What do you think?
Rate this book
Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things
The renowned social scientist, professor, and bestselling author of Predictably Irrational delivers his most urgent and compelling book—an eye-opening exploration of the human side of the misinformation crisis—examining what drives otherwise rational people to adopt deeply irrational beliefs. Misinformation affects all of us on a daily basis—from social media to larger political challenges, from casual conversations in supermarkets, to even our closest relationships. While we recognize the dangers that misinformation poses, the problem is complex—far beyond what policing social media alone can achieve—and too often our limited solutions are shaped by partisan politics and individual interpretations of truth. In Misbelief , preeminent social scientist Dan Ariely argues that to understand the irrational appeal of misinformation, we must first understand the behavior of “misbelief”—the psychological and social journey that leads people to mistrust accepted truths, entertain alternative facts, and even embrace full-blown conspiracy theories. Misinformation, it turns out, appeals to something innate in all of us—on the right and the left—and it is only by understanding this psychology that we can blunt its effects. Grounded in years of study as well as Ariely’s own experience as a target of disinformation, Misbelief is an eye-opening and comprehensive analysis of the psychological drivers that cause otherwise rational people to adopt deeply irrational beliefs. Utilizing the latest research, Ariely reveals the key elements—emotional, cognitive, personality, and social—that drive people down the funnel of false information and mistrust, showing how under the right circumstances, anyone can become a misbeliever. Yet Ariely also offers hope. Even as advanced artificial intelligence has become capable of generating convincing fake news stories at an unprecedented scale, he shows that awareness of these forces fueling misbelief make us, as individuals and as a society, more resilient to its allure. Combating misbelief requires a strategy rooted not in conflict, but in empathy. The sooner we recognize that misbelief is above all else a human problem, the sooner we can become the solution ourselves.
320 pages, Paperback
First published September 19, 2023
650 people are currently reading
5122 people want to read
About the author
Dan Ariely
45 books3,939 followersFrom Wikipedia:
Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University. He also holds an appointment at the MIT Media Lab where he is the head of the eRationality research group. He was formerly the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT Sloan School of Management.
Dan Ariely grew up in Israel after birth in New York. In his senior year of high school, Ariely was active in Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed, an Israeli youth movement. While he was preparing a ktovet esh (fire inscription) for a traditional nighttime ceremony, the flammable materials he was mixing exploded, causing third-degree burns to over 70 percent of his body.[
Ariely recovered and went on to graduate from Tel Aviv University and received a Ph.D. and M.A. in cognitive psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. in business from Duke University. His research focuses on discovering and measuring how people make decisions. He models the human decision making process and in particular the irrational decisions that we all make every day.
Ariely is the author of the book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, which was published on February 19, 2008 by HarperCollins. When asked whether reading Predictably Irrational and understanding one's irrational behaviors could make a person's life worse (such as by defeating the benefits of a placebo), Ariely responded that there could be a short term cost, but that there would also likely be longterm benefits, and that reading his book would not make a person worse off.
Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University. He also holds an appointment at the MIT Media Lab where he is the head of the eRationality research group. He was formerly the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT Sloan School of Management.
Dan Ariely grew up in Israel after birth in New York. In his senior year of high school, Ariely was active in Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed, an Israeli youth movement. While he was preparing a ktovet esh (fire inscription) for a traditional nighttime ceremony, the flammable materials he was mixing exploded, causing third-degree burns to over 70 percent of his body.[
Ariely recovered and went on to graduate from Tel Aviv University and received a Ph.D. and M.A. in cognitive psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. in business from Duke University. His research focuses on discovering and measuring how people make decisions. He models the human decision making process and in particular the irrational decisions that we all make every day.
Ariely is the author of the book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, which was published on February 19, 2008 by HarperCollins. When asked whether reading Predictably Irrational and understanding one's irrational behaviors could make a person's life worse (such as by defeating the benefits of a placebo), Ariely responded that there could be a short term cost, but that there would also likely be longterm benefits, and that reading his book would not make a person worse off.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 301 reviews
September 19, 2023
Dan Ariely got caught red handed making up data. It’s hard to know how many of his studies were faked, but it could be all of them. There’s very little oversight in academia. And now he’s out with a new book talking about why people believe in misinformation. You know, like the misinformation he peddles in. He’s an establishment shill reinforcing the narrative against people who don’t believe the official narrative as conspiracy theorists. He even paints himself as a victim of misinformation. It’s amazing that when people like this are caught they still don’t suffer any consequences and are still able to make money off their books full of lies.
September 26, 2023
"The journey of this book began with my own experience but it quickly became about a phenomenon that affects all of us. It led me to venture into research areas that are new for me, such as personality, clinical psychology, and anthropology. The spread of conspiracy theories and the scourge of misinformation are challenges that reach beyond the realm of social science and exceed the scope of my expertise and the capacity of any single book..."
Misbelief was an interesting book. I enjoy reading about mindsets and psychology, and the conspiracy theorist is a fascinating case study into the human condition. The book is my second from the author, after his 2008 book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, which I also enjoyed.
I'll say right up front that this book will likely garner very polarizing reviews. COVID is a central theme of the book, and I don't think that Ariely covered it in as balanced and nuanced a manner as he should have. This will likely piss a lot of people off...
Author Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University. He also holds an appointment at the MIT Media Lab where he is the head of the eRationality research group. He was formerly the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT Sloan School of Management.
Dan Ariely:
Just as in the other book of his that I read, Ariely writes with an engaging and lively style, and this one shouldn't struggle to hold the reader's attention.
The book opens with a decent intro, and Ariely mentions an email he received that accused him of being part of an Illuminati conspiracy.
The quote from the start of this review continues:
He lays out the aim of the book in this bit of writing:
The book mentions many different conspiracy theories; including 9/11, The Denver airport, 5G harm, microchips in vaccines, the faked Moon landing, and many more. Despite efforts by those on both sides of the political aisle to paint conspiratorial thinking as a partisan "them" issue, it is not, says Ariely, and drops this graph, which breaks down subscription to many different conspiracy theories by political belief:
He puts forward some interesting ideas as to what's ultimately responsible for these mindsets. He unfolds a theory here that includes chronic stress, helplessness, wanting feelings of control, and social pressure; among others. Ultimately, these factors culminate into what Ariely calls a "funnel of misbelief."
The mechanisms for falling into this funnel are broken into four parts. In the first, he talks about the emotional elements that contribute to this line of thinking. In the second, he outlines the cognitive aspects. In the third, the personality elements, and the fourth: the social elements.
What is missing from this insightful writing on the complex machinations of personal psychology is the role of plain old-fashioned human stupidity. Sure, a lot of what Ariely unfolds here sounds reasonable, and there is much thoughtful analysis, but quite a lot of this mindset can be correlated with a basic lack of intelligence. Less intelligent people don't understand epistemology and the hierarchy of knowledge, or how to parse data. They are also probably more susceptible to groupthink (although maybe not).
Ariely mocks many of conspiracy theories' low-hanging fruits, but never acknowleges that there actually are conspiracies. Sure, we can make fun of David Icke's lizard people, chemtrails, and flat Earthers, but what about the CIA and their attempts at mind control? Or the US Government's mass collection of internet data and spying on you through your cell phone?? Those "conspiracy theories" turned out to be true. Even the humble folks at Reader's Digest published this short list of 12 popular conspiracy theories that turned out to be true in the end.
In this list, 11 different theories that turned out to be true are covered.
To the above point, some of what Ariely lists here under the umbrella of "conspiracy" is questionable. His "List of Conspiracy Theories" contains a few items that can only very tenuously be called conspiracy theories. For example, he lists the theory that COVID-19 was created as a bioweapon in a Chinese or US laboratory. However, the Chinese were working on gain-of-function research at the Wuhan laboratory. Grant money for the controversial experiment came from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is headed by Anthony Fauci. And while I don't know that it can ever be concluded with certainty that the virus originated in a Chinese lab, it's certainly not an outlandish theory.
As mentioned at the start of this review, COVID-19 is a recurring theme of this book. It probably should not have been, as Ariely did not do a good job in covering it here, IMO. He lumps all the protestors together under an umbrella of no more than tinfoil-hat wearing nutjobs. He doesn't seem to realize that sweeping draconian lockdowns, the removal of constitutionally protected basic freedoms, and government overreach are actually things that are valid concerns. He seems ignorant to the fact that freedom is valuable, and having governments remove your personal freedoms at the stroke of a pen is something that is going to produce a lot of backlash...
This also doesn't address the complete shit show and SNAFU that the governmental response to the virus ended up being. Cramming old people into tight quarters in nursing homes, closing small businesses while funneling people into big box stores for restricted hours, marking lines on the floor of grocery stores, and arresting people for paddleboarding alone out in the Ocean are all examples of well-intentioned policies that were either completely ineffectual, or actually damaging and counterproductive.
In my opinion, Ariely should have steered clear of this minefield altogether. Or failing that; try to see beyond his own narrow scope, and take some of the advice he dishes out here himself...
