Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior [Hardcover]

Leonard Mlodinow (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 24, 2012

Leonard Mlodinow, the best-selling author of The Drunkard’s Walk and coauthor of The Grand Design (with Stephen Hawking), gives us a startling and eye-opening 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 his trademark wit and lucid, accessible explanations of the most obscure scientific subjects, Leonard Mlodinow 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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

---

Guest Reviewer: V.S. Ramachandran on Subliminal
V.S. Ramachandran is a neuroscientist known for his work in the fields of behavioral neurology and visual psychophysics. The author of The Tell-Tale Brain, He is the Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, and is currently a Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Neurosciences Graduate Program at the University of California, San Diego.

This delightfully accessible yet intellectually rigorous book transcends traditional boundaries between neuroscience, psychology and philosophy, to tackle the riddle of the unconscious mind. Freud bashing is a popular intellectual pastime these days (I myself have been guilty on occasion) but Mlodinow shows that by emphasizing the unconscious he was on the right track: we are completely unaware of the vast majority of events going on inside our brains. The book presents compelling evidence gleaned from a variety of sources to show that much of our behavior is governed not so much by our conscious mind – which is prone to claim credit – but by a cauldron of motives, drives and unconscious propensities of which we are largely oblivious. Indeed, most of our actions are carried out by the unconscious mind (or minds ) which exists in peaceful harmony with the conscious person "inside" your body. The question of why we are conscious of the tip of the iceberg of neural activity continues to remain elusive but, perhaps, the answer can be found by asking what you can do without being conscious; What’s the IQ of the unconscious mind? Here Mlodinow offers dazzling new insights into what the unconscious can and does do, to influence our lives.

Review

“Clever, engaging. . . . A popular-science beach book, the sort of tome from which cocktail party anecdotes can be mined by the dozen. . . . Subliminal makes its main point well and concisely.”
—The Oregonian

“An assault against the idea that we control our decisions and our beliefs in the way that we think we do . . . A useful addition to the growing body of work arguing convincingly against the idea of the rational human brain.”
—The Daily Beast
 
“Mlodinow, a theoretical physicist who has been developing a nice sideline in popular science writing, shows how the idea of the unconscious has become respectable again . . . Fascinating.”
—The Economist

“This very enlightening book explores the two sides of our mental lives, with a focus on the subconscious or subliminal element. Drawing on clinical research conducted over a period of several decades and containing a number of rather startling revelations . . . the book appeals to readers with an interest in the workings of the human mind.” 
—Booklist 

“One of the ten books to watch out for in 2012 . . . Physicist, science writer and Hollywood screenwriter Leonard Mlodinow is out to explore how important the unconscious is in shaping the way we process the world.”
—NewScientist.com
 
“Mlodinow never fails to make science both accessible and entertaining.”
—Stephen Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time
 
“Think you know the whys and hows of your choices? Follow Mlodinow on a gorgeous journey that will make you think again.”
—David Eagleman, author of Incognito
 
“With the same deft touch he showed in The Drunkard’s Walk, Mlodinow probes the subtle, automatic, and often unnoticed influences on our behavior.”
—Daniel J. Simons, professor of psychology, University of Illinois, and coauthor of The Invisible Gorilla
 
“If you liked The Drunkard’s Walk, you’ll love Subliminal. This engaging and insightful book not only makes neuroscience understandable, it also makes it fascinating. You will look at yourself (and those around you) in a new way.”
—Joseph T. Hallinan, author of Why We Make Mistakes
 
“A must-read book that is both provocative and hugely entertaining. Mlodinow provides many eye-opening insights into the ways we act in business, finance, politics, and our personal lives.”
—Jerry A. Webman, chief economist, OppenheimerFunds, Inc., and author of MoneyShift
 
“A highly readable, funny, and thought-provoking travelogue by Mlodinow, a trusted traveler in this treacherous region, who leads us on a tour of the little-known country that is our unconscious mind.”
—Christof Koch, professor of cognitive and behavioral biology, California Institute of Technology

