Book Analysis: Kidding Ourselves

The book that I chose to read is entitled, “Kidding Ourselves”. According to the book the author of this book is Joseph T. Hallinan. Hallinan is a former writer for the Wall Street Journal, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and a former Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. This book talks about the power of mental behavior and the unconscious alterations we as humans make in the process of perceiving the world around us including ourselves. It also shows how self-deception influences every major aspect of our personal and social life, which would include relationships, health, careers, etc. Hallinan uses many credited sources of psychologists, doctors, writers, and other professionals.

This book is divided into three parts. The first part:

The first example that Hallinan gives deals with a white coat. In an experiment participants were asked to put a white coat on. When they were told that they were wearing a coat of a doctor their ability to pay attention increased, but when they were told it was a painter’s coat, this improvement vanished. Halliman was trying to make a point that the effect lay entirely in the participant’s perception of the

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in reading and learning more about what the human mind is capable of and also if they have an interest in psychology. After reading this, I’ve learned that “Kidding Ourselves” is a look at how we as humans fool ourselves into believing the illusions our minds create instead of actually seeing reality. I’ve also learned that the reason we do this is for survival. Hallinan shows how interesting our illusions help us get through difficult time in our lives. He also points out how it’s also very important to understand both the negative and positive consequences of