What does it mean to be wise? Thomas Gilovich and Lee Ross, in The Wisest One in the Room: How You Can Benefit From Social Psychology's Most Powerful Insights, define wisdom as "Wisdom involves knowing when the information available is insufficient for the problem at hand. It involves the recognition that how things are right now might seem very different down the road" (p. 4).We look at the world and believe what we see (naive realism). What I love about psychology is that it opens up the world...

I don't like the tone of the authors like " we hope, reading this book you could be ... ... ... (adjectives, they value ) ". However, part of me doesn't expect much from the "self-help" book. Of course, if someone believes that a single self-help book could change a person's life like holy books then it's okay because it's their belief and sometimes "belief" could work as a placebo effect (-_-). But, one single book isn't enough to understand adequately about oneself let alone the rest of the wo...

I picked this book as part of me trying to diversify my reading list. This is in principle a psychology book. I found it a little boring with its academic way of presenting things. Numerous studies are presented in academic details to support the point and it would've been better for ordinary readers to have the conclusion rather than the actual experiment with its all details. Then, there is the topic of the book, I just did not understand what the main idea of writing this book. It has many to...

A good read for people new to the field

Very insightful. This book does a good job in explaining biases and barriers in human thinking.There is no one book that will make you the wisest in the room, but this will definitely add to your wisdom.I probably would've given this a 5/5 if not for the annoying political examples. They talk about politics way too much.

For me, the utility of books like The Wisest One in the Room is measured by the degree to which they highlight systematic defects in thought that lead to poor decision-making. By this standard, this book does a good job explaining two common sources of bias: naive realism and the fundamental attribution error. Naive realism refers to our tendency to believe that our perceptions are, in fact, reality. This bias is often compounded by the fundamental attribution error, which refers to a belief tha...

My ratings of books on Goodreads are solely a crude ranking of their utility to me, and not an evaluation of literary merit, entertainment value, social importance, humor, insightfulness, scientific accuracy, creative vigor, suspensefulness of plot, depth of characters, vitality of theme, excitement of climax, satisfaction of ending, or any other combination of dimensions of value which we are expected to boil down through some fabulous alchemy into a single digit.

Two social psychologists created a book about emotional intelligence and self awareness in a way that is both easy to understand and academically sound. The authors play on the specific human idiosyncrasy that makes parables and anecdotes easier to understand and remember (what social psychologist worth their salt wouldn't?) While underlining their credibility with studies others have done.My only complaint with this book is that it took forever to get to the point. After two or three examples a...

A great book that really helps put things in perspective making you a better communicator and debater and more conscious person of the role of psychology in everyday issues.

About 10 pages of this book are about naïve realism, and I would recommend those 10 pages. People believe that they see the world objectively and without bias, and people think that others will come to the same conclusions, so long as they are exposed to the same information and interpret it in a rational manner. People believe that others who do not share the same views must be ignorant, irrational, or biased. In fact, the average person is right an average amount of the time. Average people ar...

Another in an excellent crop of books about social psychology in recent years (see my bookshelf brain-cogsci-socialpsych for others). Each emphasizes slightly different characteristics, and each uses different metaphors to present the information and help it stick. This one doesn't use the word "heuristic" so it sounds more like common sense than "psychobabble," (though it does describe some mental processes that others would label as heuristics). It also provides more concrete steps one can tak...

The book is talking about social psychology in general and how to use the knowledge extracted from the experiments to be wiser in ur decision making and in life

Originally posted on: http://www.batsarenotbugs.com/2015/12...I normally really enjoy books like this, but I approached The Wisest One in the Room with more trepidation than usual. This was due to two specific words/phrases in the book's pesky subtitle (How You Can Benefit from Social Psychology's Most Powerful Insights): "How" and "Social Psychology." I'm not claiming that I'm often or even ever the wisest member of a room, I just dislike "how-to" books as they tend to have unappetizing content...

I picked this book up by chance from a local library, and found the content surprisingly interesting and myself fascinated by the insights and anecdotes offered throughout the book. I took a long time finishing the book, for each chapter actually does make me ponder on the concepts, reflect on my way of viewing the world and show me fresh new perspectives. From naive realism to dissonance reduction, when the social psychologist explains the idea, they all make sense, but before reading the book,...

Of the many definitions proposed for wisdom, perhaps the most intriguing is “seeing beyond illusion.” When most people are captivated by illusions, the wisest one in the room sees past them and proposes new solutions. The authors draw on recent research in social psychology, judgement, and decision making to help us become wiser. These insights help us see beyond five classes of compelling illusions that often mislead us. The second part of the book applies these wise perspectives to solving sev...

I caught the rebroadcast of the YouAreNotSoSmart podcast Why you often believe people who see the world differently are wrong and thought this might be worth reading.

I was hoping this was a self-help book with tops on how to appear intelligent. I felt like I was reading a college textbook when I read this. I am sure it would make an excellent college text for Psychology students. I did not enjoy reading about all kinds of studies and their findings. I just wanted a list of things to do and this was not it.

This is a book it is well worthwhile getting your hands on. I've read another book by Gilovich - How We Know What Isn't So - and have recommended it to lots of people since reading it. This one is interesting because it is basically a companion to cognitive errors we are likely to make and how to notice and avoid them. One of the main ideas in this book is that we see how we do things as being 'normal' and how everyone else does things as slightly strange. The example given is of how we perceive...

The second half of the book applies these insights to analyzing and suggesting solutions to four pressing real-world problems. The problems addressed are: 1) What leads to human happiness and well-being? 2) What sustains human conflict? 3) How can at-risk populations be more effectively educated? and 4) What can we do to minimize global warming? These examples demonstrate how overcoming the frailties of ordinary thinking can help us arrive at new solutions to persistent problems.This well-res...

This past year has been highly politically charged and reading this book gave me a deeper understanding of the differences between the political parties and how their respective constituents have ideologically dug themselves in. Social psychology can teach us a lot about the current state of political trench warfare in this country. Gilovich and Lee write about numerous psychological principles, a first example being the False Consensus Effect: “People tend to think that their beliefs, opinions,...