Subliminal

Employing his trademark lucid, accessible explanations of the most obscure scientific subjects, Leonard Mlodinow unravels the complexities of the subliminal mind and reveals its influence on how we misperceive our relationships with family, friends, and business associates, misunderstand the reasons for our investment decisions, and misremember important events.

Zusatztext 42759027 Informationen zum Autor 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. Klappentext From the bestselling author of The Drunkard's Walk and coauthor of The Grand Design (with Stephen Hawking), a startling and eye-opening examination of how the unconscious mind shapes our experience of the world. Winner of the 2013 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award 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. 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 dountil 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 s...

“With great wit and intelligence, Mlodinow takes us on a sweeping tour of this [mental] landscape and the latest revelations in neuroscience.”
    —The Huffington Post

“Mlodinow plunges into the realm of the unconscious mind accompanied by the latest scientific research . . . [with] plenty of his trademark humor.”
    —*Los Angeles Times

• “Clever [and] engaging. . . . A popular-science beach book, the sort of tome from which cocktail party anecdotes can be mined by the dozen.” —The Oregonian
   
  “Fascinating. . . . Shows how the idea of the unconscious has become respectable again.” —The Economist
   
  “A must-read book that is both provocative and hugely entertaining.” —Jerry A. Webman, chief economist, OppenheimerFunds, Inc., and author of MoneyShift

“Leonard Mlodinow never fails to make science both accessible and entertaining.”
*    —*Stephen Hawking, author of *A Brief History of Time

• “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 Daily Beast
• “Mlodinow thinks in equations but explains in anecdote, simile, and occasional bursts of neon. . . . The results are mind-bending.”
      —*Fortune
• “Mlodinow argues his case persuasively and with humor.”
  *    —The Montreal Gazette
• “In a loose, easygoing style, Mlodinow combines numerous accounts of scientific studies with pop-culture references and even personal anecdotes.”
      —*Kirkus Reviews
• “Mlodinow is the perfect guy to reveal the ways unrelated elements can relate and connect.”
      —*The Miami Herald
• “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.”
  *    —Booklist
• “Think you know the whys and hows of your choices? Think again. Follow Mlodinow on a gorgeous journey into the enormous mental backstage behind the curtain of consciousness.” 
  *    —*David Eagleman, neuroscientist and author of *Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain
• “With the same deft touch he showed in The Drunkard’s Walk, Mlodinow probes the subtle, automatic, and often unnoticed influences on our behavior.”
       —Daniel J. Simons, professor of psychology, University of Illinois, and coauthor of *The Invisible Gorilla
• “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.”
       —Joseph T. Hallinan, author of *Why We Make Mistakes
• “A highly readable, funny, and thought-provoking travelogue by Mlodinow, a trusted traveler in this treacherous region, who leads us on a tour of the little-known country that is our unconscious mind.” —Christof Koch, professor of cognitive and behavioral biology, California I…