Some more of what is covered by Ariely here includes:
• The "Funnel" at Work
• The "Scarcity" mindset
• Martin Seligman's "learned helplessness"
• Picking a Villain as a Way to Regain Control
• OCD and its role; control
• The proportionality bias
• Motivated reasoning
• The Dunning-Kruger Effect
• Alien abductions
• Superstitious rituals
• Social proof
• Cognitive dissonance
• Zahavian (or "honest") Evolutionary signaling
********************
Misbelief was a decent book that I enjoyed. While it wasn't without its flaws, there was still some interesting material covered here.
I knocked a star off for his unwieldy and obtuse handling of COVID. He's smart enough to have dealt with that better...
3 stars.
Misbelief was an interesting book. I enjoy reading about mindsets and psychology, and the conspiracy theorist is a fascinating case study into the human condition. The book is my second from the author, after his 2008 book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, which I also enjoyed.
I'll say right up front that this book will likely garner very polarizing reviews. COVID is a central theme of the book, and I don't think that Ariely covered it in as balanced and nuanced a manner as he should have. This will likely piss a lot of people off...
Author Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University. He also holds an appointment at the MIT Media Lab where he is the head of the eRationality research group. He was formerly the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Behavioral Economics at MIT Sloan School of Management.
Dan Ariely:
Just as in the other book of his that I read, Ariely writes with an engaging and lively style, and this one shouldn't struggle to hold the reader's attention.
The book opens with a decent intro, and Ariely mentions an email he received that accused him of being part of an Illuminati conspiracy.
The quote from the start of this review continues:
"...Technology, politics, economics, and more play a role in driving and accelerating these problems. With the advent of advanced AI tools such as ChatGPT and its siblings and the ongoing polarization of everything, it’s hard to see from a societal and structural perspective how we might solve them anytime soon. What fascinates me—and where I see leverage for positive change—is understanding why people are so susceptible. Why do we not only believe but actively seek and spread misinformation? What is the process by which a seemingly rational person begins to entertain, adopt, and then defend irrational beliefs? Approaching these questions with empathy, rather than judgment or ridicule, is both illuminating and disconcerting."
He lays out the aim of the book in this bit of writing:
"...In this book, I will use the term misbelief to describe the phenomenon we’re exploring. Misbelief is a distorted lens through which people begin to view the world, reason about the world, and then describe the world to others. Misbelief is also a process—a kind of funnel that pulls people deeper and deeper. My goal in this book is to highlight how anyone, given the right circumstances, can find themselves pulled down the funnel of misbelief. Of course, it’s easiest to see this book as being about other people. But it’s also a book about each of us. It’s about the way we form beliefs, solidify them, defend them, and spread them. My hope is that rather than simply looking around and saying to ourselves, “How crazy are those other people?,” we will start to understand—and even empathize with—the emotional needs and psychological and social forces that lead all of us to believe what we end up believing.
Social science provides us with a valuable set of tools for understanding the various elements of this process and for interrupting or mitigating it. Much of the research I present in these pages is not new. I have found myself returning to some of the cornerstones of the field in my quest to shed light on the emotional, cognitive, personality, and social elements that lead people into misbelief. This isn’t surprising. After all, a propensity for misbelief is part of human nature..."
The book mentions many different conspiracy theories; including 9/11, The Denver airport, 5G harm, microchips in vaccines, the faked Moon landing, and many more. Despite efforts by those on both sides of the political aisle to paint conspiratorial thinking as a partisan "them" issue, it is not, says Ariely, and drops this graph, which breaks down subscription to many different conspiracy theories by political belief:
He puts forward some interesting ideas as to what's ultimately responsible for these mindsets. He unfolds a theory here that includes chronic stress, helplessness, wanting feelings of control, and social pressure; among others. Ultimately, these factors culminate into what Ariely calls a "funnel of misbelief."
The mechanisms for falling into this funnel are broken into four parts. In the first, he talks about the emotional elements that contribute to this line of thinking. In the second, he outlines the cognitive aspects. In the third, the personality elements, and the fourth: the social elements.
What is missing from this insightful writing on the complex machinations of personal psychology is the role of plain old-fashioned human stupidity. Sure, a lot of what Ariely unfolds here sounds reasonable, and there is much thoughtful analysis, but quite a lot of this mindset can be correlated with a basic lack of intelligence. Less intelligent people don't understand epistemology and the hierarchy of knowledge, or how to parse data. They are also probably more susceptible to groupthink (although maybe not).
Ariely mocks many of conspiracy theories' low-hanging fruits, but never acknowleges that there actually are conspiracies. Sure, we can make fun of David Icke's lizard people, chemtrails, and flat Earthers, but what about the CIA and their attempts at mind control? Or the US Government's mass collection of internet data and spying on you through your cell phone?? Those "conspiracy theories" turned out to be true. Even the humble folks at Reader's Digest published this short list of 12 popular conspiracy theories that turned out to be true in the end.
In this list, 11 different theories that turned out to be true are covered.
To the above point, some of what Ariely lists here under the umbrella of "conspiracy" is questionable. His "List of Conspiracy Theories" contains a few items that can only very tenuously be called conspiracy theories. For example, he lists the theory that COVID-19 was created as a bioweapon in a Chinese or US laboratory. However, the Chinese were working on gain-of-function research at the Wuhan laboratory. Grant money for the controversial experiment came from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is headed by Anthony Fauci. And while I don't know that it can ever be concluded with certainty that the virus originated in a Chinese lab, it's certainly not an outlandish theory.
As mentioned at the start of this review, COVID-19 is a recurring theme of this book. It probably should not have been, as Ariely did not do a good job in covering it here, IMO. He lumps all the protestors together under an umbrella of no more than tinfoil-hat wearing nutjobs. He doesn't seem to realize that sweeping draconian lockdowns, the removal of constitutionally protected basic freedoms, and government overreach are actually things that are valid concerns. He seems ignorant to the fact that freedom is valuable, and having governments remove your personal freedoms at the stroke of a pen is something that is going to produce a lot of backlash...
This also doesn't address the complete shit show and SNAFU that the governmental response to the virus ended up being. Cramming old people into tight quarters in nursing homes, closing small businesses while funneling people into big box stores for restricted hours, marking lines on the floor of grocery stores, and arresting people for paddleboarding alone out in the Ocean are all examples of well-intentioned policies that were either completely ineffectual, or actually damaging and counterproductive.
In my opinion, Ariely should have steered clear of this minefield altogether. Or failing that; try to see beyond his own narrow scope, and take some of the advice he dishes out here himself...
Some more of what is covered by Ariely here includes:
• The "Funnel" at Work
• The "Scarcity" mindset
• Martin Seligman's "learned helplessness"
• Picking a Villain as a Way to Regain Control
• OCD and its role; control
• The proportionality bias
• Motivated reasoning
• The Dunning-Kruger Effect
• Alien abductions
• Superstitious rituals
• Social proof
• Cognitive dissonance
• Zahavian (or "honest") Evolutionary signaling
********************
Misbelief was a decent book that I enjoyed. While it wasn't without its flaws, there was still some interesting material covered here.
I knocked a star off for his unwieldy and obtuse handling of COVID. He's smart enough to have dealt with that better...
3 stars.
October 22, 2023
A timely, lively, well-structured, and thoughtful exploration of the factors that drive people to become tempted by and enmeshed in conspiracy theories! Dan Ariely writes from (unfortunate) firsthand experience about the dangers of what he dubs “misbelief”; he’s personally been the subject of vicious conspiracy campaigns on social media branding him as a psychopath and murderer for his work related to COVID-19. His personal anecdotes were horrifying and made me extra-appreciative of the compassion he showed throughout the book: Ariely consistently encourages us not to ostracize and rather to build trust. Super powerful stuff.
The book is structured into 4 main sections: how emotion brings potential misbelievers into the funnel, how cognitive biases strengthen our beliefs, how personality differences affect what we’re susceptible to, and how social pressures make it hard to extricate from an established community of misbelief. I liked this framework a lot! In each section, Ariely was thorough in his supporting analysis while maintaining an engaging pace. He also intersperses helpful tips for dealing with misbelievers throughout. I appreciated these as someone with a Fox News Dad™️.
Overall, I would highly recommend this book! I think we can all benefit from learning more about misinformation and human psychology, and I thought this book packaged a lot of helpful information in a single place. It also sparked thought-provoking takeaways for other arenas for me (e.g. business and relationships). Great stuff!
The book is structured into 4 main sections: how emotion brings potential misbelievers into the funnel, how cognitive biases strengthen our beliefs, how personality differences affect what we’re susceptible to, and how social pressures make it hard to extricate from an established community of misbelief. I liked this framework a lot! In each section, Ariely was thorough in his supporting analysis while maintaining an engaging pace. He also intersperses helpful tips for dealing with misbelievers throughout. I appreciated these as someone with a Fox News Dad™️.
Overall, I would highly recommend this book! I think we can all benefit from learning more about misinformation and human psychology, and I thought this book packaged a lot of helpful information in a single place. It also sparked thought-provoking takeaways for other arenas for me (e.g. business and relationships). Great stuff!