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1 edition (April 24, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9780307378217
• ISBN-13: 978-0307378217
• ASIN: 0307378217
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.1 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (86 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #59,704 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Leonard Mlodinow was born in Chicago, Illinois, to immigrant Jewish parents who were holocaust survivors. He received his PhD in theoretical physics from the University of California at Berkeley, and is now at Caltech. His book The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives was a New York Times Bestseller, Editor's Choice, and Notable Book of the Year, and was short-listed for the Royal Society book award. His other books include two co-authored with physicist Stephen Hawking -- A Briefer History of Time, and The Grand Design. In addition to his books and research articles, he has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Forbes magazine, among other publications, and for television series such as McGyver and Star Trek: the Next Generation. Visit my web site at: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~len/

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

132 of 147 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Book!! April 28, 2012

By J. Gomez TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow

"Subliminal" is the provocative and fascinating look at the unconscious part of our minds. One of my favorite authors and physicists, Leonard Mlodinow, takes the readers on a journey into the science of the unconscious. What a fun and enlightening book this was. Mlodinow is the master of making the difficult accessible and fun for the masses. How are mind works is one of the most interesting subjects and I was thrilled to see that the coauthor of both the Grand Design and the equally interesting book War of the Worldviews makes his latest venture into this intriguing science. This excellent 272-page book is composed of the following ten chapters: 1. The New Unconscious, 2. Senses Plus Mind Equals Reality, 3. Remembering and Forgetting, 4. The Importance of Being Social, 5. Reading People, 6. Judging People by Their Covers, 7. Sorting People and Things, 8. In-Groups and Out-Groups, 9. Feelings, and 10. Self.

Positives:
1. A fascinating topic (science of the unconscious) in the hands of a master.
2. Elegant, conversational tone that makes this book a treat to read.
3. Mlodinow consistently produces great books and this one lived up to my expectations.
4. As accessible a book as you will find. A difficult topic made easy and fun to read.
5. The book is loaded with great and I mean great examples to help the reader grasp the latest in the science. One of the books strengths.
6. Great use of science history.
7. The pioneers of the science of the unconscious.
8. Great use the latest scientific research in this fascinating topic to support well-stated positions.
9. You will end up with a better grasp at how our brains work.
10.... A good use of illustrations.
11. Great quotes and factoids abound, "The truth is that our unconscious minds are active, purposeful, and independent."
12. Evolution...why our brains evolved to be what they are.
13. A truly exceptional study that mirrors the subjects' sexual preferences.
14. What modern neuroscience tells us about our brains and how we perceive the world.
15. How our memory system works. Who does it change over time? Find out.
16. Social interactions and the subliminal. Theory of mind. The three regions of the brain and the three basic types of nonverbal communication.
17. An interesting look at stereotyping.
18. Popular misconceptions analyzed.
19. What do we know about our feelings our emotions? Find out.
20. The ways to the truth...our worldviews.
21. How our brain creates unconscious biases.
22. Is unrealistic optimism good for you?
23. Great links.

Negatives:
1. Notes are great but a formal bibliography never hurts.
2. Nothing about supernatural beliefs and why they are so prevalent.
3. Having to get multiple copies to share.

In summary, I loved this book. It was an intellectual treat. The science of the unconscious is a fascinating topic and this book was loaded with a lot of great research. Mlodinow is a great author who is able to tackle complex topics and make it fun and interesting to read. If you want to learn about the science of the unconscious, make a conscious decision to get this one, I highly recommend it!!

Further suggestions: "The Grand Design" and "War of the Worldviews: Science Vs. Spirituality" coauthored by this same author were excellent, "Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time" and "The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths" by Michael Shermer, "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature" by Steven Pinker, Hardwired Behavior: What Neuroscience Reveals about Morality" by Laurence Tancredi, "Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain" Michael S. Gazzaniga, "The Belief Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life" by Jesse Bering, "50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True" by Guy P. Harrison, "Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts" by Carol Tavris. For the record, I have reviewed all the aforementioned books, enjoy. Read more ›

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Well Written and Informative May 5, 2012

By Book Fanatic TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

In recent years there have been a number of books written on the topic of the influence of our non-conscious (or subconscious or unconscious) minds upon our behavior. This one is really well done and a fairly easy read. The book is broken into two parts. The first part is "The Two-Tiered Brain" and discusses the importance of the non-conscious part of our brain. The second part is "The Social Unconscious" and is primarily concerned with how our subliminal thoughts affect our social selves.

