THE NEW BOOK FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF EVERYBODY LIES 'Don't Trust Your Gut is a tour de force - an intoxicating blend of analysis, humor, and humanity' DANIEL H. PINK 'Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is an expert on data-driven thinking, and this engaging book is full of surprising, useful insights for using the information at your fingertips to make better decisions' ADAM GRANT Big decisions are hard. We might consult friends and family, read advice online or turn to self-help books for guidance, but in the end we usually just do what feels right. But what if our gut is wrong? As economist and former Google data scientist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz argues, our gut is actually not that reliable - and data can prove this. In Don't Trust Your Gut, he unearths the startling conclusions that the right data can teach us about who we are and what will make our lives better. Over the past decade, scholars have mined enormous datasets to find remarkable new approaches to life's biggest self-help puzzles, from the boring careers that produce the most wealth, to old-school, data-backed relationship advice. While we often think we know how to better ourselves, the numbers, it turns out, disagree. Telling fascinating stories through the latest big data research, Stephens-Davidowitz reveals just how wrong we really are when it comes to improving our lives, and offers a new way of tackling our most consequential choices.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017

Insightful, surprising and with ground-breaking revelations about our society, Everybody Lies exposes the secrets embedded in our internet searches, with a foreword by bestselling author Steven Pinker

Everybody lies, to friends, lovers, doctors, pollsters - and to themselves. In Internet searches, however, people confess their secrets - about sexless marriages, mental health problems, even racist views. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, an economist and former Google data scientist, shows that this could just be the most important dataset ever collected.

This huge database of secrets - unprecedented in human history - offers astonishing, even revolutionary, insights into humankind. Anxiety, for instance, does not increase after a terrorist attack. Crime levels drop when a violent film is released. And racist searches are no higher in Republican areas than in Democrat ones.

Stephens-Davidowitz reveals information we can use to change our culture, and the questions we're afraid to ask that might be essential to our health - both emotional and physical. Insightful, funny, and always surprising, Everybody Lies exposes the biases and secrets embedded deeply within us, at a time when things are harder to predict than ever.