October 15, 2023
Preview
I find it strange that the title and synopsis makes it sound like he thinks most people are rational to begin with.
You've literally got droves and droves of people who spend half of their day consuming mindless social media content. Who will immediately believe whatever they see on Facebook, Tik Tok, Instagram or the one news channel they spend 2/3 of their free time watching. No matter how ridiculous it is.
If people were all that rational to begin with, a book like this wouldn't even need to be written.
You've got a society of sheep that spend more time worrying about how they can blow the paycheck they just spent 40+ hours earning and what senseless app they want to bounce to next for their minutely dopamine fix.
But hey, that's "rational" people for yah.
Predictably Irrational was pretty good so I'll see how this one fares and I'll probably leave a proper review.
Review:
This Has NOTHING To Do With Rational People
It turns out what I initially stated above (before the book was released) and in the comments turned out to be true. The subtitle is complete and utter nonsense.
He says he wonders why "seemingly rational people" believe, actively seek and spread misinformation.
Yet he gives absolutely no criteria for what a rational individual consists of. Again, just like I stated prior to having read the book, he just labels everyone as "rational". Why?! Well because if you were to ask them, they would say they are.
It's like writing a book titled "Why Smart People Make More Money" and then arbitrarily tossing a blanket over the entire population and labeling everyone "smart".
What kind of metric is that??
The whole premise of the book is based off this incredibly inaccurate assumption.
Imagine fully assuming you could trust everyone just because you know most people would blindly answer "Yes" if you were to ask them if they are trustworthy.
He tells a story about how a number of buffoons were online spreading lies about him and then goes on to just randomly attribute these people as being “rational” individuals simply because they are human beings??
This incident was the sole cause he wrote this book.
His goal is to show how anyone given the right circumstances can be pulled down the funnel of misbelief.
He brings up countless of the most absurd conspiracy theories and those who believe them….and then he turns around and labels these same people as being “rational” individuals.
He says the most common type of misbeliever is the “naive person who has no interest or agenda and just wants to understand the world around them. They don’t want to invite hate or confusion. In this regard these people are all of us”.
The irony is that that is such a naive view (the author has) in and of itself.
If their goal is truly to try and understand the world then why would they be so eager to spread information at all? Especially newly formed ideas that have not been rigorously tested.
Why would they cling to their beliefs so vehemently like people cling to their political parties?
Why would they be so focused on spreading information when there is so much more out there that they do not understand at all?
Why are they the loudest proponents of misinformation if all they seek is an understanding of the knowledge?
The First Example:
The first example the author lays out is of an emotionally charged stressed out single mom focused on her subjective experience and wanting to be "right" about something. And it is not a representation of rationality.
Women are more subjective than men. Women are more emotional than men. Women seek external validation far more than men. Unhealthy women also like to act like they are the victim rather than ever take responsibility for their life.
Along with all that, Jenny's whole motive for traveling down the conspiracy rabbit hole stemmed from her being butt hurt that her son had to leave the class because he did not follow the rules that were clearly (and fairly) laid out.
Jenny didn't like that her son wasn't given special treatment. Jenny didn't like that the teacher followed the rules set forth to protect ALL students. Jenny didn't like that her and her son were held accountable for not being prepared. Jenny didn't like that the teacher put the wellbeing of her entire class above the feelings of her son.
Because of this, Jenny spent her time looking up contradicting information in order to make herself feel better about it all.
Essentially her form of coping = seeking validation from others
She had an overly subjective perspective, was emotionally AF and was completely incapable of taking accountability for her and her son's actions, yet Dan Ariely labels this woman, "your average rational individual".
There is nothing rational about this grown woman not wanting to accept the fact that rules apply to her offspring too.
The teacher showed Jenny the world doesn't revolve around her and Jenny couldn't take it so she looked for "yes men" online so that she could go back to playing make believe and being the center of everything once again.
That is what you get when you deal with people who are so fixated on their insanely limited subjective experience AND like to play the victim.
These are the LEAST rational people around.
There is nothing rational about how Jenny handled her situation and using her as a poster child for a rational individual is outrageously absurd.
__________________________
The Affects Emotions Play:
● Many people don't often know where their feelings are coming from (why they feel the way they do)
● We can take a negative feeling and reattribute it to something positive and vice versa
● Stress increases the likelihood we will misattribute our emotions
● When we experience stress we might attribute it to the wrong cause which leads us down the wrong path to relieving it
● A scarcity mindset (financially, time, multitasking, pain, food etc.) is a form of stress that reduces our capacity to reason, think plan and make good decisions.
How he can label people completely unaware of this "rational" is beyond me. On at least some level you must know yourself to know how best to make logical decisions.
How clueless do you have to be to not realize that you spend more and make worse purchasing decisions if you go to the grocery store starving?
That you won't be as sharp during your presentation if you only get 2 1/2 hours of sleep?
That asking someone for a favor after they just finished an intense argument full of screaming and flying objects isn't likely to end well for you?
People who can't pick up on these VERY basic and incredibly obvious factors that influence their decision making are very much unaware and irrational people.
Even a basic car from the 1930s could tell you when it was not operating at optimal capacity.
If you're a human and can't even do that, then guess what? Chances are you're operating off a set program. And it's not one where you are making rational, well thought out decisions.
His 2nd Example of a "Rational" Individual
1st words out of Eve's mouth:
😑😑😑
Really now.....in a book about RATIONAL people are we REALLY including someone who fears witchcraft as our shining example of a LOGICAL thinker!?!??
Do you know what the opposite of scientific reasoning is? Belief in the super natural!!!
The only way he could have picked a WORSE example would be if this lady was locked up in a psych ward for believing she was a teletubby.
After her talk with the author she leaves not even knowing her stance on the matter anymore. Months pass. She reaches out to Dan solely to ask for money. He says no and she gets her feelings hurt and whines that he truly is an evil man.
Highly rational alright 🙄
While some of our psychological tendencies that he describes from a scientific standpoint are insightful and good to know, virtually all of the examples he uses to try and support his stance that "absolutely anyone is alarmingly susceptible to becoming a misbeliever" are just horrendous. (These insights are pretty much the only reason why this book isn't 1 star)
Along with the others I previously mentioned, he uses people like "flat earthers" and acts as if they are no different from an actual rational thinker.
Every example he speaks of in this book is of a highly irrational person.
This book would have been much better if he hadn't tried to spin the narrative that 1. most people are rational thinkers 2. that the examples he uses are of rational people.
Had he just stated the facts/psychological tendencies that we engage in, the book would have had much more credibility, flowed better and have made sense. Instead, he contradicts himself with every example he uses by citing how irrational people believe irrational things they read online. I mean who would've guessed?
He rates people as "rational" as freely as a child would rate candy as tasting "yummy".
If they've got a pulse then apparently they are rational.
The subtitle is just a complete lie, and I'm not a fan of lying so I'll have to pass on future books from this author.
The Type of People Actually Discussed in the Book
What he describes are people who lack self-awareness and are entirely ego driven.
They don't want to understand the reality of things, they want to be "right" so they can feel good about themselves and boost their self-esteem.
It's completely fine (and normal) to (to some degree) share many of the psychological tendencies that he mentions. But when you find yourself solely operating off these tendencies on autopilot and you fail to understand or see how these tendencies affect your behavior, then how in the world can you be making rational decisions?
That's like saying you're a top tier expert in sports when you don't even know the rules of the game.
You can't be a rational decision maker when you don't even understand how your mind works to begin with.
When you want to be right (ego driven) more than you want to simply understand, learn and grow. Then you can't be thinking rationally.
If all you want to do is be "right" than you end up being no different than the child who makes a statement and then immediately blocks out his ears and starts babbling to make sure he can't hear a single word you say.
By the time I reached the last 1/5 of the book it all felt incredibly boring.
I really enjoyed "Predictably Irrational" (another book of his) when I first read it, but this book was a massive disappointment given his focus on discussing irrational, unaware, ego driven people and acting as if they were rational human beings.
I find it strange that the title and synopsis makes it sound like he thinks most people are rational to begin with.
You've literally got droves and droves of people who spend half of their day consuming mindless social media content. Who will immediately believe whatever they see on Facebook, Tik Tok, Instagram or the one news channel they spend 2/3 of their free time watching. No matter how ridiculous it is.
If people were all that rational to begin with, a book like this wouldn't even need to be written.
You've got a society of sheep that spend more time worrying about how they can blow the paycheck they just spent 40+ hours earning and what senseless app they want to bounce to next for their minutely dopamine fix.
But hey, that's "rational" people for yah.
Predictably Irrational was pretty good so I'll see how this one fares and I'll probably leave a proper review.
Review:
This Has NOTHING To Do With Rational People
It turns out what I initially stated above (before the book was released) and in the comments turned out to be true. The subtitle is complete and utter nonsense.
He says he wonders why "seemingly rational people" believe, actively seek and spread misinformation.
