Alfred Street (University of Auckland Store)
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Black And White Thinking : When Grey Matter And Grey Matterscollide
Paperback Edition: 1
It is human instinct to sort and categorise. According to Professor Kevin Dutton, a psychologist at the University of Oxford, we are hardwired to discriminate and frame everything in binary black and white. It's how our brains work. Migrant or refugee? Muslim or Christian? Them or us? Rather than reaching out to those who are different, we bond with those who are similar to ourselves. Rather than challenging our own thinking about the world, we endeavour only to confirm what we believe.
The result is that the difference between polarized beliefs becomes ever greater. Dangerous possibilities arise. The Arab Spring. Brexit. Trump. Through persistent binary thinking our capacity for rational thought - seeing the grey, rather than merely black and white - begins to erode.
Black and White Thinking is an alarm call. Amidst a rising tide of religious intolerance and political extremism, it argues that by understanding the evolutionary programming of our binary brains we can overcome it, make sense of the world and in future make much subtler - and far better - decisions.
Publisher : Bantam
Pages : 320
Publication date : 2020-09-01
Subjects: Non-fiction, Published in the UK, Humanities, Social Sciences, Philosophy, Psychology, Popular Philosophy, Behavioural Theory (Behaviourism), Intelligence & Reasoning, Social, Group Or Collective Psychology