Must-read psychology books
durmonski.com
durmonski.com
It's interesting to look at the Amazon reviews: most of the reviews give 5 stars, but if you look at the 1-star reviews you'll see that there is a significant minority of reviewers with opinions like this one, for example: "It's an overrated book that is unnecessarily long. It will suffice to read the book blurb as the rest is repetitive explanation of the same topic with endless examples."
To me it is an interesting psychological phenomenon that people find the book worth reading. Perhaps someone should write a book about that ...
This is what I actually find most of even the best books to be. This is why I am asking (also because I believe most of the people here know what this book is about and many of them have actually read it).
I think some of the examples of bias or other cognitive misgivings that he gives throughout the book could be insightful by themselves. It might be easy to express a general idea in a couple of pages, but concrete examples of the phenomena help bridge it to real life. It could also be interesting as a quick peek at how some of the studies were designed and conducted.
The problem for me is that, since at least some (perhaps many?) of the results Kahneman presents haven't actually been replicable, and I'm not an expert in the field, I have trouble figuring out which of them to believe and which, despite his convincing tone, might not be true after all.
The blog post of the title doesn't actually seem to even mention the problems with replication at all even though they're moderately well known, which kind of makes me want to question whether the "must-read" list has been really considered that critically at all.
I got to the section on priming and immediately thought "what ridiculous bullshit", looked up the original paper and saw that my suspicions we absolutely justified. The statistical analysis of the results is garbage and the experiment design doesn't pass some basic sanity checks.
If this were some sort of purely pop-psych book I would have just brushed it off. Journalists often have to write to a deadline and don't have to time to dive into the details of everything, especially if it makes a good story otherwise.
However I was completely put off by the fact that this was written by someone who made understanding how we reason his life's work. In the book he even says something along the lines of "this sounds unbelievable but you have to accept it!"
I felt somewhat validated that years later this became a more widely accepted criticism but the popularity of both that book and the unquestioned esteem that Kahneman commands really repulsed me. The biggest value of that book is as an object lesson on why we have a reproducibility crisis in the first place. If even prize winning economists/psychologists won't ask the most basic questions about what they're being told there's no hope for the field.
The following articles look relevant:
https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-...
https://retractionwatch.com/2017/02/20/placed-much-faith-und...
Per the following, not all types of priming are under controversy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology)#Replicabi...
I greatly appreciate this comment. Thank you.
For me, I'd say reading the Summary is a good start to know if you want to read a book, but just because the basic idea is in that, I don't think it's all you need. I often find myself taking notes on different things than others have and linking it to other things in different ways.
You need to fully understand the Why and although there is an argument that most books are only a few ideas, the stories in the book help argue why these are important an help you see how those ideas fit into the world and how they fit, something that is truly important if you are going to start implementing that idea or thought into your way of thinking, else it's just another article you read on wikipedia that you nod your head too.
The human brain is all about patterns and connections and that is missed on a single article that is making a big point, a summary is exactly that, a good way to explain things in a simple and quick way, but you have to understand everything else behind it for you to truly understand it and for that you really need the whole book, unless you have a badly written book that fails to do this. I think this is vastly missed by those that just read summaries or dismiss the power of the whole book, just reading something doesn't really ingrain it into you, you have to wrestle and think about it in your own mind and being exposed to that idea from all different directions for a few hours really helps cement it.
It's also why I am considering rereading books I liked, even though I still remember the basic ideas and due to what I mentioned earlier, I think you can take different things from the same book if you read it at different points in your life, different connections will happen and different points will make more sense than they did before.
https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Judgment-Decision-Making-M...
There's an 'Ask HN' thread on "high signal to noise ratio" books: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10027102 I note that "Thinking, Fast and Slow" is also listed here.
Wikipedia itself is of course lovely for high information density and is my go-to resource.
"Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes" by Paul Watzlawick (1)
On the other hand it could very well be the case that the two main points of the book(2) are discussed also in one or more of the 10 listed in the OP.
1) https://www.goodreads.com/it/book/show/89200.Pragmatics_of_H...
2) The two points being: - What Communication and Meta-communication are, what purpose they serve and how these are a uniquely human trait. - The role of the therapist in treating dysfunctional families.
> It is based on the idea that the same message accompanied by different meta-communication can mean something entirely different, including its opposite, as in irony.
It's the real message, communication via a false message rather than about it.
Your cat can communicate to you that he wants some more milk. This is communication.
Your cat CANNOT communicate about its own communication, i.e. cannot "say" something like: "hey, you bastard, I meowed for milk 4 times already, are you deaf or just too lazy to pour some for me?".
This would be meta-communication, and no animal species can do it. It is like adding a whole extra dimension to it.
(The cat example is straight out of the book, as much as I can recall it, at least).
Adding the metacommunication layer we can do much much more than just saying "give me the milk".