Yet he gives absolutely no criteria for what a rational individual consists of. Again, just like I stated prior to having read the book, he just labels everyone as "rational". Why?! Well because if you were to ask them, they would say they are.
It's like writing a book titled "Why Smart People Make More Money" and then arbitrarily tossing a blanket over the entire population and labeling everyone "smart".
What kind of metric is that??
The whole premise of the book is based off this incredibly inaccurate assumption.
Imagine fully assuming you could trust everyone just because you know most people would blindly answer "Yes" if you were to ask them if they are trustworthy.
He tells a story about how a number of buffoons were online spreading lies about him and then goes on to just randomly attribute these people as being “rational” individuals simply because they are human beings??
This incident was the sole cause he wrote this book.
His goal is to show how anyone given the right circumstances can be pulled down the funnel of misbelief.
He brings up countless of the most absurd conspiracy theories and those who believe them….and then he turns around and labels these same people as being “rational” individuals.
He says the most common type of misbeliever is the “naive person who has no interest or agenda and just wants to understand the world around them. They don’t want to invite hate or confusion. In this regard these people are all of us”.
The irony is that that is such a naive view (the author has) in and of itself.
If their goal is truly to try and understand the world then why would they be so eager to spread information at all? Especially newly formed ideas that have not been rigorously tested.
Why would they cling to their beliefs so vehemently like people cling to their political parties?
Why would they be so focused on spreading information when there is so much more out there that they do not understand at all?
Why are they the loudest proponents of misinformation if all they seek is an understanding of the knowledge?
The First Example:
The first example the author lays out is of an emotionally charged stressed out single mom focused on her subjective experience and wanting to be "right" about something. And it is not a representation of rationality.
Women are more subjective than men. Women are more emotional than men. Women seek external validation far more than men. Unhealthy women also like to act like they are the victim rather than ever take responsibility for their life.
Along with all that, Jenny's whole motive for traveling down the conspiracy rabbit hole stemmed from her being butt hurt that her son had to leave the class because he did not follow the rules that were clearly (and fairly) laid out.
Jenny didn't like that her son wasn't given special treatment. Jenny didn't like that the teacher followed the rules set forth to protect ALL students. Jenny didn't like that her and her son were held accountable for not being prepared. Jenny didn't like that the teacher put the wellbeing of her entire class above the feelings of her son.
Because of this, Jenny spent her time looking up contradicting information in order to make herself feel better about it all.
Essentially her form of coping = seeking validation from others
She had an overly subjective perspective, was emotionally AF and was completely incapable of taking accountability for her and her son's actions, yet Dan Ariely labels this woman, "your average rational individual".
There is nothing rational about this grown woman not wanting to accept the fact that rules apply to her offspring too.
The teacher showed Jenny the world doesn't revolve around her and Jenny couldn't take it so she looked for "yes men" online so that she could go back to playing make believe and being the center of everything once again.
That is what you get when you deal with people who are so fixated on their insanely limited subjective experience AND like to play the victim.
These are the LEAST rational people around.
There is nothing rational about how Jenny handled her situation and using her as a poster child for a rational individual is outrageously absurd.
__________________________
The Affects Emotions Play:
● Many people don't often know where their feelings are coming from (why they feel the way they do)
● We can take a negative feeling and reattribute it to something positive and vice versa
● Stress increases the likelihood we will misattribute our emotions
● When we experience stress we might attribute it to the wrong cause which leads us down the wrong path to relieving it
● A scarcity mindset (financially, time, multitasking, pain, food etc.) is a form of stress that reduces our capacity to reason, think plan and make good decisions.
How he can label people completely unaware of this "rational" is beyond me. On at least some level you must know yourself to know how best to make logical decisions.
How clueless do you have to be to not realize that you spend more and make worse purchasing decisions if you go to the grocery store starving?
That you won't be as sharp during your presentation if you only get 2 1/2 hours of sleep?
That asking someone for a favor after they just finished an intense argument full of screaming and flying objects isn't likely to end well for you?
People who can't pick up on these VERY basic and incredibly obvious factors that influence their decision making are very much unaware and irrational people.
Even a basic car from the 1930s could tell you when it was not operating at optimal capacity.
If you're a human and can't even do that, then guess what? Chances are you're operating off a set program. And it's not one where you are making rational, well thought out decisions.
His 2nd Example of a "Rational" Individual
1st words out of Eve's mouth:
"My friends warned me not to see you because they said you put a spell on me."
😑😑😑
Really now.....in a book about RATIONAL people are we REALLY including someone who fears witchcraft as our shining example of a LOGICAL thinker!?!??
Do you know what the opposite of scientific reasoning is? Belief in the super natural!!!
The only way he could have picked a WORSE example would be if this lady was locked up in a psych ward for believing she was a teletubby.
After her talk with the author she leaves not even knowing her stance on the matter anymore. Months pass. She reaches out to Dan solely to ask for money. He says no and she gets her feelings hurt and whines that he truly is an evil man.
Highly rational alright 🙄
While some of our psychological tendencies that he describes from a scientific standpoint are insightful and good to know, virtually all of the examples he uses to try and support his stance that "absolutely anyone is alarmingly susceptible to becoming a misbeliever" are just horrendous. (These insights are pretty much the only reason why this book isn't 1 star)
Along with the others I previously mentioned, he uses people like "flat earthers" and acts as if they are no different from an actual rational thinker.
Every example he speaks of in this book is of a highly irrational person.
This book would have been much better if he hadn't tried to spin the narrative that 1. most people are rational thinkers 2. that the examples he uses are of rational people.
Had he just stated the facts/psychological tendencies that we engage in, the book would have had much more credibility, flowed better and have made sense. Instead, he contradicts himself with every example he uses by citing how irrational people believe irrational things they read online. I mean who would've guessed?
He rates people as "rational" as freely as a child would rate candy as tasting "yummy".
If they've got a pulse then apparently they are rational.
The subtitle is just a complete lie, and I'm not a fan of lying so I'll have to pass on future books from this author.
The Type of People Actually Discussed in the Book
What he describes are people who lack self-awareness and are entirely ego driven.
They don't want to understand the reality of things, they want to be "right" so they can feel good about themselves and boost their self-esteem.
It's completely fine (and normal) to (to some degree) share many of the psychological tendencies that he mentions. But when you find yourself solely operating off these tendencies on autopilot and you fail to understand or see how these tendencies affect your behavior, then how in the world can you be making rational decisions?
That's like saying you're a top tier expert in sports when you don't even know the rules of the game.
You can't be a rational decision maker when you don't even understand how your mind works to begin with.
When you want to be right (ego driven) more than you want to simply understand, learn and grow. Then you can't be thinking rationally.
If all you want to do is be "right" than you end up being no different than the child who makes a statement and then immediately blocks out his ears and starts babbling to make sure he can't hear a single word you say.
By the time I reached the last 1/5 of the book it all felt incredibly boring.
I really enjoyed "Predictably Irrational" (another book of his) when I first read it, but this book was a massive disappointment given his focus on discussing irrational, unaware, ego driven people and acting as if they were rational human beings.
December 18, 2024
حولنا من الأقرباء والأصدقاء والزملاء فئة من الناس تعتقد أشياء غريبة عجيبة، بعضها مضحك وبعضها مخيف. أخبار أقرب للإشاعات، وآراء أقرب للخزعبلات، وقصص أقرب للخرافات. كالأرض المسطحة، ونظريات المؤامرة، ورافضو التطعيم....الخ
هؤلاء هم الذين يتشككون بكل ما هو رسمي ومعتمد، فيظهرون بمظهر الباحث المتشكك، لكنهم يسارعون للإيمان بالغريب العجيب، الذي لا تقوم به حجة، ولا يعتمد على برهان. هل نسميهم بالـ"خزعبلانيين"؟ والخزعبلات هي الأقوال الباطلة المضحكة.
يجتمع هؤلاء الخزعبلانيون في جماعات حازمة في إيمانياتها وعنيفة مع المنشقين عنها، ويبدءون بمهاجمة الآخرين.
وهذه الفئة هي الأرض الخصبة للخطاب الشعبوي الهابط، ومادة التغيير الاجتماعي للأسوأ.
في كتابه الأحدث هذا؛ يدرس "دان آريلي" آلية تشكل هذه الفئة من الناس، محللا ذلك إلى عوامل أربعة؛ نفسية عاطفية، ومعرفية، وشخصية، ثم اجتماعية. تشكل هذه العوامل مجتمعة شخصية ذلك المتشكك الخزعبلي.
ويعطي "آريلي" لكل عامل من تلك العوامل حظه من البحث والتفصيل والأمثلة، في فصول قصيرة وسريعة.
الكتاب مفيد وماتع، ويستحق القراءة.
