 Born to Copy, Learn to Practice 209

Part 6 Nothing So Pure as Action

Chapter 15 Mind the Gap 221

Chapter 16 Shake Your Meaning Maker 249

Special Section 1 Suggested Resources 253

Special Section 2 Of Technology and Rewards 273

Afterword to the New Edition: On the Anxiety of Reduction 285

Acknowledgments 289

Notes 291

Index 303