I chose to read "The Influential Mind" by Tali Sharot. This is a seven-chapter book that delves into topics such as confirmation bias, emotion, persuasion, and curiosity. The main idea of this book is to see how our brain can change or influence others' brains. This means affecting their beliefs, actions, and thoughts. Now this can be done multiple ways, and can be done consciously and unconsciously. This book not only explains the reasons why we are persuaded but also how and where it stems from. It gives you an in-depth perspective and knowledge as to why our brain does what it does in these situations.
My favorite section of the book was on confirmation bias. This is a subsection in chapter 1. This chapter delves into the question of whether or not evidence can change a person's beliefs. The conclusion of this chapter is that just evidence is probably not enough for reasons like confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is something that I have found draws me in in every class I have taken. The idea that you could go your whole life believing one thing because it was all that you saw, because you never went searching for more. Now, whether that is because of ignorance or just not knowing is a different story. This is my favorite because it made me sit and ponder the most. Because confirmation bias practically answers the question, if a person wants to believe something, they will always find the information and knowledge they want and ignore the rest. So the mind is always influenced, and depending on what you get caught in, it can be very hard to ever steer away from that. My mind goes to our section of reproduction, and a woman looking for a certain man, and vice versa. This makes me think of confirmation bias. They have in mind what the perfect man or woman is, and when they have that idea in their head, it is hard to change that. For a woman, it's a man with a good job, good money, etc...
Beyond this class, I think that this book is very helpful in understanding why changing one person's or a group of people's or an entire world's perspective is so difficult. Not only are we all unique, but we might not fully comprehend why we think or believe what we do. However, I think for all who are interested, it is a good read, it made me really think about why I believe what I believe, where it stems from, and how it can change.
Below, I have attached two videos. The first is an interview by the author where she talks a little about influencing others. The second video is more of an in-depth explanation of confirmation bias.
https://youtu.be/p-pRAxrc1vM?si=inrBktslHAndySqP
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