Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior

by Leonard Mlodinow

Hardcover, 2012

Status

Available

Call number

154.2

Publication

Pantheon (2012), Edition: 1, Hardcover, 272 pages

Description

The best-selling author of The Drunkard's Walk and coauthor of The Grand Design (with Stephen Hawking), gives us an examination of how the unconscious mind shapes our experience of the world and how, for instance, we often misperceive our relationships with family, friends, and business associates, misunderstand the reasons for our investment decisions, and misremember important events. Your preference in politicians, the amount you tip your waiter, all judgments and perceptions reflect the workings of our mind on two levels: the conscious, of which we are aware, and the unconscious, which is hidden from us. The latter has long been the subject of speculation, but over the past two decades researchers have developed remarkable new tools for probing the hidden, or subliminal, workings of the mind. The result of this explosion of research is a new science of the unconscious and a sea change in our understanding of how the subliminal mind affects the way we live. Employing accessible explanations of the most obscure scientific subjects, the author takes us on a tour of this research, unraveling the complexities of the subliminal self and increasing our understanding of how the human mind works and how we interact with friends, strangers, spouses, and coworkers. In the process he changes our view of ourselves and the world around us.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Meredy

Six-word review: Something about how our minds work.

Extended review:

While I'm reading one of Leonard Mlodinow's books, I always enjoy a pleasant, even exhilarating, sense of understanding the workings of some very complex process.

Afterward I can't remember the explanations or even necessarily what

it was that was being explained. But I invariably come away full of the conviction that there are sound, rational answers to the questions raised and that the author knows what they are. If this sounds a little too much like taking things on blind faith, I try not to let myself be too disturbed by that. After all, I did follow the reasoning at the time, and I am no physicist or mathematician or psychologist.

So: I liked this book, much as I enjoy most books I read that explain something I didn't already know about the workings of the mind, and it has probably added something to my understanding; but apparently it has done nothing to increase my retention of a certain kind of content.

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LibraryThing member the.ken.petersen

How often does one read the blurb on a book and find the promise of an insight into modern thinking upon a subject, only to discover that one is hopelessly patronised by an author who feels that he is more intelligent than his reader and, issues a string of bamboozling statements with the unwritten

challenge that, were the reader to doubt the veracity of a single word, they would simply be proving that gulf in intellect? A book upon current understanding of the mind is, of course, a prime candidate for such an approach.

It is with a certain amount of surprise, and considerable pleasure, that I can report that Mr Mlodinow spurns this opportunity and genuinely informs, in a manner that is readily comprehensible to the average reader. This is one of those works where, amongst the new information, is seeded a myriad of examples whereby one recognises an attribute that may be a little less noble than one would care to admit. At least now understands why one exercises such bias, and that it is not exclusive to oneself.

The book is written in a friendly way, with a scattering of jokes and humorous stories; but one is never allowed to forget that it is backed up by serious, scientific investigation. Suddenly, ridiculous ideas, such as 90%+ of our brain not being used, are blown out of the water. Mr Mlodinow shows that we operate on both a conscious and a sub-conscious level. The subliminal brain activity filters what is passed to the conscious brain. This is a rational state of affairs because, were we to link our senses directly to the conscious brain, it would be hit with information overload. The sub-conscious filters and informs us of the likely state of play. Were we to not use such a system, man would probably have been wiped out by the first unfriendly creature to cross his path. He would have still been debating, internally, as to the best option; fight or flight. when the animal's teeth took their first delicious mouthful of man-steak!

This is a book for the curious who genuinely wants to understand human thought. It is a joy to read and leaves one feeling wiser for the experience: of how many modern tomes can one say that?

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LibraryThing member kjreed

One of the best science books I've read. Mlodinow gives an outstanding recap of neuroscience and how we've come to know what we know about the unconscious mind. The author has an engaging writing style that makes something that could be dry very exciting. The book is full of experiments for readers

to do that illustrate the topics being discussed. Mlodinow is a gifted writer who can bridge academia and the general public very successfully.