*Misbelievers هو الاسم الذي اختاره الكاتب لوصف هؤلاء. وأرجو أن أكون وفقت بوصفهم عربيا بالخزعبلانيين
هؤلاء هم الذين يتشككون بكل ما هو رسمي ومعتمد، فيظهرون بمظهر الباحث المتشكك، لكنهم يسارعون للإيمان بالغريب العجيب، الذي لا تقوم به حجة، ولا يعتمد على برهان. هل نسميهم بالـ"خزعبلانيين"؟ والخزعبلات هي الأقوال الباطلة المضحكة.
يجتمع هؤلاء الخزعبلانيون في جماعات حازمة في إيمانياتها وعنيفة مع المنشقين عنها، ويبدءون بمهاجمة الآخرين.
وهذه الفئة هي الأرض الخصبة للخطاب الشعبوي الهابط، ومادة التغيير الاجتماعي للأسوأ.
في كتابه الأحدث هذا؛ يدرس "دان آريلي" آلية تشكل هذه الفئة من الناس، محللا ذلك إلى عوامل أربعة؛ نفسية عاطفية، ومعرفية، وشخصية، ثم اجتماعية. تشكل هذه العوامل مجتمعة شخصية ذلك المتشكك الخزعبلي.
ويعطي "آريلي" لكل عامل من تلك العوامل حظه من البحث والتفصيل والأمثلة، في فصول قصيرة وسريعة.
الكتاب مفيد وماتع، ويستحق القراءة.
*Misbelievers هو الاسم الذي اختاره الكاتب لوصف هؤلاء. وأرجو أن أكون وفقت بوصفهم عربيا بالخزعبلانيين
December 21, 2023
We tend to ostracize and cut connections with friends and family members who have fallen down conspiracy theory rabbit holes. I think the most important part of this book is how the author explains that we need to resist this natural tendency and instead double down on those connections--extremism thrives on people without strong social nets and only sucks them in more deeply. :(
September 30, 2023
I listened to this book via Audible.
Misbelief begins with Ariely recounting his experiences in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when he became a target of accusations relating to his involvement with the response by the government. It was very crazy to hear what he allegedly did according to these conspiracy theorists, and it sets the stage for the book.
Ariely goes step by step in examining the so-called 'funnel of misbelief' whereby a person can go from a normal member of society to a conspiracy theorist. It's scary and fascinating and eye-opening. It helps explain trends in modern society that we see more and more on social media and in the news. It certainly makes me glad that I've decided to limit my interaction on social media to the bare minimum, to avoid some of the things that can lead a person into the funnel and become radicalized in one way or another. It also made me aware of some of my own biases and beliefs and how to be more cognizant of them while making decisions.
As seems to frequently be the case with Dan Ariely's books, I heartily recommend Misbelief to anyone and everyone. Add it to your to-read list today!
Misbelief begins with Ariely recounting his experiences in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when he became a target of accusations relating to his involvement with the response by the government. It was very crazy to hear what he allegedly did according to these conspiracy theorists, and it sets the stage for the book.
Ariely goes step by step in examining the so-called 'funnel of misbelief' whereby a person can go from a normal member of society to a conspiracy theorist. It's scary and fascinating and eye-opening. It helps explain trends in modern society that we see more and more on social media and in the news. It certainly makes me glad that I've decided to limit my interaction on social media to the bare minimum, to avoid some of the things that can lead a person into the funnel and become radicalized in one way or another. It also made me aware of some of my own biases and beliefs and how to be more cognizant of them while making decisions.
As seems to frequently be the case with Dan Ariely's books, I heartily recommend Misbelief to anyone and everyone. Add it to your to-read list today!
December 8, 2023
Rating: 2.5 Meh
Format: Audiobook
Non-fiction November 2023
This started strong but ended up being repetitive, but I still found it interesting.
For a book about biases the author is too biased, that's the irony and the worst part of it.
This were the most interesting parts for me:
Format: Audiobook
Non-fiction November 2023
This started strong but ended up being repetitive, but I still found it interesting.
For a book about biases the author is too biased, that's the irony and the worst part of it.
This were the most interesting parts for me:
“How can you prove that your sister is not a prostitute when you don’t even have a sister?”
Hanlon’s razor. The original Hanlon’s razor states, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
Occam’s razor. The basic idea of Occam’s razor is that the simplest explanation with the fewest moving parts is the one we should favor, until it is proven inadequate. Just to be clear, Occam’s razor does not say that the simplest explanation is always the right one, only that when we don’t have any data to help us pick one explanation over another, we should pick the simplest one.
The principle of the pain of paying, which posits that it hurts to part with cash but it hurts less when we don’t see or pay attention, helps us understand why we overspend when we use credit cards; why we feel worse at the end of a meal when we pay with cash compared with a credit card; why we sometimes prefer all-inclusive vacations even if they are more expensive; why we often go over budget when we renovate our homes; and much more.
Proportionality bias is the idea that when we are faced with a large event, we implicitly assume that such an event must have been caused by proportionally large causes. The reality of life is that often “shit happens” without any rhyme or reason. Randomness and luck (including bad luck) are important forces in the universe, as is human stupidity, but this is an unnatural way for us to think. We look for reasons, for causes, and when something is larger, we look for larger causes. Interestingly, the proportionality bias does not seem to apply to positive events. When amazing inventions are developed, such as penicillin, Post-it Notes, X-rays, Teflon, Viagra, and many others, we’re very comfortable attributing them to chance. In other words, when it comes to major good things, compared with major bad things, we are much likelier to believe that “shit happens.”
The third psychological reason favoring complexity is the desire for unique knowledge.
Together, all of these forces pull the misbelievers away from Occam’s razor and closer to Macco’s razor (the complete opposite of Occam’s razor), which states that “The most complex solution that involves the most devious intentions and the most hidden elements is almost always the truth.”
Hitchens’ razor, named after Christopher Hitchens, the late literary critic, journalist, contrarian, and staunch atheist: “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
November 7, 2023
The best part of this book was the quotes at the beginning of each chapter. The rest if his "insights" were obvious, reductive or just plain wrong. I'd think that even if I hadn't recently read the New Yorker article about how Ariely tends to make things up.
August 15, 2024
O livro tem um propósito bastante ambicioso: tentar entender de onde surgem as tendências para a desinformação — aqui entendida como a produção de histórias sem base em fundamento real e despidas de maiores vínculos com a realidade.
Particularmente não gostei da estrutura do livro. Há informações interessantes aqui e acolá, mas em alguns momentos o fio da meada é meio confuso.
Um elemento-chave (e que está meio escondido) diz respeito ao conceito de padronicidade, criado pelo Michael Shermer. A ideia é que uma das características da natureza humana, é a de enxergar padrões que possam dar um sentido ao mundo. Segundo ele, a nossa mente está sempre procurando histórias que constituam um padrão constituam uma relação casual que nos ajudem a entender o mundo. Há um lado positivo nisso porque é daí que surgem muitas das descobertas científicas. O lado negativo é que muito frequentemente, a mente humana tende a criar padrões que não existem na realidade.
Enfim, nós, seres humanos, queremos um mundo que faça sentido.
Esses padrões criados pela mente humana, segundo ele, são influenciados por vieses: emocionais (incluindo-se aí o estresse), cognitivos (falhas no sistema de raciocinar, o que incluem as falácias), psicológicos (problemas de personalidade, caso do narcisismo) e sociais (medo do ostracismo, tribalismo, pensamento de grupo influenciando os indivíduos ou dissonância cognitiva).
O livro tem uns insights interessantes, mas está longe de oferecer uma resposta ao fenômeno.
A solução que ele oferece é a de buscar mais confiança nos relacionamentos, já que o negacionismo, sugere ele, é uma forma exacerbada de desconfiança.
Particularmente não gostei da estrutura do livro. Há informações interessantes aqui e acolá, mas em alguns momentos o fio da meada é meio confuso.
Um elemento-chave (e que está meio escondido) diz respeito ao conceito de padronicidade, criado pelo Michael Shermer. A ideia é que uma das características da natureza humana, é a de enxergar padrões que possam dar um sentido ao mundo. Segundo ele, a nossa mente está sempre procurando histórias que constituam um padrão constituam uma relação casual que nos ajudem a entender o mundo. Há um lado positivo nisso porque é daí que surgem muitas das descobertas científicas. O lado negativo é que muito frequentemente, a mente humana tende a criar padrões que não existem na realidade.
Enfim, nós, seres humanos, queremos um mundo que faça sentido.
Esses padrões criados pela mente humana, segundo ele, são influenciados por vieses: emocionais (incluindo-se aí o estresse), cognitivos (falhas no sistema de raciocinar, o que incluem as falácias), psicológicos (problemas de personalidade, caso do narcisismo) e sociais (medo do ostracismo, tribalismo, pensamento de grupo influenciando os indivíduos ou dissonância cognitiva).
O livro tem uns insights interessantes, mas está longe de oferecer uma resposta ao fenômeno.
A solução que ele oferece é a de buscar mais confiança nos relacionamentos, já que o negacionismo, sugere ele, é uma forma exacerbada de desconfiança.
December 23, 2023
Anyone considering purchasing or reading this book should read this New Yorker article about Dan Ariely's thoroughly documented habit of lying first: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20....
