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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of The Drunkard’s Walk, a startling, eye-opening examination of how the unconscious mind shapes our experience of the world. “Mlodinow plunges into the realm of the unconscious mind accompanied by the latest scientific research ... [with] plenty of his trademark humor.” —Los Angeles Times
Over the past two decades of neurological research, it has become increasingly clear that the way we experience the world—our perception, behavior, memory, and social judgment—is largely driven by the mind's subliminal processes and not by the conscious ones, as we have long believed. In Subliminal, Leonard Mlodinow employs his signature concise, accessible explanations of the most obscure scientific subjects to unravel the complexities of the subliminal mind. In the process he shows the many ways it influences how we misperceive our relationships with family, friends, and business associates; how we misunderstand the reasons for our investment decisions; and how we misremember important events—along the way, changing our view of ourselves and the world around us.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of The Drunkard’s Walk, a startling, eye-opening examination of how the unconscious mind shapes our experience of the world. “Mlodinow plunges into the realm of the unconscious mind accompanied by the latest scientific research ... [with] plenty of his trademark humor.” —Los Angeles Times
Over the past two decades of neurological research, it has become increasingly clear that the way we experience the world—our perception, behavior, memory, and social judgment—is largely driven by the mind's subliminal processes and not by the conscious ones, as we have long believed. In Subliminal, Leonard Mlodinow employs his signature concise, accessible explanations of the most obscure scientific subjects to unravel the complexities of the subliminal mind. In the process he shows the many ways it influences how we misperceive our relationships with family, friends, and business associates; how we misunderstand the reasons for our investment decisions; and how we misremember important events—along the way, changing our view of ourselves and the world around us.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the book
Prologue
In June 1879, the American philosopher and scientist Charles Sanders Peirce was on a steamship journey from Boston to New York when his gold watch was stolen from his stateroom. Peirce reported the theft and insisted that each member of the ship’s crew line up on deck. He interviewed them all, but got nowhere. Then, after a short walk, he did something odd. He decided to guess who the perpetrator was, even though he had nothing to base his suspicions on, like a poker player going all in with a pair of deuces. As soon as Peirce made his guess, he found himself convinced that he had fingered the right man. “I made a little loop in my walk,” he would later write, “which had not taken a minute, and as I turned -toward them, all shadow of doubt had vanished.”
Peirce confidently approached his suspect, but the man called his bluff and denied the accusation. With no evidence or logical reason to back his claim, there was nothing Peirce could do—until the ship docked. When it did, Peirce immediately took a cab to the local Pinkerton office and hired a detective to investigate. The detective found Peirce’s watch at a pawnshop the next day. Peirce asked the proprietor to describe the man who’d pawned it. According to Peirce, the pawnbroker described the suspect “so graphically that no doubt was possible that it had been my man.” Peirce wondered how he had guessed the identity of the thief. He concluded that some kind of instinctual perception had guided him, something operating beneath the level of his conscious mind.
If mere speculation were the end of the story, a scientist would consider Peirce’s explanation about as convincing as someone saying, “A little birdie told me.” But five years later Peirce found a way to translate his ideas about unconscious perception into a laboratory experiment by adapting a procedure that had first been carried out by the physiologist E. H. Weber in 1834. Weber had placed small weights of varying degrees of heaviness, one at a time, at a spot on a subject’s skin, in order to determine the minimum weight difference that could be detected by the subject. In the experiment performed by Peirce and his prize student, Joseph Jastrow, the subjects of the study were given weights whose difference was just below that minimum detectable threshold (those subjects were actually Peirce and Jastrow themselves, with Jastrow experimenting on Peirce, and Peirce on Jastrow). Then, although they could not consciously discriminate between the weights, they asked each other to try to identify the heavier weight anyway, and to indicate on a scale running from 0 to 3 the degree of confidence they had in each guess. Naturally, on almost all trials both men chose 0. But despite their lack of confidence, they in fact chose the correct object on more than 60 percent of the trials, significantly more than would have been expected by chance. And when Peirce and Jastrow repeated the experiment in other contexts, such as judging surfaces that differed slightly in brightness, they obtained a comparable result—they could often correctly guess the answer even though they did not have conscious access to the information that would allow them to come to that conclusion. This was the first scientific demonstration that the unconscious mind possesses knowledge that escapes the conscious mind.
Peirce would later compare the ability to pick up on unconscious cues with some considerable degree of accuracy to “a bird’s musical and aeronautic powers . . . it is to us, as those are to them,...
