How many of your Facebook friends do you think you know? Would you help a stranger in need? Do you know why you’re so in love with your new smartphone? The truth is: you’re probably wrong. You are not so smart. In this international bestseller, award-winning journalist David McRaney examines the assorted ways we mislead ourselves every single day. A psychology course with all the boring bits taken out, prepare for a whirlwind tour of the latest research in the subject, fused with a healthy dose of humour and wit. You’ll discover just how irrational you really are, which delusions keep you sane, how to boost your productivity, and why you’ve never kept a New Year’s resolution.

'In a time when too many minds seem closed, this is a masterful analysis of what it takes to open them' Adam Grant, author of the bestselling Think Again 'Optimistic, illuminating and even inspiring' Guardian As the world is increasingly polarised, it feels impossible to change the mind of someone with a conflicting view. But this book shows that you could be one conversation away from changing someone's mind about something, maybe a lot of things. Self-delusion expert and psychology nerd David McRaney sets out to discover not just what it takes to influence others, but why we believe in the first place. Along the way he meets a former Westboro Baptist Church member who was deradicalised on Twitter, goes deep canvassing to see how quickly people will surrender their character-defining views, finds a 9/11 Truther who turns his back on it all, and reveals how, within a few years, half a country can go from opposing the 'gay agenda' to happily attending same-sex weddings. Distilling the latest research in psychology and neuroscience, How Minds Change reveals how beliefs take hold, not over hundreds of years, but in less than a generation, in less than a decade, and sometimes in an instant.

In the follow-up to the international bestseller You Are Not So Smart, McRaney helps us to overcome our quirks and think more effectively. Informed by the latest studies in psychology, You Can Beat Your Brain is a pocket-sized primer packed with wry humour and astonishing facts. You'll discover why tall people earn more money, why a rickety bridge is a good place for a first date, and how to avoid irrational beliefs and self-delusion.

An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise, based on the popular blog of the same name.
Whether you're deciding which smartphone to purchase or which politician to believe, you think you are a rational being whose every decision is based on cool, detached logic. But here's the truth: You are not so smart. You're just as deluded as the rest of us--but that's okay, because being deluded is part of being human.
Growing out of David McRaney's popular blog, "You Are Not So Smart" reveals that every decision we make, every thought we contemplate, and every emotion we feel comes with a story we tell ourselves to explain them. But often these stories aren't true. Each short chapter--covering topics such as Learned Helplessness, Selling Out, and the Illusion of Transparency--is like a psychology course with all the boring parts taken out.
Bringing together popular science and psychology with humor and wit, "You Are Not So Smart" is a celebration of our irrational, thoroughly human behavior.

The author of the bestselling You Are Not So Smart gives readers a fighting chance at outsmarting their not-so-smart brains.
A mix of popular psychology and trivia, "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 seventeen ways we fool ourselves every day, including:
Enclothed Cognition (the clothes you wear change your behavior and influence your mental abilities) The Benjamin Franklin Effect (how you grow to like people for whom you do nice things and hate the people you harm). Deindividuation (Despite our best intentions, we practically disappear when subsumed by a mob mentality) The Misattribution of Arousal (Environmental factors have a greater effect 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") McRaney also reveals the true price of happiness, and how to avoid falling for our own lies.