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LibraryThing member StephenBarkley

Mlodinow has a knack for delving into specific fields of science that do not receive a lot of attention and popularizing them. He did this with randomness in The Drunkard’s Walk, and now he’s back with Social Neuroscience in Subliminal.

The strength of Mlodinow’s writing lies in the way he’s

able to make scientific studies accessible. There are experiments galore recounted in his latest book. Here are a few of the ideas that expanded my mind:

- In the Southeastern United States, people with the most common surnames tend to marry people with the same surname (“Smiths marry other Smiths about as often as they marry people with all those other names [Johnson, Williams, Jones, Brown], combined”) (19).

- Shares on the New York Stock Exchange with easily pronounceable names are funded better (27).

- 1 in 5 average students whose teachers were informed that they were gifted gained 30 or more IQ points eight months later (114).

In addition to the fascinating experiments, Mlodinow uses compelling stories from his own history, laced with his witty sense of humour.

Unlike The Drunkard’s Walk, however, the structure of this book let me down. Despite the two-part organization in the Contents (“The Two-Tiered Brain” and “The Social Unconscious”), this book didn’t develop along any logical lines I was able to follow. While almost every chapter was interesting, they didn’t flow together or develop any overarching thesis.

In the end, Subliminal is a good popular introduction to the topics studied in the quickly developing field of Social Neuroscience.

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LibraryThing member MlleEhreen

I love listening to this stuff in audiobook format, then find them really frustrating to review - I have a great time listening but then I sit down to summarize and realize that I'm missing all the specifics I'd like to have in front of me when formulating my opinion.

SUBLIMINAL is a book about

automatic behaviors. Things we do without thinking, because they're dictated by our unconscious mind. The example that really hooked me into buying this book reported that couples who met for the first time on a bridge over a deep ravine, where they were frightened by the drop below, reported feeling higher levels of attraction for one another than couples who met in pleasant locations that didn't get the adrenalin pumping. So we might think we like someone, but maybe it's just our autonomic nervous system fooling us. And we can't tell the difference.

Mlodinow covers a ton of really cool examples. Another favorite of mine involved photocopiers, but he also talks about how the font on menus affects the way we taste food, or whether or not we think recipes are too complicated to cook. Our self-image, racial prejudice, eyewitness accounts of crimes...by the end, it's clear that our unconscious mind interferes with just about everything.

SUBLIMINAL is definitely science-lite, but it's not one of those big-idea, Gladwell-style books. Instead of trying to blow our minds with his theory of everything, he sticks to his topic and aims to be thorough. Yes, humans can be rational actors - but we aren't always, and there's proof. Yes, there are batteries of studies that show how our unconscious mind can overpower conscious reasoning, while we remain totally unaware and, in fact, quite confident that we're thinking our way through to a decision rather than behaving instinctively. Yes, this kind of adaptation is generally useful.

I find this kind of stuff fascinating and I had a great time listening to the book. Its primary quirk is that Mlodinow peppers his text with dad jokes. If you don't know what a dad joke is...I can only assume you are a dad who makes dad jokes on a regular basis. It's cute and dorky and took a little while to get used to, but lends the book a sort of sweet earnestness that, again, sets it apart from slick Gladwell-style "big idea" tomes.

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LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind

Eh. A good overview, especially for the person new to the subject, but I personally was underwhelmed. Don't let it put you off, though. It is a very good introduction to a tricky and mysterious subject.

