The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking: How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy, and Sane [Hardcover]

Matthew Hutson (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 12, 2012

What is so special about touching a piano John Lennon once owned? Why do we yell at our laptops? What drove the Yankees to dig up the Red Sox jersey secretly buried beneath their new stadium? And what's up with the phrase "Everything happens for a reason"?

Psychologists have documented a litany of cognitive biases—misperceptions of reality—and explained their positive functions. Now, Matthew Hutson shows that all of us, even the staunchest skeptics, engage in magical thinking all the time—and that we can use it to our advantage, if we know how to outsmart it.

Drawing on cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, and anthropology, Hutson shows us that magical thinking has been so useful to us that it's hardwired into our brains. It encourages us to think that we actually have free will. It helps us believe that we have an underlying purpose in the world. It can even protect us from the paralyzing awareness of our own mortality. In other words, magical thinking is a completely irrational way of making our lives make sense.

With wonderfully entertaining stories, personal reflections, and sharp observations, Hutson has written a book that is entertaining, useful, and ever so slightly alarming.

Editorial Reviews

Review

 “In this wickedly funny and deeply clever book, Matthew Hutson makes a radical claim: All of us, whether we accept it or not, believe in magic. Without these intuitions, he says, we would hardly be human. Through vivid examples and cutting-edge science, Hutson presents a provocative new theory of how we make sense of the world.”

(Paul Bloom, Ph.D. author of Descartes� Baby and How Pleasure Works)

 This is a book that you pick up, but can’t put down. Hutson, intelligently and entertainingly, gives us the best kind of book: one that gives us insight to our very core. Highly recommended!”

(Ori Brafman, co-author of Sway and Click)

 “Matthew Hutson promises to convince the most hard-core skeptics and rationalists that they believe in magic, and he succeeds—with wit and clarity and scientific rigor.”

(Sharon Begley, author of Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From the Back Cover

7 REASONS TO READ The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking

1: "Matthew Hutson promises to convince the most hard-core skeptics and rationalists that they believe in magic, and he succeeds—with wit and clarity and scientific rigor." 
—SHARON BEGLEY, author of Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain 

2: "A remarkably creative synthesis of the science behind magical thinking threaded through with a very personal narrative that engages the reader." 
—BRUCE HOOD, PH.D., author of SuperSense and The Self Illusion 

3: "With wit and respect for both the rational and the irrational, Hutson reveals the pervasiveness of superstition and 'magical thinking,' even among people who consider themselves totally rational." 
—ALAN LIGHTMAN, PH.D., author of Einstein's Dreams 

4: "This is a book that you pick up but can't put down. Hutson, intelligently and entertainingly, gives us the best kind: one that gives us insight to our very core. Highly recommended!" 
—ORI BRAFMAN, coathour of Sway and Click 

5: "In this brilliant, exhilarating book, Matthew Hutson surveys the new science of belief and irrationality to reveal the delights of the human capacity for magical thinking." 
—DACHER KELTNER, PH.D., author of Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life 

6: "In this wickedly funny and deeply clever book, Matthew Hutson makes a radical claim: all of us, whether we accept it or not, believe in magic." 
—PAUL BLOOM, PH.D., author of Descartes' Baby and How Pleasure Works 

7: "This book about thinking is magical. It's the perfect blend of astonishing stories, up-to-date science, awe, beauty, disgust, and humor. It's science journalism at its best." 
—JONATHAN HAIDT, PH.D., author of The Happiness Hypothesis and The Righteous Mind

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Hudson Street Press (April 12, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594630879
• ISBN-13: 978-1594630873
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #336,300 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the Best Non-Fiction Books of the Year June 6, 2012

By J. Sexton

Format:Hardcover

This is a stunning book for anyone interested in neuroscience/psychology, philosophy, why people do what they do. Yet despite the book's excellence, you'll likely find mixed reviews, because the books subject matter and stance are disturbing to a lot of people. Don't be dissuaded, this is a fabulous, eye-opening book.

Magical Thinking is a term used by psychologists and anthropologists to describe non-scientific and a-rational thought patterns. I sort of like to think of the term as having 3 generations of use. First generation usage was when anthropologists coined the term to describe how primitive tribes thought about magical / non-scientific cause & effect. Think voodoo and witch doctors and such. Second generation was when psychologists used the same term to describe how everyone, no matter how modern, scientific, and rational, engages in these thought patterns. Yet the psychologists basically just thought of Magical Thinking as irrationality. It was still a mostly negative term. Third generation is a dawning understood that Magical Thinking underlies a lot of our humanity -- how it is, in many ways, vital to psychological health.

