Customer Reviews

Quirkology: How We Discover the Big Truths in Small Things

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Recently I read an article in a magazine which was about the art of making small talk at parties. One of the suggestions that it made was to take note of interesting facts or stories to bring up if the conversation stalls. The example given was a study in which men and women were asked which superpower they would like to possess. Top of the women's list was being invisible, while men were far more likely to want to be able to fly. Not only is this an interesting nugget of information, it also immediately stimulates discussion.

If you enjoy these kinds of conversations, you will love this book. (It even includes a list of the factoids most likely to prompt discussion). Psychologist Richard Wiseman has conducted a number of studies over the years looking into the ways that people behave and also reports on some other people's experiments. Some of the things that I learned while reading this book were:
- How asking people to trace the letter Q on their forehead is a good predictor of how good a liar they are.
- How our memories can be tricked into creating false memories and why this happens.
- How a waiter can dramatically increase his chances of getting a tip.
- Why you are more likely to be attracted to people when you're in a precarious situation that elevates your heart-rate (so maybe Hollywood storylines aren't so far-fetched after all)
- That words containing the "K" sound are especially likely to make people laugh, because of the way they contort the facial muscles.

The book is written in a lively and entertaining fashion and in parts is very amusing. While it's quite disjointed, it held my interest throughout. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest why people behave the way they do. Our behavior is more predictable than we think.

How should one rate a book that's a kick to read but is bad "science"? This is a well-written and amusing -- even sometimes fascinating -- book. I liked it. However, I found myself wanting to contact the author and say, "Yes, that's one interpretation of the data, but what about..." for nearly every experiment he cites. The "Q" experiment he begins with, which is a sort of self-analysis/personality-profile parlor game, was utterly wrong in my case. Wiseman might dismiss that statement as an instance of self-deception (which is too easy an answer to fall back on, but common in this type of pop-psychology), but accepting his analysis of "me" would actually be far more flattering that the truth! I won't spoil the game for those who haven't read the book. If you want a taste of Wiseman's style before committing to this, go to www.quirkology.com (but doing so WILL ruing the "Q" test for you), where you can even participate is some of his "research". The questions are pretty general, even vapid -- so obvious that you can see the "trick" behind them. So much for science.

I should point out, in fairness, that I already knew a lot of the information Wiseman offers here. For another reader, this book might be a revelation. Maybe.

Overall, I'd say this is a fun book that will give you some good talking points for dinner parties, and which might give you a new perspective on a few things. But it's really just an entertainment. I think Wiseman would be a wonderful lecturer for one of those lite intro courses that fulfill your university science requirement. He'd be great fun as a drinking buddy. But I'm hard pressed, after reading this book, to think of him as a serious academic. All of which shouldn't keep you from reading the book, of course. Just don't expect too much.

Richard Wiseman is an experimental psychologist and professor of "public understanding of psychology." In this book, he discusses dozens of experiments performed by himself and other psychologists around the world over the course of the last hundred years. All these experiments have in common is unusual research methodology or amusing results.

Each experiment is described in as little as a paragraph, or as much as a chapter. Old favorites like the Milgram "Obediance to Authority" experiments make an appearance, and some of the recent experiments discussed got a lot of press ("what is the funniest joke in the world"), but most of the content will be new to most readers.

Topics include studies of personal ads and pickup lines, determining which are most effective, how to detect liars, manifestations of prejudice and hypocrisy (are religious people or priests more honest or generous than others? it has been tested). Wiseman even ran tests to see which experiments in the book are the most interesting, to help the reader know what would be the best conversation starters at parties.

Unusually for a mass market book, it is copiously footnoted.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I bought this book, but it turned out to be a lot like the book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (P.S.) - only Dr. Wiseman's book is much, much better. Wiseman says that: "Put simply, quirkology uses scientific methods to study the more curious aspects of everyday life. This approach to psychology has been pioneered by a few researchers over the past hundred years who have followed in Galton's footsteps and had the courage to explore the places mainstream scientists avoid."

Hopefully the chapters can give you a gist as to what you will find in this book: Chapter 1 - What does your date of birth really say about you?, The New Science of Chronopsychology; Chapter 2 - Trust everyone, but always cut the cards, The Psychology of Lying and Deception; Chapter 3 - Believing six impossible things before breakfast, Psychology Enters the Twilight Zone; Chapter 4 - Making your mind up, The Strange Science of Decision Making; Chapter 5 - The scientific search for the world's funniest joke, Explorations into the Psychology of Humor; Chapter 6 - Sinner or saint?, The Psychology of When We Help and When we Hinder; Chapter 7 - The pace of life and other quirkological oddities, The Future of Quirkology.