W. says that the meta-communication layer, for humans, is mostly a way to broadcast your own self-image and see how the others react to it.
How many different way to ask for milk you can manage? Polite, obsequious, commanding, rude... what are you trying to say to the guy handling the milk, besides the simple fact that you want some? Are you in a position of power? or are you appealing to his kindness?
So the reason the cat does not need this extra layer is because he only wants his milk, and it is not trying to impress you about his own coolness, or how erudite he is, and so on.
They can do it patiently, timidly, demandingly, angrily, etc. and there’s a progression: they might not say “I’ve asked nicely, you idiot, and you didn’t respond, so now I’m no longer asking nicely” - with words, but they do act it out.
You, on the other hand, may very well be a workd-renowned expert on canine/feline communication but in this specific case are barking up the wrong tree: the cat example is not the main topic but more of an example/metaphor.
I don’t care enough either way, except to say I find the example/metaphor not convincing enough to consider reading the book.
In a discussion about a Pscyhology book (by a quite influential and respected researcher) you felt you really had to make known to everyone that your superior experience as breeder of innumerable dogs and cats made amply clear that the guy was a charlatan, due to a half-page example from a 304 pages book. A book you have not read, and you probably did not even know it existed before another random guy mentioned it.
From this I infer that what you really wanted to say is "Hey, look at me: I know lots about cats and dogs."
I am not blaming you. This is exactly what Watzlawick considers to be one of the primary "uses" of metacommunication by humans: a way to project our own self image on others.
And I am surely doing the same, just like everyone else. Maybe I am a bit more conscious about this phenomenon, thanks to having read the book. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I knew someone who couldn't smoke weed because any time she did, everything seemed loaded with intent and backstory that seemed all too true.
Communication doesn't happen in a vacuum. I hope the book at least acknowledges that metacommunication received is subjective to the receiver.
Also, pair with “Widen the Window”
In general William James writing seems full of profound ideas.
These are books that synthesize huge amounts of data. They're incredibly valuable and have plenty of third-party reviews you can read to further learn what their strengths and weaknesses are. They're not perfect, but nothing in science is.
On the other hand, the post you're linking to is a bunch of tiny hand-picked studies that haven't had replication succeed -- as would be trivial to assemble such a list in any field. Those studies don't form the main underpinning of any of these books, so they don't have anything to do with it.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Emotions-Are-Made-Secret/dp/15098...
Is it still a good read? Is there another book like it that hackers recommend?
The book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 is a different book by a different author. Read the Daniel Goleman book instead, or at least first.
Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss is also worth checking out.
I've also read influence. It's Great but it didn't have near as much impact on me. but it does really drive home how people rationalize prior assumptions rather than logically arriving at conclusions.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20100527123450/http://www.gbc.ed...
Punished by rewards by Alfie Kohn. The amount of research showing that incentivizing people kills internal motivation is… staggering.
The full title is: Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion
What may be more amazing is that scrolling through these threads treating K*hneman or others seriously. Invariably if cognitive psych or physiology make the rounds here I feel a serious case of guilty Gell-Mann Amnesia. I mean, is it too much to ask the constituents of this forum to keep the pace ahead of "Ah, Thinking Fast and Slow was really intellectually stimulating" in 2021, or... ever?.
1. The Wiley Handbook on the Development of Children's Memory by Patricia J. Bauer & Robyn Fivush. (A really excellent book, even if somewhat dated, a lot of it has withstood re-examination).
2. Memory Reconsolidation, edited by CM Alberini
3. The Nature of Emotion, Fundamental Questions 2nd Edition Edited by Andrew Fox.
I mean just go on google scholar, look for chapters on a topic you find interesting. You will more likely get the real stuff that way than pop psychology books, or by reading frauds like Freud.
So, the books are going to be popular psychology almost by definition (and we really shouldn't continue the academic tradition of sneering at academics who write for the popular market. We need them).
I get your irritation about Freud. Dan Ariely and Daniel Kahneman are pretty relevant today, actually. I'd add these books:
* Decisions, Uncertainty and the Brain by Paul Glimcher
* Why Choose This Book: how we make decisions by Read Montague
So Subiculum, can you recommend books on memory that aren't intended to be read by academics in the field?
Update: Subiculum indicates that they read their first suggestion, the Wiley Handbook as an undergraduate, so I'm guessing that it is accessible enough for a general audience.
* Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction by Sutton and Barto
(required reading in our lab, but its computer science book)
* Decision Neuroscience: An Integrative Perspective by Jean-Claude Dreher and Leon Tremblay
I think it is still useful to read Freud, assuming you don't take it as gospel and consider when he wrote it and how little was known at the time. In my opinion, Freud was a brilliant man. The fact that some of his ideas are so obviously false today might serve as immunization against hubris, with which some of us do not realize that many of our ideas will seem absurd in a hundred years.