This book, as you may have guessed from the title, is a look at Magical Thinking from that third gen perspective. And anytime someone praises a-rational or non-scientific thought patterns, you can be sure that someone is going to get their panties in a bunch. Hence the polarized reviews. But think of it this way: if belief in essences and souls and teleology/purpose and irrational commitments are all essential to our humanity, then understanding how these beliefs function is, in a very profound way, necessary to really understand ourselves and our fellow man. And this book is the finest source for exploring these issues currently on the market.

If you buy it, you may have quibbles with the author's positions here and there, but you'll be richly rewarded for the effort. This is a first class book and highly recommended.

85 of 116 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars a book on magical thinking that relies on magical thinking April 22, 2012

By o. fenech

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

i was looking forward to this book and got it as soon as it came out, and while it does have some good moments all in all it fails on a good number of conclusions.
a particularly annoying one is one that is very fashionable at the moment. humans don't have free will because EEG tests and MRI scans show brain activity before our consciousness is aware that we are going to do something. the conclusion by the author being that it proves we are automata and our consciousness is just fooled into thinking we made the decision. the problems with this are many.
in the first place he is confusing conscious control with will. if we make an unconscious decision before we are conscious of it, it doesn't mean we are automata because our unconscious is us as much as our consciousness. if we were getting directions from aliens or CIA computers or whatnot, ok, then maybe we wouldn't have free will. but if our own mind made the decision, whether conscious or not, it is still us. that we are not consciously aware of it does not make it not ours. after all, it is us who "train" our unconscious. we can ride a bike home unconsciously --we know how to keep our balance, pedal, make turns and make our way home down a familiar path without having to consciously think about it. that's because we taught ourselves how to ride the bike and get home in the first place. we trained our unconscious to easily make those decisions for us so keeping our balance etc. would not have to be something we have to have our conscious focused on. so while we may not be consciously aware of how we pedaled our way home, it's still an activity we willed to happen.
another problem with the no-free-will belief is that it's based on MRI's and EEG's. the measurements that MRI's and EEG's take are hard science, but the interpretations of those measurements are an ever evolving art form. a certain part of our brain lights up on a screen and gets classified as "that's the part of your brain that decides X and Y" but in all truth we actually don't know. it's just an educated guess based on A usually happens before B therefore A is the cause of B --ironically a fallacy that's explored in the book in a different context. it might be an educated guess but it's still just a guess and to base your whole life philosophy on what is still basically a very young science is a beginner's mistake. the author just takes the magical thinking of the shamans wearing white lab coats as hard truth from the heavens and doesn't make much of an attempt to delve into the the vague reality of MRI and EEG interpretations.
a thing to consider is that in the past few years (less than a decade) scientist have discovered that the fatty tissues in the brain actually communicate with each other through complex chemical means that we are barely starting to figure out. this fatty tissue composes the majority of our brains and its activity is not measured by EEG's or MRI's. that neurons and their firings have such prominence in contemporary brain science is only due to the fact that we are able to measure that activity, but the fact is that at this moment we are not able to measure the majority of activity in our brains. MRI's and EEG's only cover a small sliver of what's going on and they only measure certain activities and we have no way of truly knowing what exactly those activities mean. they are great tools to ascertain things like brain damage and such but using them as mind readers still requires a leap of faith. there is still much magical thinking involved in this area of studies and to use it to prove theories about magical thinking is a bit magical in and of itself.

the book does have some good moments and it's a fast breezy read, so i wouldn't discount it all together but in the end it's another malcolm gladwell style book without gladwell's incisive observations or deft ability to communicate the marvels of the world in a marvelous way. the author's humor is painfully cheesy and it detracts from the reading instead of adding to it. i would also advice him to quit referencing science fiction novels that he read in his youth for no other reason than that it's just corny. also his reliance on his own dude tastes are a bit of a hindrance. while his review of sport fan and fishermen superstitions is interesting he just glosses over the myriads of magical beliefs held by many new agers --a crowd whose size is a lot bigger than superstitious fishermen or superstitious sports fans and who rely more on those beliefs to make serious life decisions. as you might guess, the new age beliefs are mainly held by women while the sport fans and fishermen who believe in jinxes are mainly men. there are whole industries based on magical beliefs but he seems to have barely dipped his toe in those waters.

all in all a promising premise and some good content but worth a read only if you want a quick read and borrowed the book from a library. i would have given it a 2.5 stars rating but you can't do half stars on amazon. with that said, it felt much safer to round out to 2 instead of 3 stars.

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A very interesting and funny book. April 17, 2012

By Feisty

Format:Hardcover

The premise of this book is sure to set off the hardcore skeptics. Do we honestly all think magically? The author makes it clear from the introduction that he's a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, so don't expect a religious message. Instead what we learn is seven well-thought-out ways in that we all, whether we like it or not, bend reason on daily basis. It's funny too!