LibraryThing member Silvernfire

This book is a good popular science introduction to social neuroscience. Mlodinow is skilled at moving between scientific descriptions, discussions of studies, and personal anecdotes, which means the book is both informative and entertaining. But if you've read other books even remotely on this

topic, you may not find all that much that's new in this one. I was surprised to realize that I was already familiar with many of the studies that he talks about, and I don't think of myself as being all that knowledgeable in this field. I thought the first part of the book ("The Two-Tiered Brain") held together better than the second half ("The Social Unconscious"), which had something of an episodic feel to it: here's a chapter on X, here's a chapter on Y... But really, I'm getting picky about these things: generally, I enjoyed reading it and recommend it to others who are interested in this sort of thing. And extra points for the clever cover design which uses "subliminal" writing to urge you to buy the book.

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LibraryThing member sbenne3

Good for a science book - will make you think about your subconscious and perceptions differently. It was s nice break from all of the novels I typically read in a year.

LibraryThing member jimocracy

I really enjoyed this book! I think the author's thoughts on the subconscious are even more important than the cosmological books he co-authored with Stephen Hawking. Mlodinow did a very good job of organizing the subject matter in easily consumable bits and then revisiting those bits, as

necessary. The end result was a very cogent and entertaining insight to our unconscious thoughts and their impact on our conscious lives.

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LibraryThing member pennsylady

I discontinued my audio in lieu of purchasing the hardcover.
It needs more explicit attention

LibraryThing member DLMorrese

The central point of this book is that many, if not most, of the choices we make result from other than a conscious decision making process, and it summarizes some of the research done in the past few decades that demonstrates this. Some of this unconscious process is due to instinct or physical

limitations in our brains, and some is due to subconsciously internalized ways of thinking that we absorb from our culture. The book is interesting but could have done more to distinguish between these.

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LibraryThing member KevinKLF

The book started a little slow for me. But I found when I thought about it, this would be a nice book to pull off your shelf when you are thinking about how our perceptions can be deceptive. He writes well and in a thought provoking manner = enough to make you think but not always convincing.

LibraryThing member SheilaDeeth

Written in a pleasing conversational style, Leaonard Mlodinow’s Subliminal is not a book of lectures or a science text, but it is an intriguing and enticing introduction to the advantages and disadvantages of our human makeup, conscious and subconscious selves alike. The author presents enough

historical information to orient the reader between Freud and the present day, often surprising with his description of how much has changed in the last fifty years. Where once we imagined ourselves in control of our thoughts and decisions (especially voting preferences, though Freud allowed us little control at all), now we’re presented with experiments which show that control manipulated in the simplest (scariest) ways. Which, of course, could leave readers imagining a hopeless world where only those with power and money to manipulate can succeed. But there’s more to it than that, and our weaknesses can also be our strengths.

As an aspiring (dreaming) author, I found the section on how we delude ourselves, overvaluing our own skills and undervaluing others’, quite depressing. But it’s followed at once with the story of persistence rewarded—our very self-delusion keeps us going. So I’ll persist, but perhaps with a bit more knowledge than before. Even if my cynical conscious self denied the value of some of the experiments , I still really enjoyed the book and couldn’t stop talking about it. However, please don’t force me to choose which jam I prefer, because I can promise I’ll change my mind in an eyeblink.

Disclosure: I didn’t see the subliminal messages on the cover. If I had, I probably wouldn’t have bought it. But it was next to a book on a similar topic on the bookshelf, so I bought them both.

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LibraryThing member ajlewis2

Good coverage of the topic for the layman. It is written with interesting stories that make it readable. I found the last 2 chapters less readable than the rest due to the number of studies presented which seemed hard for me to follow. It began to seem repetitive to me. It's possible that my

problem was the nature of the topics which were feelings and self. Those topics might have been a bit less tangible for me.

All in all it was a very good read for this type of book and had a lot of information and examples that were helpful. I'm glad I read it.

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LibraryThing member reader1009

not as readable as malcolm gladwell, but a lot of the same studies are in here. Recommended for those who enjoy interesting psych studies.

LibraryThing member kwskultety

Fascinating and well researched book about how our mind processes things we aren't even aware of. A little bit of body language, horses that can count, and optical illusions add to the fun and wonder that is the human brain.

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