HOW DO WE KNOW OURSELVES? CURIOSITIES AND MARVELS OF THE HUMAN MIND By David G. Myers

David G. Myers is a social psychologist and professor at (ironically!) Hope College in Michigan. Myers discusses the latest research findings on Life and Death, depression, fear, anxiety, and happiness.

The last part of How Do We Know Ourselves? focuses on cultural issues and how Change (good and bad) takes place. There’s plenty of information in these brief chapters. This is a browser’s delight: you can read many of these chapters in any order…and they’ll only take you a few minutes to finish them.

If you’re in the mood for an intelligent discussion of many of our personal and social problems–and what we might do to make them better–you might consider giving How Do We Know Ourselves? a try. GRADE: B+

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Preface xi

Part I Who Am I?

1 Implicit Egotism 3

2 The Amazing Power of Attention 8

3 There Is More to Hearing Than Meets the Ears 12

4 How Do We Know Ourselves? 17

5 Dual Processing: One Brain, Two Minds? 21

6 Making New Year’s Resolutions That Last 27

7 The Powers and Perils of Intuition 32

8 Fearing the Right Things 37

9 We Knew It All Along 42

10 Judging Others and Judging Ourselves 47

11 Behavioral Confirmation: Getting What We Expect 51

12 How Do I Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways 54

Part II Who Are We?

13 The Science of Humility 65

14 When Birth Order Matters 70

15 Cardiac Arrest and the Conscious Experience of Death 75

16 Do People Repress-or Vividly Remember-Traumatic Events? 81

17 When Fear of Losing Steals Our Chances of Winning 85

18 How We Polarize, and What We Can Do About It 90

19 Our Differences Seize Our Attention, Define Our Identity, and Sometimes Deceive Us 96

20 The Psychology of Division 102

21 The Social Psychology of Dissent 106

22 The Overconfidence Phenomenon 111

23 Why Is Everyone Else Having More Fun? 117

24 Social Facilitation: The Energizing Presence of Others 124

25 The Happy Science of Micro-friendships 129

26 How to Make and Sustain Friendships 136

27 Narcissism: The Grandiose Self 142

Part III What in the World?

28 How Nature and Nurture Form Us 149

29 The Wonder of Walking (and Singing): Synchronized Spirits 154

30 Wise Interventions Can Change Lives 158

31 Failure and Flourishing 163

32 Death Is Terrifying to Contemplate, Except for Those Who Are Dying 168

33 Do Places with More Immigrants Exhibit Greater Acceptance or Greater Fear of Immigrants? 173

34 Implicit Bias Is Real. Can Training Programs Decrease It? 178

35 How Politics Changes Politicians 183

36 The Power of Confirmation Bias and the Credibility of Belief 188

37 Friends Versus Phones 194

38 Wealth, Well-Being, and Generosity 198

39 The Mere Exposure Effect: Familiarity Breeds Content 203

40 Do Replication Failures Discredit Psychological Science? 208

Notes 213

Acknowledgments 251

16 thoughts on “HOW DO WE KNOW OURSELVES? CURIOSITIES AND MARVELS OF THE HUMAN MIND By David G. Myers

  1. Patti Abbott

    Hope College is in beautiful Holland, MI and pretty much a Christian school although more moderate than many. In the Spring, they compete with their namesake in the NE and have a tulip festival. Sounds like an interesting book.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Patti,Socrates believed the first step to true wisdom is to “know thyself” because only then can one appreciate what one understands…and what remains to be learned. HOW DO WE KNOW OURSLEVES? is a thought-provoking book.

      Reply
    1. george Post author

      Jeff, I agree with you. All the research I’ve read on Birth Order points to specific tendencies: The oldest child tends to be a leader. The “middle” child tends to be “difficult.” The youngest child enjoys a lot of attention and indulgence.

      Reply
      1. george Post author

        Jeff, I’m the oldest sibling and of course, got the most restrictions. My little sister–15 years my junior–got away with everything! I think my parents were just worn down by that time!

      2. Jeff Meyerson

        When our friends from England came here, they came to dinner at Jackie’s parents’ house. Sue immediately picked out Jackie’s sister Susie as a classic “middle child.”

      3. Wolf

        That brings up memories …
        I may have written about part of this before:
        My parents met in the late 1930s when my father was a sergeant in Hitler’s army and in 1938 he “knew” that war was coming so he proposed to his blond girlfriend aka my mother.
        But because of the times they decided not to have children until 1942 when my father while serving in Russia realised that the war was lost and I was conceived to be born im early 1943 as a kind of souvenir for my mother because he was almost sure he wouldn’t return
        In early 1944 he got hit by a Russian sharpshooter and had to leave the force.
        When he got home they continued their relatively happy life – I remember being told that a remote American relative sent them food after WW2. ddTwo sisters were born and that was to be enough but several years later another sister was conceived and she became the family darling. Of course we had more money and more possibilities when she grew up so she was kind of a pampered darling. While the older sisters had to start work early she went to university – and killed herself …
        Nobody knows the reason or at least none of her “friends” told us.

      4. george Post author

        Wolf, mental health doesn’t get enough study or funding. Suicide rates in the U.S. are up. The age-adjusted suicide rate in the U.S. in 2021 was 14.04 per 100,000 individuals.
        The rate of suicide is highest in middle-aged white men.
        In 2021, men died by suicide 3.90x more than women.
        On average, there are 132 suicides per day.
        White males accounted for 69.68% of suicide deaths in 2021.
        In 2021, firearms accounted for 54.64% of all suicide deaths.

      5. Todd Mason

        Interesting…I asked Alice (as you might recall, a psychiatrist), as I sat across the living room from her, if she had a sense of how many men were committing suicide in the US of late, and why, and she suggested it was largely because they had little emotional support…and I replied, and they sure aren’t taught that they should need any or that emotions should be taken seriously…given how the stats you cite are particularly reporting middle-aged Yanks offing ourselves.

        Sigh. That can also play into the cleaving to Trumpism and its similar pathologies.

      6. george Post author

        Todd, you’re right about Trumpism and similar pathologies. I also point the finger at the cumulative effects of drinking alcohol and taking opioids for years. Self-destructive impulses get the upper hand…

  2. tracybham

    This does sound good, Especially that you can hop around to various chapters. I usually just prefer to read straight through but I also tend to stop reading a nonfiction book partway and pick it up later, and sometimes I have lost the sense of the book by then.

    Reply
    1. george Post author

      Tracy, you can browse through HOW DO WE KNOW OURSELVES? with its self-contained chapters. There’s a lot to think about in this book.

      Reply

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