This author has been repeatedly shown to have manipulated and outright fabricated data for his papers, including for more than one study *about lying*.
While he starts this book with a sympathetic account of his experience being made a figure in right-wing, Covid-19 related conspiracy theories, and indeed there are many lies about him to be found around the internet, it remains the case that he has accumulated a record of real, credible, very hard to refute accusations of lying about important things, without regard for the impact of these lies on the public, on politics, on innocent graduate students, or on the scientific endeavor as a whole.
Furthermore, the book does not appear to cover any new ground as far as this topic goes. It's an important topic, but it's been covered extensively by far more credible authors.
This book also takes a firmly neoliberal perspective on the topic, placing the blame on individuals rather than on systems, and making much of how "both sides" of the political spectrum succumb to misbelief. He goes on about how terrible it is that people have "lost trust" in institutions, as if that loss of trust is the root problem, and without acknowledging that these institutions often *are untrustworthy* or the many and varied ways they have failed and continue to fail people. And while it's true that there are conspiracy theories on the left - anti-vaxxers and so on - Ariely claims the distribution is equal across the political spectrum. He includes a graph very early on in which he shows a cherry-picked array of conspiracy theories, with unclearly labeled axis, supposed to show which conspiracy theories are more strongly held by which side of the left-right political spectrum binary, and including such items as "effort to stop the post office from processing mail-in ballots", "Russia manipulates U.S. politics" and "the GOP steals elections" on the left side. One can argue the terminology, but I think calling these "misbeliefs", aka the word Dan Ariely says he is using just because he wanted to avoid the stigma of "conspiracy theories", is stretching it at best, and he lumps them in with much wilder ideas (e.g. the world is lead by a cabal of evil pedophiles, and so on) as if they are equivalent so that he can show his perfectly balanced "both sides do this equally actually" graph. Ariely even deploys an anecdote about Russia (drumroll...) attempting to manipulate U.S. politics shortly after showing this graph.
The fact that he begins the book by coining a snappy buzzword - misbelief - is rather a red flag when it comes to these sorts of books, too. As is the fact that much of the book is a collection of anecdotes. It's the same-old, same-old playbook of these pop-sci "this one weird trick will fix everything while conveniently never inconveniencing those currently in power" behavioral economics guru books, this time from someone who has repeatedly, literally made up data for his papers. You can't trust any anecdote or data point or study account in this book.
And to be honest, in light of his currently being embroiled in scandal about his habitually producing disinformation in the form of manipulated or outright invented study results, his writing a book about conspiracy theories, beginning with a long intro (whose title claims even those who don't usually read intros should read it) bemoaning the lies people tell about him, kinda just feels like a setup to frame his credible accusers as "misbelievers" too. Or at best, perhaps writing this book is just a continuation of his apparent fascination with lying that presumably stems from the fact that he, himself, lies. See: the scientific papers *about lying* that he's made-up data for.
Shame on the publisher for publishing this anyway, as there's no way they didn't know about the scandals. Though it's not surprising - these sorts of popsci books are never fact checked by publishers.
It's not worth your time.
This author has been repeatedly shown to have manipulated and outright fabricated data for his papers, including for more than one study *about lying*.
While he starts this book with a sympathetic account of his experience being made a figure in right-wing, Covid-19 related conspiracy theories, and indeed there are many lies about him to be found around the internet, it remains the case that he has accumulated a record of real, credible, very hard to refute accusations of lying about important things, without regard for the impact of these lies on the public, on politics, on innocent graduate students, or on the scientific endeavor as a whole.
Furthermore, the book does not appear to cover any new ground as far as this topic goes. It's an important topic, but it's been covered extensively by far more credible authors.
This book also takes a firmly neoliberal perspective on the topic, placing the blame on individuals rather than on systems, and making much of how "both sides" of the political spectrum succumb to misbelief. He goes on about how terrible it is that people have "lost trust" in institutions, as if that loss of trust is the root problem, and without acknowledging that these institutions often *are untrustworthy* or the many and varied ways they have failed and continue to fail people. And while it's true that there are conspiracy theories on the left - anti-vaxxers and so on - Ariely claims the distribution is equal across the political spectrum. He includes a graph very early on in which he shows a cherry-picked array of conspiracy theories, with unclearly labeled axis, supposed to show which conspiracy theories are more strongly held by which side of the left-right political spectrum binary, and including such items as "effort to stop the post office from processing mail-in ballots", "Russia manipulates U.S. politics" and "the GOP steals elections" on the left side. One can argue the terminology, but I think calling these "misbeliefs", aka the word Dan Ariely says he is using just because he wanted to avoid the stigma of "conspiracy theories", is stretching it at best, and he lumps them in with much wilder ideas (e.g. the world is lead by a cabal of evil pedophiles, and so on) as if they are equivalent so that he can show his perfectly balanced "both sides do this equally actually" graph. Ariely even deploys an anecdote about Russia (drumroll...) attempting to manipulate U.S. politics shortly after showing this graph.
The fact that he begins the book by coining a snappy buzzword - misbelief - is rather a red flag when it comes to these sorts of books, too. As is the fact that much of the book is a collection of anecdotes. It's the same-old, same-old playbook of these pop-sci "this one weird trick will fix everything while conveniently never inconveniencing those currently in power" behavioral economics guru books, this time from someone who has repeatedly, literally made up data for his papers. You can't trust any anecdote or data point or study account in this book.
And to be honest, in light of his currently being embroiled in scandal about his habitually producing disinformation in the form of manipulated or outright invented study results, his writing a book about conspiracy theories, beginning with a long intro (whose title claims even those who don't usually read intros should read it) bemoaning the lies people tell about him, kinda just feels like a setup to frame his credible accusers as "misbelievers" too. Or at best, perhaps writing this book is just a continuation of his apparent fascination with lying that presumably stems from the fact that he, himself, lies. See: the scientific papers *about lying* that he's made-up data for.
Shame on the publisher for publishing this anyway, as there's no way they didn't know about the scandals. Though it's not surprising - these sorts of popsci books are never fact checked by publishers.
It's not worth your time.
October 25, 2025
A very interesting Audio book. The author has been attacked on social media by people who have taken his work/statements etc out of context and have built wild conspiracy theories around their beliefs on what he stands for. He has tried to reach out to them, to explain the facts and what he had actually meant to get across – often (but not always) to no avail.
His advice is – don’t argue with them. Facts have little effect, and true ‘believers’ will just double down on their beliefs – however irrational they may be. What is important, is to not cut these people out of your life. Listen to them. Try to gently steer them towards your view – but show you are there for them.
Difficult – to nigh on impossible. But, once someone goes down a conspiracy theory wormhole, it becomes increasingly difficult to bring them back to rationality. Often the only ‘news’ they will see, will confirm or add to their beliefs. So portray yourself as a friend with a different viewpoint.
Conspiracy theories and irrational beliefs give people a feeling of belonging to a group.
Emotions and belonging have much greater impact than cold facts.
I used to think that if I could just rationally explain things – people would agree with me. Sadly, no. This book explains why.
Also, what we personally believe might be mistaken too. There are some very illuminating tests in the book.
Recommended
His advice is – don’t argue with them. Facts have little effect, and true ‘believers’ will just double down on their beliefs – however irrational they may be. What is important, is to not cut these people out of your life. Listen to them. Try to gently steer them towards your view – but show you are there for them.
Difficult – to nigh on impossible. But, once someone goes down a conspiracy theory wormhole, it becomes increasingly difficult to bring them back to rationality. Often the only ‘news’ they will see, will confirm or add to their beliefs. So portray yourself as a friend with a different viewpoint.
Conspiracy theories and irrational beliefs give people a feeling of belonging to a group.
Emotions and belonging have much greater impact than cold facts.
I used to think that if I could just rationally explain things – people would agree with me. Sadly, no. This book explains why.
Also, what we personally believe might be mistaken too. There are some very illuminating tests in the book.
Recommended
September 26, 2023
Ariely's book often reads like my social psych and cognitive psych textbooks, citing many of the same studies and sources. Ariely includes enough memoir elements and anecdotes from others to prevent the narrative from becoming too dry. The book is well-organized and really lays out all facets of the layered cause-and-effect we are experiencing now in attempting to understand "post-truth" America.
July 31, 2024
ENGLISH
Dan Ariely motivates the writing of this book on a personal experience he went through during the covid-19 pandemic, when conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, and science deniers elected him as one of their targets on social media.
Ariely proposes a theory to explain why people fall for fake news and conspiracy theories and contribute to spread them. He puts together four main factors and cites key scientific studies that support each of them.
1. Emotional. People under stress, especially for reasons not clearly understood, tend to seek explanations and see patterns even when there is no clear one. Finding a villain to blame also gives some comfort. In addition, seeing obscure connections and making up or believing in complex theories make people feel superior.
2. Cognitive. Confirmation bias plays an important role, when people seek reinforcement for already preconceived ideas they have.
3. Personality. Some personality traits, especially those related to creativity and narcissism, facilitate the creation of stories and the belief in fake news.
