"If we could only mind read, we would know how our first date or job interview really went. In reality, we understand little about what goes on in the minds of others, even those we think we know best. According to psychologists Wegner and Gray, 'you can never be certain that other minds even exist.' The authors explore these uncertainties, weaving together personal anecdotes and research on human behavior and perception to try to unravel the mysteries of the mind."—Scientific American
“Daniel Wegner was among the world’s cleverest, wittiest, and most beloved social psychologists. The Mind Club is genuinely novel, with brilliantly conceived studies on some of the deepest issues the mind of man can ponder.”—Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought and How the Mind Works
"Reading The Mind Club will take your thoughts about minds to places you never imagined…[Wegner and Gray] have created a true page-turner: witty, quirky and insightful.”—New Scientist
"A wonderful and strange book; science-fiction thought experiments ('robot versus baby') informed by social psychology experiments of fascinating design, part ethics, philosophy, neuroscience... authentically mind-boggling. And fun!"—Boing Boing
"A layman's guide to understanding how humans come to understand the minds of others... where and why people draw the line between perceiving another (or an inanimate object) as having a mind or not."—Brian Resnick, Vox
“Daniel Wegner’s final book is a masterpiece made ever more precious by his untimely death. Thankfully, his brilliance and wit live on—in these pages, and in his collaborator and protégé, Kurt Gray, who presents their ideas with clarity, depth, and style. The Mind Club is not to be missed.”—Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness
“One of psychology’s greatest and one of its best young minds—who better to remind us to mind minds.”—Michael Norton, Harvard Business School Professor and coauthor of Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending
"A pleasure for anyone comfortable with the thought that knowing others' minds will improve our own."—Kirkus
“Daniel Wegner was one of psychology’s most creative minds, and Kurt Gray was one of his most creative collaborators. The Mind Club describes their biggest idea together using thought-provoking examples, clever writing, and brilliant experiments. Essential reading for anyone who owns a mind and wants to know how to use it!”—Nicholas Epley, Professor of Behavioral Science, University of Chicago Booth School of Business and author of Mindwise
“Did he intend to cause harm? Did she feel pain and suffer? When it comes to morality—abortion, animal rights, legal culpability—many of the deepest questions boil down to: Does he or she (or even it) have a properly working mind? In lucid prose, Wegner and Gray explore the profound nature and implications of this question—one that is becoming all the more complex as lines of awareness and intent blur in a world where technology is rapidly advancing.”—David DeSteno, author of Out of Character
“An engaging ride through the hidden science of the human mind. If this book doesn’t change the way you see the world, and yourself, nothing will.”—Jonah Berger, Wharton Professor and Bestselling Author of Contagious and Invisible Influence
“The world lost an intellectual giant when Daniel Wegner passed. Lucky for us, his legendary wit and conversation-stoking discoveries live on in The Mind Club, and indeed in the career and voice of Kurt Gray, one of Daniel’s last doctoral students. The Mind Club draws you in with fun facts that hold grave implications for the meaning of life, loss, and morality.”—Barbara Fredrickson, author of Positivity and Love 2.0
“Science writing at its best: informative, entertaining, and thought-provoking. Who knew that the debate over whether an embryo is human can be explained by the same processes that have you believing your car has it in for you? Gray is a gifted young scientist who shares his insights in an easy, delightfully snarky way. But the best thing about The Mind Club is that it gives us one more chance to perceive Wegner’s mind, in all its glorious wit and intelligence; for those of us who knew him, this is a gift, and for those who didn’t, it’s an opportunity not to be missed.”—Lisa Feldman Barrett, Ph.D., Director of the Interdisciplinary Science Laboratory and University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University and author of How Emotions Are Made
05/23/2016
The late Wegner (The Illusion of Conscious Will), professor of psychology at Harvard University, and Gray, assistant professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, explore the qualifications of belonging to "that special collection of entities who can think and feel." Offering a bevy of examples, they posit that the degree to which a human, animal, or thing possesses an emotionally or cognitively sharp mind is in the mind of the beholder. For instance, when we dislike, fear, compete with, or lust after other people, we tend to dehumanize them. Conversely, when a technological object isn't working, people tend to humanize it. But it is in understanding the self that humans are perhaps most deluded; we're prone to "choice blindness," confirmation bias, and anthropocentrism. The fragility of self-knowledge is troubling, but may also be liberating. "If the self is merely a chain of memories, then it should be relatively easy to dissolve these links and melt away the distance between ourselves and others," the authors suggest. Wegner (1948–2013) died during the writing of the book, and Gray did well by his mentor, completing a very thoughtful look at the degree to which humans are, primarily, perceivers. Illus. Agent: Katinka Matson, Brockman Inc. (Apr.)
Narrator David Marantz elevates the message of this audiobook without calling attention to his outsized talent. His appealing tones and intellectual comfort with the material allow his phrasing to sound authentic, compassionate, and always in sync with the authors’ themes. This ambitious audiobook examines how individuals and groups communicate thoughts and feelings and, thus, arouse empathy from others. Drs. Wagner and Gray raise provocative questions like why do we form close attachments with some animals and dispassionately eat others? Why do we empathize with certain people or organizations but not others? Enlightening without sounding prescriptive, this audio will make listeners take a sober look at their own emotions, how they react to others, and how they can be more responsible and enlightened citizens. T.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
2016-01-26
Do the dead have thoughts? The late Harvard psychology professor Wegner (The Illusion of Conscious Will, 2002, etc.), assisted by neuroscientist Gray (Mind Perception and Morality/Univ. of North Carolina), ponders that ethereal question and much more. I think, therefore I am. I know I am—but what about you? We scarcely know our own thoughts, it seems, but we accord other humans, and other beings, respect and agency because we acknowledge that they have thoughts, that they have mind. Never mind that we may be wrong about how much respect we accord others; for instance, as the authors write in a move guaranteed to tick off cat lovers, we "extend more protection to kittens than crows, despite the fact that corvids are much smarter." Yes, they are, demonstrably and measurably, but our view otherwise grants kittens slightly more capital in the animal rights department. And what of dead people? What, particularly, of a dead you? Write the authors, with admirable clarity, "trying to perceive your dead mind is paradoxical, because you have to perceive a state that is incapable of perception—which is impossible while you are currently perceiving." The authors' approach to understanding the minds of others—whether those minds are those of people we consider enemies or people who for whatever reason cannot express themselves—is a touch softer than the hard-core neuroscience of, say, Antonio Damasio. Still, they look at some very tough questions: how do we sort our thoughts about the minds of others in such a way that we can rationalize torture? (The answer hinges on levels of empathy.) What kind of mind does God have, if God exists? (A provocative hint: "God is perceived as being very high in agency but relatively low in experience.") And so forth, all leading to the wise if unsettling thought that "our perceptions are all we have." Complex science lightly delivered; a pleasure for anyone comfortable with the thought that knowing others' minds will improve our own.