This is a good book and an enjoyable read. It will be extremely informative and surprising to those new to the subject and still has lessons for those of us who are not so new to the topic.

This book has Amazon's "Search Inside" feature and I strongly recommend you use it to become more familiar with its content. Easily recommended.

43 of 46 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Science, Good Writing on an Important Topic April 30, 2012

By Mike Grant

Format:Hardcover

We often imagine that every decision we make has a rational basis, that everything we do is for a "good reason." What we never consider is that each choice, each experience actually has an unknown framework that underlies it. So,"why" we think we made a decision may not explain the choice at all.

Mlodinow looks at our decisions from the perspective of the new field of social neuroscience, and finds what Freud and Jung theorized about almost a hundred years ago: that beneath every action and experience that is apparently rational, a set of unconscious processes actually dominates the decision-making process.

But these process are far from the "blood, lust and rage" of the Freudian unconscious, or the universal Platonic conceptions of Jung. Instead, these are adaptive mechanisms that protect us and help us to find a way through the rigors and dangers of life.

For research into these mechanisms, Instead of the "psychologist's couch" approach to self -understanding taken by classical psychoanalysis, Mlodinow champions an empirically verifiable line of research that is far from the "psychiatrist's couch" of classical psychoanalysis. Namely, social neuroscience, with the fMRI as the key experimental tool. This is a device that allows scientists to see exactly what processes are occurring in the brain during any given activity or experience.

In an experiment that gives breathtaking evidence of the possibilities presented by social neuroscience, a computer was able to select an image that closely matched one being viewed by an experimental subject, from over six million possible choices, on the basis of analyzing fMRI data alone....

By applying these insights to behavior and experiences in general, Mlodinow shows how we can now identify the unconscious neurological processes that underlie every field of human activity. Mlodinow explains how the unconscious serves not to protect us from, as Freud would have it, a patricidal impulses, but rather to provide a course of action and interpretation of reality that is geared towards survival in the particular environment that formed us. They are a set of neurological routines that have allowed us to survive in whatever strange set of circumstances life has thrown us into.

Additionally, there is no shortage of well-placed humor in this book. For example, when discussing the tendency for humans to anthropomorphize non-human beings, he discusses the tendency for a microscopic roundworm to select one food over another. In passing, he reminds us that a roundworm is not saying to itself, "I'd better watch my diameter." Such light touches infuse the book, but never obscure the fascinating science (as he brilliantly did in Drunkard's Walk).

By explaining our everyday decisions not as choices we make for rational reasons, but as the fruits of unconscious processes, Mlodinow is not - as some may criticize him for - sending psychology back a hundred years. Instead, he is showing how we are extraordinarily adaptive creatures, able to survive and thrive in a wide variety of environments. And in the course of our adaptation, we the marks of our environments - at every level of consciousness. Read more ›

49 of 62 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars A bit cheesy June 16, 2012

By zepolita

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I was hoping to learn something new in this book, or at least have something to talk about at a coctail party. I expected a little more from a physicist (author) who had worked with Stephen Hawking. The author used old examples of "subliminal" situations, like the horse who could do math by stomping his hooves. This example has been around for as long as I can remember. In some instances the author makes cases from a scarcity of evidence, like pointing out that people with the same last name tend to marry each other a little bit more than they do any other specific name (his sample set is quite small). He neglects to mention that there might be a tendency toward this because the population of a town may have more Joneses than Smiths, so of course Joneses would tend to marry one another and Smiths, in a different town, would tend to marry. When he does happen to write about something interesting, it is usually covered only superficially, so that one is left with a lack of solid understanding. Perhaps the most interesting "new" information in the book is covered in a couple of paragraphs, which discusses how brain imaging could detect which picture a subject was viewing (or sort of). Anyway, there's a scarcity of information in this book and while the reading doesn't take much effort, I felt like I was eating a bunch of rice cakes - not very good food with not too many calories. I'd pass this one up any day for Freakonomics or The Melting Spoon, for example.

Z