In short, this is a terrific book. In many respects it shares a lot in common with not only Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics, but also books like Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (Revised & Expanded Edition), The Mind of the Market: How Biology and Psychology Shape Our Economic Lives, Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average and How We Decide. I highly recommend this book and also recommend Wiseman's newest book, 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot (Borzoi Books). I would definitely have given this book 5 starts even if it only had included the chapters on Lying and Deception and The Scientific Search for the World's Funniest Joke - the whole book is hilarious, entertaining and above all, informative. This is a truly great read.

Quirk is a funny word, and recently popular (see Michael Hirschorn's essay Quirked Around in the Sept. 2007 Atlantic Monthly, which considers "[t]he unbearable lightness of Ira Glass, Wes Anderson, and other paragons of indie sensibility"). Quirkology: How We Discover The Big Truths In Small Things is University of Hertfordshire psychologist Richard Wiseman's recent compendium of human oddity.

Wiseman's list of topics includes the effect of date of birth on personality, the relation between names, initials and other personal traits like height with success in life, lie detection, unconscious influences on behavior, the psychology of humor, and the nature of disgust. The common thread is that either the method behind the research, or the topic itself, or both, are unusual or odd in some way.

At the level of the "small things," the little quirks in human behavior, Quirkology offers an amusing and informative sample of the kinds of phenomena that might make the reader stop and think, "huh, how about that," perhaps with a chuckle. But at the level of "big truths," the deeper theoretical understanding of human nature, Quirkology sometimes disappointed. It is not Blink, Malcolm Gladwell's consideration of many (also quirky) aspects of human behavior that point to intuitive, instinctive, instantaneous decision-making processes, or Everything Bad is Good For You, Stephen Johnson's consideration of why IQ has been increasing a few points with each generation for the last few decades. Quirkology is more a collection of independent essays, which would be fine, except that not all of them get to a "big truth." I don't think it is giving away the punch line to say that in the chapter, The Search for the World's Funniest Joke, there really is no punch line, no deep truth about humor. Some of the essays reach for the bigger truth, but some do not.

Wiseman's prose is light and breezy, and he introduces new topics and makes transitions within a sequence of ideas by relating anecdotes and examples that pique the reader's interest: "The idea for the study had occurred to me when I had come across a Gary Larson Far Side cartoon. The cartoon was set in a courtroom, and the lawyer was talking to the jury. Pointing at his client, the lawyer said, 'And so I ask the jury...is that the face of a mass murderer?' Sitting in the dock is a man wearing a suit and a tie, but instead of a normal head, he has the classic 'smiley' face consisting of just two black dots for eyes and a large semicircle grin. Like all good comedy, Larson's cartoon made me laugh, but then it made me think." Wiseman did make me cringe occasionally by lapsing into the language of supermarket tabloids: "I have examined the telltale signs that give away a liar, explored how our personalities are shaped by month of birth, uncovered the secret science behind speed dating and personal ads..." and then again, just a paragraph later, "Each chapter reveals the secret psychology underlying a particular aspect of our lives..."

Quirkology is a wide-ranging, but loose, collection of interesting tidbits about psychology, presented in an accessible, sometimes entertaining, style.

I'm finding it a little hard to write a review because I'm asking myself what I just read. Yes, it is a fun read. Fun because it is frothy; not because there is a thread or sequence of explorations which build to some insight. No, it is just a compilation of tidbits. This is not to say there is no value to these tidbits. For instance, there is more behind the scenes information about Stanley Milgram's experiements, of which I had been familiar. But the stories and perhaps conclusions are richer because of Wiseman's discussions. Some of his vignettes serve as mythbusters. And, alas, some of his research studies imply causation when there is really just correlation. In the end, worth the time to read if you have a lot of it. If you don't, you might take a pass.

I got this book as a Christmas present from my mom. I'm a 17 year old, high school student and I am fascinated by the world of Psychology and the unconscious mind.
I may have already biased you to call this review "unhelpful" because I mentionted the fact that I was 17. This could potentially have impacted you to think "Oh he's just 17, what does he know?"