4. Social. Fear of ostracism when deniers conflict with family and friends due to their beliefs, and feeling of belonging to a new embracing, supporting group of deniers are relevant bonding elements. Groups with ideas “contrasting” with common sense may be in frequent conflict with people outside the group, so that growing radicalism and intolerance for any deviation within the group are striking characteristics.
Ariely calls one’s journey to the world of conspiracy theories and fake news the “funnel of the fallacy”. For him, instead of fighting and isolating deniers, people should embrace them with understanding as quickly as possible to prevent them from falling further into the funnel.
This is another of those Dan Ariely’s incredibly clearly written books, making a social and psychological multi-factorial phenomenon seems easy to understand.
A last word on the misfortune Ariely went through very closely to the launching of this book. A group of scientists found that a paper Ariely and other researches published in 2012 got cooked numbers, which apparently created or inflated results. Ariely admitted the problem as a mistake and retracted the paper.
Despite the unfortunate irony of one’s writing a book on fake news and have a paper retracted for false data, and even if one decides to suspect of Ariely’s whole carrier just because of such incident (which is definitely not my case), this book can be read without suspicion, as it works as if it were a good “meta-analysis”; he cites interesting research from several authors and his general thesis makes a lot of sense even in theory.
PORTUGUÊS
Dan Ariely atribui a escrita deste livro a uma experiência pessoal pela qual passou durante a pandemia de covid-19, quando teóricos da conspiração, antivaxxers e negacionistas da ciência o elegeram como um de seus alvos nas redes sociais.
Ariely propõe uma teoria para explicar por que as pessoas caem em notícias falsas e teorias da conspiração e contribuem para divulgá-las. Ele reúne quatro fatores principais e cita estudos científicos importantes que apoiam cada um deles.
1. Emocional. Pessoas sob estresse, especialmente por motivos não claramente compreendidos, tendem a buscar explicações e a ver padrões mesmo quando não há muita clareza sobre eles. Encontrar um vilão para culpar também dá algum conforto. Além disso, enxergar conexões obscuras e inventar ou acreditar em teorias complexas faz essas pessoas se sentirem superiores.
2. Cognitivo. O viés de confirmação desempenha um papel importante quando as pessoas buscam reforço para ideias pré-concebidas que possuem.
3. Personalidade. Alguns traços de personalidade, principalmente aqueles relacionados à criatividade e ao narcisismo, facilitam a criação de histórias e a crença em notícias falsas.
4. Social. Medo do ostracismo quando os negacionistas entram em conflito com familiares e amigos devido às suas crenças e o sentimento de pertencer a um novo grupo que abraça e suporta negacionistas são importantes elementos de ligação. Grupos com ideias “contrastantes” com o senso comum podem estar em conflito frequente com gente de fora do grupo, de modo que o radicalismo crescente e a intolerância a qualquer desvio dentro do grupo são características marcantes.
Ariely chama a jornada ao mundo das teorias da conspiração e das notícias falsas de o “funil da falácia”. Para ele, em vez de lutar e isolar os negacionistas, as pessoas deveriam abraçá-los com compreensão o mais rápido possível para evitar que caiam ainda mais no funil.
Este é mais um daqueles livros escritos de forma incrivelmente clara de Dan Ariely, fazendo com que um fenômeno social e psicológico multifatorial pareça fácil de entender.
Dan Ariely motivates the writing of this book on a personal experience he went through during the covid-19 pandemic, when conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, and science deniers elected him as one of their targets on social media.
Ariely proposes a theory to explain why people fall for fake news and conspiracy theories and contribute to spread them. He puts together four main factors and cites key scientific studies that support each of them.
1. Emotional. People under stress, especially for reasons not clearly understood, tend to seek explanations and see patterns even when there is no clear one. Finding a villain to blame also gives some comfort. In addition, seeing obscure connections and making up or believing in complex theories make people feel superior.
2. Cognitive. Confirmation bias plays an important role, when people seek reinforcement for already preconceived ideas they have.
3. Personality. Some personality traits, especially those related to creativity and narcissism, facilitate the creation of stories and the belief in fake news.
4. Social. Fear of ostracism when deniers conflict with family and friends due to their beliefs, and feeling of belonging to a new embracing, supporting group of deniers are relevant bonding elements. Groups with ideas “contrasting” with common sense may be in frequent conflict with people outside the group, so that growing radicalism and intolerance for any deviation within the group are striking characteristics.
Ariely calls one’s journey to the world of conspiracy theories and fake news the “funnel of the fallacy”. For him, instead of fighting and isolating deniers, people should embrace them with understanding as quickly as possible to prevent them from falling further into the funnel.
This is another of those Dan Ariely’s incredibly clearly written books, making a social and psychological multi-factorial phenomenon seems easy to understand.
A last word on the misfortune Ariely went through very closely to the launching of this book. A group of scientists found that a paper Ariely and other researches published in 2012 got cooked numbers, which apparently created or inflated results. Ariely admitted the problem as a mistake and retracted the paper.
Despite the unfortunate irony of one’s writing a book on fake news and have a paper retracted for false data, and even if one decides to suspect of Ariely’s whole carrier just because of such incident (which is definitely not my case), this book can be read without suspicion, as it works as if it were a good “meta-analysis”; he cites interesting research from several authors and his general thesis makes a lot of sense even in theory.
PORTUGUÊS
Dan Ariely atribui a escrita deste livro a uma experiência pessoal pela qual passou durante a pandemia de covid-19, quando teóricos da conspiração, antivaxxers e negacionistas da ciência o elegeram como um de seus alvos nas redes sociais.
Ariely propõe uma teoria para explicar por que as pessoas caem em notícias falsas e teorias da conspiração e contribuem para divulgá-las. Ele reúne quatro fatores principais e cita estudos científicos importantes que apoiam cada um deles.
1. Emocional. Pessoas sob estresse, especialmente por motivos não claramente compreendidos, tendem a buscar explicações e a ver padrões mesmo quando não há muita clareza sobre eles. Encontrar um vilão para culpar também dá algum conforto. Além disso, enxergar conexões obscuras e inventar ou acreditar em teorias complexas faz essas pessoas se sentirem superiores.
2. Cognitivo. O viés de confirmação desempenha um papel importante quando as pessoas buscam reforço para ideias pré-concebidas que possuem.
3. Personalidade. Alguns traços de personalidade, principalmente aqueles relacionados à criatividade e ao narcisismo, facilitam a criação de histórias e a crença em notícias falsas.
4. Social. Medo do ostracismo quando os negacionistas entram em conflito com familiares e amigos devido às suas crenças e o sentimento de pertencer a um novo grupo que abraça e suporta negacionistas são importantes elementos de ligação. Grupos com ideias “contrastantes” com o senso comum podem estar em conflito frequente com gente de fora do grupo, de modo que o radicalismo crescente e a intolerância a qualquer desvio dentro do grupo são características marcantes.
Ariely chama a jornada ao mundo das teorias da conspiração e das notícias falsas de o “funil da falácia”. Para ele, em vez de lutar e isolar os negacionistas, as pessoas deveriam abraçá-los com compreensão o mais rápido possível para evitar que caiam ainda mais no funil.
Este é mais um daqueles livros escritos de forma incrivelmente clara de Dan Ariely, fazendo com que um fenômeno social e psicológico multifatorial pareça fácil de entender.
June 19, 2024
Audiobooked.
This book is psychologically focused, so keep that in mind picking it up. I really enjoyed it, thought it was very contemporary, and everyone can connect to plenty of aspects of it. We all know someone that is written about in here.
The biggest let down about this book is that the people who need it most will never come across it, but realistically what would they do with it haha? Very thought provoking, thought about many people I know who are described pretty accurately in this, would recommend.
This book is psychologically focused, so keep that in mind picking it up. I really enjoyed it, thought it was very contemporary, and everyone can connect to plenty of aspects of it. We all know someone that is written about in here.
The biggest let down about this book is that the people who need it most will never come across it, but realistically what would they do with it haha? Very thought provoking, thought about many people I know who are described pretty accurately in this, would recommend.
July 15, 2024
ENGLISH
Dan Ariely motivates the writing of this book on a personal experience he went through during the covid-19 pandemic, when conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, and science deniers elected him as one of their targets on social media.
Ariely proposes a theory to explain why people fall for fake news and conspiracy theories and contribute to spread them. He puts together four main factors and cites key scientific studies that support each of them.
1. Emotional. People under stress, especially for reasons not clearly understood, tend to seek explanations and see patterns even when there is no clear one. Finding a villain to blame also gives some comfort. In addition, seeing obscure connections and making up or believing in complex theories make people feel superior.
2. Cognitive. Confirmation bias plays an important role, when people seek reinforcement for already preconceived ideas they have.
3. Personality. Some personality traits, especially those related to creativity and narcissism, facilitate the creation of stories and the belief in fake news.
