Interview with David Robson, author of The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Change Your World
David Robson, author of The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Change Your World recommends some fascinating books! Before jumping into the interview, please check out David's book:
Review from Book Depository:
People who believe ageing brings wisdom live longer.
Lucky charms really do improve an athlete's performance.
Taking a placebo, even when you know it is a placebo, can still improve your health.
Welcome to The Expectation Effect.
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The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Change Your World
In this book David Robson takes us on a tour of the cutting-edge research happening right now that suggests our expectations shape our experience. Bringing together fascinating case studies and evidence-based science, The Expectation Effect uncovers new techniques that we can all use to improve our fitness, productivity, intelligence, health and happiness.
Of course, you can't just think yourself thinner, happier or fitter, but using this book you can reframe many different facets of your life, and in so doing start real physiological change. These easy-to-use skills will help you on your way to becoming the person you want to be, living the life you want to live.
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Wordery $18.68
Q. Do you have a favourite smart thinking book (and why that book)?
It’s so hard to chose a single favourite! The neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett’s How Emotions Are Made draws on an enormous body of recent research that has completely overturned the scientific dogma about the brain’s emotional processing. This has enormously important implications for the ways we interpret our own feelings. I think all good smart thinking books should change our understanding of ourselves and the world around us in some way - and I found How Emotions Are Made made me examine so many of my own experiences in a new light. Review From Book Depository:
When you feel anxious, angry, happy, or surprised, what's really going on inside of you?
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Turn your inner voice from critic to coach.
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Ethan Kross’s Chatter is another favourite. It examines how the voice in our head can influence everything from our mental health to our productivity - and the ways that we can harness it for the better. Besides being an award-winning psychologist who has led much of this scientific research, Kross is a wonderful storyteller. I find myself constantly returning to Chatter for the wise advice that it contains.
How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain
Many scientists believe that emotions come from a specific part of the brain, triggered by the world around us. The thrill of seeing an old friend, the fear of losing someone we love - each of these sensations seems to arise automatically and uncontrollably from within us, finding expression on our faces and in our behaviour, carrying us away with the experience.
This understanding of emotion has been around since Plato. But what if it is wrong? In How Emotions Are Made, pioneering psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett draws on the latest scientific evidence to reveal that our common-sense ideas about emotions are dramatically, even dangerously, out of date - and that we have been paying the price. Emotions aren't universally pre-programmed in our brains and bodies; rather they are psychological experiences that each of us constructs based on our unique personal history, physiology and environment.
This new view of emotions has serious implications: when judges issue lesser sentences for crimes of passion, when police officers fire at threatening suspects, or when doctors choose between one diagnosis and another, they're all, in some way, relying on the ancient assumption that emotions are hardwired into our brains and bodies. Revising that conception of emotion isn't just good science, Barrett shows; it's vital to our well-being and the health of society itself.
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Wordery $12.65
Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It
As humans, we all have a special ability that is unique to our species: an inner voice. It helps us focus, achieve our goals and reflect on life's most joyful moments. But it can also be our biggest enemy, chewing over painful emotions and replaying embarrassments, hijacking our thoughts to run amok with 'chatter'. How does this source of wisdom turn into our biggest critic? And how can we take back control?
These are the questions one of the world's leading experts on the conscious mind set out to answer twenty years ago, when he started on an audacious mission - to study the conversations we have with ourselves. In this hugely anticipated book, that expert, the award-winning neuroscientist and psychologist Ethan Kross, reveals the sheer power of the inner voice, and shows us that we all possess a set of tools for harnessing it. Hidden in plain sight, they are in the words we use and the stories we tell ourselves, in the conversations we have with our loved ones and in the habits we undertake when tackling our goals. They are even sometimes in our bizarre rituals and lucky charms.
Fascinating, entertaining and full of original insights and tips, Chatter will change the conversations you have with yourself forever, and help you lead a happier, more productive life.
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Easons €16.80
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Waterstones £10.99
Wordery $11.31
Q. What's the most recent smart thinking book you've read (and how would you rate it)?
I was lucky to read early proofs of Are You Thinking Clearly? by Miriam Frankel and Matt Warren. It offers a wide-ranging discussion of the many different factors - from the food we eat to the languages we speak - that can shape our decision making and reasoning. I was blown away by the amount of research that it covers, while still being eminently readable.
Review From Book Depository:
Do emotions really cloud your thinking? Are habits holding you back? Is AI manipulating your mind? Does IQ help you think better?
Every one of our thoughts, actions, moods and decisions is shaped by a whole array of factors, most of which we don't pay any attention to. From culture, time and language to genetics, technology and the microorganisms living inside us - even our own unconscious routines and habits - it's clear that we aren't always in the driving seat.
The good news is that by better understanding the external and internal forces at work, we can minimise their impact on our lives. Drawing on rigorous interdisciplinary research, leading science journalists Miriam Frankel and Matt Warren bring us extraordinary stories and studies that open our eyes to the inner workings of the mind, challenge our thought processes and improve our decision-making. Most of all, Are You Thinking Clearly? is a rallying cry to know yourself, think broadly, think boldly - and to listen.
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Are You Thinking Clearly?: 29 reasons you aren't, and what to do about it
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Q. Do you have a favourite childhood book?
Without a doubt The Magician’s Nephew by CS Lewis. I first read it when I was around 7 and Lewis’s visions of other worlds completely blew my mind. I recently listened to the audiobook read by Kenneth Branagh and found it just as enchanting as when I was a kid.
Review From Book Depository:
A beautiful hardback edition of The Magician's Nephew, book one in the classic series, The Chronicles of Narnia. This edition is complete with cover and colour interior art by the original illustrator, Pauline Baynes.
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The Magician's Nephew - The Chronicles of Narnia (Publication Order) #6
On a daring quest to save a life, two friends are hurled into another world, where an evil sorceress seeks to enslave them. But then the lion Aslan's song weaves itself into the fabric of a new land, a land that will be known as Narnia. And in Narnia, all things are possible.
The Magician's Nephew is the first book in C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, a series that has become part of the canon of classic literature, drawing readers of all ages into a magical land with unforgettable characters for over sixty years.
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Q. Do you prefer reading on paper, Kindle or listening to an audiobook?
For new books, I prefer to hold a hard copy in my hands - I find that I can focus better that way, whereas I’m more easily distracted with Kindle and audiobooks. But I’ve recently started listening to the audiobooks of some old favourites, like the works of Jane Austen. There’s something so comforting about hearing those novels read aloud.
Q. Do you have a favourite bookshop (and why that shop)?
I suppose it would have to be Foyles’ store in Charring Cross Road, London. I go there whenever I’m feeling blue or am in need of inspiration. And as an Italian speaker, I love their range of foreign literature.
Many thanks to David for recommending some fascinating books! Please don't forget to check out David's book The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Change Your World.
Daryl
Image Copyrights: Canongate Books Ltd (The Expectation Effect), Pan Macmillan (How Emotions Are Made), Ebury Publishing (Chatter), Hodder & Stoughton General Division (Are You Thinking Clearly), HarperCollins Publishers (The Magician's Nephew).
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