Unthink, Chris Paley
Unthink, Chris Paley
List: $15.99 | Sale: $11.20
Club: $7.99

Unthink
And how to harness the power of your unconscious

Author: Chris Paley

Narrator: Jonathan Keeble

Unabridged: 4 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Coronet

Published: 08/14/2014


Synopsis

Your life is dominated by your unconscious mind: by thoughts you're unaware of and movements you don't realise you are making. Words, colours, mannerisms and other cues you don't realise are affecting you, change what you think. The confidence you have in your ability to reason and to consciously choose what to do is caused by a series of illusions that scientists are only just beginning to understand. The discovery of these illusions will change the way we see ourselves more than the discoveries of Darwin and Copernicus.

Unthink explores the unconscious decisions we make, and covers a variety of topics, ranging from how we choose politicians and romantic partners to more abstract subjects such as whether we can consciously decide to move our fingers.

The counter-intuitive observations that Chris makes in the book include:
· If you want someone to fancy you, wear red and meet them somewhere frightening.
· When waitresses repeat customers' orders back to them instead of just saying 'yes' they receive bigger tips.
· To reduce your shopping bill, start at the beer and snacks end of the store and work backwards.
· If you sit someone in an upright chair when you give them good news they will be prouder of their achievements.
· Having a picture of your family on your desk might make you work harder, but you'll be rattier when you get home!

Chris Paley shows us how we can understand ourselves and others better, by having a greater understanding of the way that the unconscious mind has an impact of the way we live our lives.

(P)2014 Hodder & Stoughton

About Chris Paley

Dr Chris Paley has an MSci and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Unthink: Why You Don't Think The Way You Think You Think. In Chris's view the greatest scientific leap of his generation is throwing off common-sense assumptions about the mind: what it's doing for us, why we have morals, and how we make decisions. This leaves scientists free to overturn millennia of fruitless theorising and truly explain why we are what we are and think what we think. He has a wife, three blameless daughters and an imaginary, but mischievous, cat. Chris might believe himself to be thoroughly amoral, but his wife thinks him 'a good man'.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Robert on March 14, 2018

According to this book, none of the following is really true. I saw this book in Waterstones for £7.99 and I liked it, but I thought to myself, this is quite expensive considering I normally pay £0.50 for a book. So I checked online and found out that a new copy is only 200 Rupees in India, which is......more

Goodreads review by Praveen on May 15, 2022

The start of the book feels like unconnected parts which are telling us various things. Eventually you realise it’s all a conclusion which are based on various psychological experiments and experiences. Then the book unravels into various examples where the subconscious brain takes the upper hand an......more

Goodreads review by Nicky on July 20, 2014

I received an ARC of this via Bookbridgr. I wasn't sure what level it would be pitched at, but as a general rule, all things to do with psychology and the weird ways our brains work interest me. It turned out that this book was probably below the level I'm reading at when it comes to psychology, whi......more

Goodreads review by Dr. Deepak on November 01, 2017

the book starts off well creating lot of inquisitiveness into the subject it touches. the examples makes you relate to reality very closely. the consciousness is defined well that how it influences the decisions. however later part of the book gets little boring, and i would say that the book is not......more

Goodreads review by Juju on July 16, 2023

I don't really understand the purpose of the book......more