About the Author-
Leonard Mlodinow received his PhD in theoretical physics from the University of California, Berkeley, was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Max Planck Institute, and now teaches at the California Institute of Technology. His previous books include three New York Times best sellers: War of the Worldviews (with Deepak Chopra), The Grand Design (with Stephen Hawking), and The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives (also a New York Times Notable Book), as well as Feynman’s Rainbow and Euclid’s Window. He also wrote for the television series MacGyver and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
www.its.caltech.edu/~len
Reviews-
March 15, 2012 Physicist Mlodinow (Physics/Caltech; The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, 2008, etc.) takes a wide-ranging look at some of the mysteries of the unconscious mind. As with his previous books, the author aims to make complex scientific concepts accessible to non-scientists. Here he samples a wide variety of studies and anecdotes from the 19th century to the present day, exploring the behaviors humans engage in without being aware of what they are doing. Because so many actions that affect our senses, memories, social interactions and self-image occur unconsciously, "the real reasons behind our judgments, feelings, and behavior can surprise us." A 2005 study, for example, found that people tend to unconsciously eat larger amounts of popcorn, regardless of its quality, if they receive a larger container of it. In another study, test subjects reacted differently to computerized voices depending on whether they sounded male or female, with subjects showing profound but unconscious gender biases. In a loose, easygoing style, Mlodinow combines numerous accounts of scientific studies with pop-culture references and even personal anecdotes. While many of his topics are fascinating individually, the author tries to cover too much ground in just over 200 pages. Among dozens of other subjects, he writes about the early history of psychology, experiments with a blind stroke victim, a horse named Clever Hans, the inaccuracies of the testimony of Watergate figure John Dean and his own mother's relationship with her pet Russian tortoise. Ultimately, the book never full coheres, and the reader comes away with little concrete insight into the unconscious--save that it is a subject full of mystery. A diverting but scattershot examination of undeniably intriguing aspects of human behavior.
COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
December 1, 2011
You'll know Caltech physicist Mlodinow as author of the best-selling The Drunkard's Walk, coauthor with Stephen Hawking of the mega-best-selling A Briefer History of Time--and author of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Here he explains how the unconscious mind drives everything we do. Big for the smart set.
Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
April 15, 2012 It can be very tricky to distinguish between behavior that is conscious and behavior that is habitual. We perform numerous automatic tasks every day, mostly unaware that we're doing them. We act on autopilot even as we also make one conscious decision after another. This very enlightening book explores the two sides of our mental lives, with a focus on the subconscious or subliminal element. More than ever before, researchers are discovering that our perceptions are filtered through the subliminal processes of our minds, that we actually see the world according to our unconscious mind's expectations and assessments. Drawing on clinical research conducted over a period of several decades and containing a number of rather startling revelationssuch as the at-first-glance counterintuitive fact that people who are briefly touched on the arm are more likely to order the dinner special in a restaurant, sign a petition, and buy food after sampling it for freethe book appeals to readers with an interest in the workings of the human mind.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)
May 15, 2012
We are not always in control of our thoughts and decisions. In fact, physicist and science writer Mlodinow (The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives) states, "much of our social perception--like our vision, hearing and memory--appears to proceed along pathways not associated with awareness, intention, or conscious effort." Mlodinow examines the role of the unconscious in everyday decision making, demonstrating that much of the activity we think is under our voluntary control is not. Brain imaging studies in social science experiments have confirmed many findings of experimental psychology: the unconscious, programmed for survival, operates in parallel processes, independently of the conscious mind. Given choices, the unconscious prefers the positive, favors the attractive, values nonverbal cues, and may select the irrational. Mlodinow goes on to discuss the subliminal aspects of common social situations from dating to voting. VERDICT Many of the these topics have been similarly examined in Shankar Vedantam's The Hidden Brain, though Mlodinow introduces the new field of social neuroscience. [See Prepub Alert, 11/14/11.]--Lucille M. Boone, San Jose P.L., CA
Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
The Oregonian
"Clever, engaging. . . . A popular-science beach book, the sort of tome from which cocktail party anecdotes can be mined by the dozen. . . . Subliminal makes its main point well and concisely."
The Daily Beast
"An assault against the idea that we control our decisions and our beliefs in the way that we think we do . . . A useful addition to the growing body of work arguing convincingly against the idea of the rational human brain."
The Economist
"Mlodinow, a theoretical physicist who has been developing a nice sideline in popular science writing, shows how the idea of the unconscious has become respectable again . . . Fascinating."
Booklist
"This very enlightening book explores the two sides of our mental lives, with a focus on the subconscious or subliminal element. Drawing on clinical research conducted over a period of several decades and containing a number of rather startling revelations . . . the book appeals to readers with an interest in the workings of the human mind."
Stephen Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time
"Mlodinow never fails to make science both accessible and entertaining."
David Eagleman, author of Incognito
"Think you know the whys and hows of your choices? Follow Mlodinow on a gorgeous journey that will make you think again."
Daniel J. Simons, professor of psychology, University of Illinois, and coauthor of The Invisible Gorilla
"With the same deft touch he showed in The Drunkard's Walk, Mlodinow probes the subtle, automatic, and often unnoticed influences on our behavior."
Joseph T. Hallinan, author of Why We Make Mistakes
"If you liked The Drunkard's Walk, you'll love Subliminal. This engaging and insightful book not only makes neuroscience understandable, it also makes it fascinating. You will look at yourself (and those around you) in a new way."
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