Book Review: The World is Not Black or White: The Gray Matters in Naturally Selected Automatic Cognition

Abstract

Reviews the book, What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite by David DiSalvo (see record 2011-27150-000). One of the major themes of this book is that although our brain craves certainty, oftentimes things are not as they seem. The author advocates taking more time and being aware of our evolutionarily hard-wired cognitive processes and their strengths and limitations. The book illustrates the resiliency of the confirmation bias with an example from the martial arts world. It discusses the appeal of cause-effect relationships and why random events make us uncomfortable. The book also discusses memory, and how what we recall is often not reality. The two main types of memory are explicit and implicit. Explicit memory is where we store facts and events. Implicit memory is responsible for motor skills, things we do not have to consciously think about to do. The author makes great suggestions, rooted in psychological research, on how to implement solutions to cognitive issues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)