From the Publisher
“In this thoughtful, moving, and well-written book, Dan Ariely narrates his personal and professional journey to understand the world of misbelievers and conspiracy theories, and offers insights and tips that will hopefully help all of us protect our fragile social fabric from being torn apart by disinformation and distrust.” — Yuval Harari, bestselling author of Sapiens
“Misbelief is an urgent examination of the human attraction to misinformation. This timely book can provide a crucial foundation for building a more empathetic and informed society.” — Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Regret
“Once again Dan Ariely writes in a way that gets us to think and reflect about our human nature. In Misbelief, he helps us understand the nature of our opinions, how they’re formed, and how the forces of misinformation can distort them. This is an important book for those who want to understand themselves and the increasingly complex world around us.” — Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO of Thrive Global
“For most of us it is tempting to think that people misbelieve things because they are uneducated, unintelligent, or misinformed. But as one of the world’s leading scientists studying beliefs, Dan Ariely, convincingly demonstrates in this important book—and as he discovered firsthand in being wrongly accused of leading a nefarious conspiracy!—misbelief is a process to which any of us can fall prey. More important, he offers science-based suggestions on what we can do about the polarization and breakdown in trust that comes with misbelief.” — Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and author of Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational
“Combining remarkable personal stories and scientific data, Dan walks us through a fascinating journey into the minds of those who choose to believe untruths. Misbelief provides a highly valuable perspective that serves to help navigate and discern our modern world view.” — Jesse L. Martin, actor and star of NBC’s The Irrational
"A rigorous but also deeply compassionate book: Ariely’s goal isn’t to condemn people who fall for misinformation, but to show the reader how easy it is to believe the irrational. The book asks us to foreground empathy to reexamine some of our own beliefs." — Booklist
OCTOBER 2023 - AudioFile
Narrating this chatty and informative audiobook, Simon Jones delivers a flawless performance full of lively interpretations and emotional resonance. The acclaimed British actor is enormously entertaining to hear, but he never steals the spotlight from the author's conversational writing and fascinating insights. The social scientist says conspiracy believers fall into an increasingly rigid funnel of disinformation because of emotional, cognitive, personality, and social factors such as unmanageable stress, insecure social connections, anger, and a desire for more order in their world. Once in the funnel, they become trapped in a social system of shared beliefs that provides status, affirmation, and secure belonging. Ariely offers suggestions to mitigate how "misbelievers" diminish the trust needed for a cohesive society to function. T.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2023-07-05
The well-known psychologist and behavioral economist explores the rabbit holes that lead to conspiracy theories and other brands of irrational thought.
Duke psychology professor Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, Payoff, and other books, begins by chronicling how he was accused of being a shill for big pharma and the “Deep State” for supporting Covid-19 vaccination. Why him? The conspiratorial echo chamber, he notes, searches high and low for heretics, aided by “technology, politics, [and] economics.” The technology is beyond individual control, the politics and economics thorny, and the battle against what Ariely characterizes as misbelief, “a distorted lens through which people begin to view the world,” is endless. Too many people are not just suckers for misinformation; they go out of their way to perpetuate it. As Ariely explains, it’s easy for a person to become ostracized by peers and family for believing that the Illuminati or lizard people control the Earth and, once ostracized, to double down, feeling persecuted and isolated, in a kind of rolling martyr complex. It’s difficult to reason with someone battered by precarity, stress, and loneliness—and if nothing else, holding outlandish ideas will earn people a place in a community thanks to, yes, technology. Still, the author urges us to try the best we can. “Providing reassurance to someone in stressful circumstances can make a big difference,” he writes, and introducing talking points designed to increase “intellectual humility,” or the ability to admit that it’s possible that one is wrong, may help, too. Empathetic but not overly soft, Ariely counsels readers to try to understand why ostracism won’t do the trick, why social roles help drive extreme emotions and polarization, and why dealing with the “funnel of misbelief” is a proposition both staggeringly challenging and wholly necessary.
For those inclined to engage, a useful handbook for dealing with the pizza-and-pedophilia devotee of the family.