Book description
Have you ever wondered how close your beliefs come to fact-or
fiction? Learn how your assumptions can both help and deceive you in
this guide to fallacy of the obvious in everyday life.
When can we trust what we believe, and when should we question our
beliefs? Illustrating his points with examples and supporting them
with the latest research findings, Thomas Gilovich documents the
cognitive, social, and motivational processes that distort our
thoughts, beliefs, judgments, and decisions. In a rapidly changing
world, the biases and stereotypes that help us process an overload of
complex information inevitably distort what we would like to believe
is reality. Awareness of our propensity to make these systematic
errors, Gilovich argues, is the first step to more effective analysis
and action. Indeed, as he writes in the introduction, “Thinking
straight about the world is a precious and difficult process that must
be carefully nurtured.”
Thomas Gilovich is a professor of psychology at
Cornell University and author of How We Know What Isn't So. He
lives in Ithaca, New York.