This book deals with that precise thing.
It deals with the minute things that influence us.
How the letter Q can determine how often you lie, how astrological signs seem to work due to labeling rather than the planets and the stars, how the "c" / "k" sound makes people laugh the most and even how a fast heart beat can make you think you're in love. This book is filled with interesting studies like this.
However some of these studies could be anecdotal. Read wikipedia's second definition for anecdotal. [...]

To make sure studies aren't anecdotal, we need to find the direct cause or root of the evidence. For example.. in one section of the book he talks about how in China a specific animal year (cow, sheep, dragon etc), is considerer bad and that if you have a child durring this year he/she will grow up badly behaved. He looked for data to see if this year (1966) had more abortions in China and it did have more than the surrounding years. It would now seem as though there is a connection between the astrological animal and abortions for this year. And in the case for this book it is likely that this is the case; however many of the studies may still be anecdotal. Just because it seems as though one thing is causing another, this may not be the case. Otherwise, I loved the book and as long as psychologists and scientists etc, have controlled environments and controlled variables and conditions it is unlikely to come out with anecdotal evidence.

Great Book 5/5!

This was generally well written. One gets the impression that this author is a very smart guy that has lots of information that he wanted to share and was trying to squeeze it all into one book. So, on one hand, you get the feeling of broadness but on the other there are many topics that I would like to have seen in much more detail. So, some of the especially noteworthy sections were:

1. His explication of the "Six Degrees of Separation" rule. We have all heard that 1 million times or better, but never had any idea of what experiments went into demonstrating it.

2. The section on names (and how some names are more popular than others and therefore lead to more successful positions) are one of those things that I might like to have seen discussed in more detail. In some books ("Freakonomics"), authors would have you believe that names don't make any difference in vertical mobiliy. In others ("Logic of Life"--Harford), the authors say that it does. (I think that Harford's conclusion is more correct, but I digress.) It might have been fun to see Wiseman's keen insight talk about that topic at a bit greater length.

3. The section on confabulation is one of the greatest ever. How people remember things that never happened, and how easy it is to suggest things to people that they will remember. The obvious thing is counselors asking children to remember sexual abuse that never happened, but that was not touched on in this book.

4. Subliminal messages, BUSTED!! I enjoyed hearing (1) that there is really no such thing as subliminal messages (2) the origin of that myth and (3) being made to appreciate just how long a wrong idea can go without dying.

Wiseman spent time showing us experimental work in actually obtaining results. It's been many years since I have taken any Psychology course (if that is what this could properly be considered), but I do distinctly remember the course being long on talking and short on empirical methods. This book was at least a partial remedy to that shortcoming. Certain sections of the book had to be reread, and that was fine. It would have been easier to follow if the book had been arranged in the same way as "Sway" (Brafman).

Definitely one of those books which promised more hilarity in the bookstore than it was able to deliver at home. I think Richard Wiseman would dearly love to have us believe that he is a brilliantly zany individual, but most of this material never rises above being moderately interesting, and the deliberate 'quirkiness' begins to feel forced after a while.

A couple of chapters fail completely in my view. Pretty much all the material related to "what your birth date really says about you" is fluff. There's not much substance in the chapter on superstition and people's belief in the paranormal either. Deconstructing and explaining humor is a risky proposition at best - most attempts I've read have been excruciatingly dull, and singularly devoid of humor. Wiseman does as well as can be expected; the chapter on humor is readable, but far too long at 50 pages.

More successful were the chapters on how to tell if people are lying, on decision-making (including how to write a personal ad that will succeed with men/women), and altruism. I thought these were well-done: the underlying science seemed more firmly grounded, findings were more concrete, and well-presented.

To the author's credit - his writing style throughout the entire book (even in the less successful chapters) is fluent and readable. Though there is that slightly forced zaniness ("let the quirkology begin"), whose charm fades before the book finishes.

In the end, a mixed bag. What rating does one give to a book where one thinks 50% of the material is excellent, 50% forgettable?
Answer: 3.5 stars, rounded to 4, because it was fun to read.

The work contains little-known facts i.e. The luckiest people are born in May or July. When a person smiles genuinely, the face muscles tighten
pulling the brows down and the cheeks appear to move upward. The #13
brought luck to President Wilson. 53% of Americans are superstitious.

Firewalkers use the mind to create energy forces to protect themselves
from harm. Most people polled thought that they would go to heaven.
In addition, a greeting card may provide information about your
personality. Subliminal stimuli stimulate powerful effects on buying.
It's important to know this in order to avoid impulse purchases.

The work provides a considerable curiosity for a large constituency
of readers. Read this book and argue about its premises ad infinitum.