4. Social. Fear of ostracism when deniers conflict with family and friends due to their beliefs, and feeling of belonging to a new embracing, supporting group of deniers are relevant bonding elements. Groups with ideas “contrasting” with common sense may be in frequent conflict with people outside the group, so that growing radicalism and intolerance for any deviation within the group are striking characteristics.
Ariely calls one’s journey to the world of conspiracy theories and fake news the “funnel of the fallacy”. For him, instead of fighting and isolating deniers, people should embrace them with understanding as quickly as possible to prevent them from falling further into the funnel.
This is another of those Dan Ariely’s incredibly clearly written books, making a social and psychological multi-factorial phenomenon seems easy to understand.
A last word on the misfortune Ariely went through very closely to the launching of this book. A group of scientists found that a paper Ariely and other researches published in 2012 got cooked numbers, which apparently created or inflated results. Ariely admitted the problem as a mistake and retracted the paper.
Despite the unfortunate irony of one’s writing a book on fake news and have a paper retracted for false data, and even if one decides to suspect of Ariely’s whole carrier just because of such incident (which is definitely not my case), this book can be read without suspicion, as it works as if it were a good “meta-analysis”; he cites interesting research from several authors and his general thesis makes a lot of sense even in theory.
PORTUGUÊS
Dan Ariely atribui a escrita deste livro a uma experiência pessoal pela qual passou durante a pandemia de covid-19, quando teóricos da conspiração, antivaxxers e negacionistas da ciência o elegeram como um de seus alvos nas redes sociais.
Ariely propõe uma teoria para explicar por que as pessoas caem em notícias falsas e teorias da conspiração e contribuem para divulgá-las. Ele reúne quatro fatores principais e cita estudos científicos importantes que apoiam cada um deles.
1. Emocional. Pessoas sob estresse, especialmente por motivos não claramente compreendidos, tendem a buscar explicações e a ver padrões mesmo quando não há muita clareza sobre eles. Encontrar um vilão para culpar também dá algum conforto. Além disso, enxergar conexões obscuras e inventar ou acreditar em teorias complexas faz essas pessoas se sentirem superiores.
2. Cognitivo. O viés de confirmação desempenha um papel importante quando as pessoas buscam reforço para ideias pré-concebidas que possuem.
3. Personalidade. Alguns traços de personalidade, principalmente aqueles relacionados à criatividade e ao narcisismo, facilitam a criação de histórias e a crença em notícias falsas.
4. Social. Medo do ostracismo quando os negacionistas entram em conflito com familiares e amigos devido às suas crenças e o sentimento de pertencer a um novo grupo que abraça e suporta negacionistas são importantes elementos de ligação. Grupos com ideias “contrastantes” com o senso comum podem estar em conflito frequente com gente de fora do grupo, de modo que o radicalismo crescente e a intolerância a qualquer desvio dentro do grupo são características marcantes.
Ariely chama a jornada ao mundo das teorias da conspiração e das notícias falsas de o “funil da falácia”. Para ele, em vez de lutar e isolar os negacionistas, as pessoas deveriam abraçá-los com compreensão o mais rápido possível para evitar que caiam ainda mais no funil.
Este é mais um daqueles livros escritos de forma incrivelmente clara de Dan Ariely, fazendo com que um fenômeno social e psicológico multifatorial pareça fácil de entender.
Por fim, uma última palavra sobre o infortúnio que Ariely passou muito perto do lançamento deste livro. Um grupo de cientistas descobriu que um artigo de Ariely e outras pesquisas publicado em 2012 apresentou números distorcidos, o que aparentemente criou ou inflou resultados. Ariely admitiu o problema como um erro e retirou o artigo.
Apesar da infeliz ironia de alguém escrever um livro sobre notícias falsas e ter um artigo retratado por dados falsos, e mesmo que alguém decida suspeitar de toda a carreira de Ariely apenas por causa de tal incidente (o que definitivamente não é o meu caso), este livro pode ser lido sem suspeitas, pois funciona como se fosse uma boa “meta-análise”; ele cita pesquisas interessantes de vários autores e sua tese geral faz muito sentido, mesmo que em teoria
Dan Ariely motivates the writing of this book on a personal experience he went through during the covid-19 pandemic, when conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, and science deniers elected him as one of their targets on social media.
Ariely proposes a theory to explain why people fall for fake news and conspiracy theories and contribute to spread them. He puts together four main factors and cites key scientific studies that support each of them.
1. Emotional. People under stress, especially for reasons not clearly understood, tend to seek explanations and see patterns even when there is no clear one. Finding a villain to blame also gives some comfort. In addition, seeing obscure connections and making up or believing in complex theories make people feel superior.
2. Cognitive. Confirmation bias plays an important role, when people seek reinforcement for already preconceived ideas they have.
3. Personality. Some personality traits, especially those related to creativity and narcissism, facilitate the creation of stories and the belief in fake news.
4. Social. Fear of ostracism when deniers conflict with family and friends due to their beliefs, and feeling of belonging to a new embracing, supporting group of deniers are relevant bonding elements. Groups with ideas “contrasting” with common sense may be in frequent conflict with people outside the group, so that growing radicalism and intolerance for any deviation within the group are striking characteristics.
Ariely calls one’s journey to the world of conspiracy theories and fake news the “funnel of the fallacy”. For him, instead of fighting and isolating deniers, people should embrace them with understanding as quickly as possible to prevent them from falling further into the funnel.
This is another of those Dan Ariely’s incredibly clearly written books, making a social and psychological multi-factorial phenomenon seems easy to understand.
A last word on the misfortune Ariely went through very closely to the launching of this book. A group of scientists found that a paper Ariely and other researches published in 2012 got cooked numbers, which apparently created or inflated results. Ariely admitted the problem as a mistake and retracted the paper.
Despite the unfortunate irony of one’s writing a book on fake news and have a paper retracted for false data, and even if one decides to suspect of Ariely’s whole carrier just because of such incident (which is definitely not my case), this book can be read without suspicion, as it works as if it were a good “meta-analysis”; he cites interesting research from several authors and his general thesis makes a lot of sense even in theory.
PORTUGUÊS
Dan Ariely atribui a escrita deste livro a uma experiência pessoal pela qual passou durante a pandemia de covid-19, quando teóricos da conspiração, antivaxxers e negacionistas da ciência o elegeram como um de seus alvos nas redes sociais.
Ariely propõe uma teoria para explicar por que as pessoas caem em notícias falsas e teorias da conspiração e contribuem para divulgá-las. Ele reúne quatro fatores principais e cita estudos científicos importantes que apoiam cada um deles.
1. Emocional. Pessoas sob estresse, especialmente por motivos não claramente compreendidos, tendem a buscar explicações e a ver padrões mesmo quando não há muita clareza sobre eles. Encontrar um vilão para culpar também dá algum conforto. Além disso, enxergar conexões obscuras e inventar ou acreditar em teorias complexas faz essas pessoas se sentirem superiores.
2. Cognitivo. O viés de confirmação desempenha um papel importante quando as pessoas buscam reforço para ideias pré-concebidas que possuem.
3. Personalidade. Alguns traços de personalidade, principalmente aqueles relacionados à criatividade e ao narcisismo, facilitam a criação de histórias e a crença em notícias falsas.
4. Social. Medo do ostracismo quando os negacionistas entram em conflito com familiares e amigos devido às suas crenças e o sentimento de pertencer a um novo grupo que abraça e suporta negacionistas são importantes elementos de ligação. Grupos com ideias “contrastantes” com o senso comum podem estar em conflito frequente com gente de fora do grupo, de modo que o radicalismo crescente e a intolerância a qualquer desvio dentro do grupo são características marcantes.
Ariely chama a jornada ao mundo das teorias da conspiração e das notícias falsas de o “funil da falácia”. Para ele, em vez de lutar e isolar os negacionistas, as pessoas deveriam abraçá-los com compreensão o mais rápido possível para evitar que caiam ainda mais no funil.
Este é mais um daqueles livros escritos de forma incrivelmente clara de Dan Ariely, fazendo com que um fenômeno social e psicológico multifatorial pareça fácil de entender.
Por fim, uma última palavra sobre o infortúnio que Ariely passou muito perto do lançamento deste livro. Um grupo de cientistas descobriu que um artigo de Ariely e outras pesquisas publicado em 2012 apresentou números distorcidos, o que aparentemente criou ou inflou resultados. Ariely admitiu o problema como um erro e retirou o artigo.
Apesar da infeliz ironia de alguém escrever um livro sobre notícias falsas e ter um artigo retratado por dados falsos, e mesmo que alguém decida suspeitar de toda a carreira de Ariely apenas por causa de tal incidente (o que definitivamente não é o meu caso), este livro pode ser lido sem suspeitas, pois funciona como se fosse uma boa “meta-análise”; ele cita pesquisas interessantes de vários autores e sua tese geral faz muito sentido, mesmo que em teoria
May 3, 2024
(2.5) Not sure about this one. I appreciated the examples and the guidelines but something bothered me all along the book. I also felt that I was kind of biased by his explanations about “why he wrote this book.”
January 13, 2025
I can't believe I just did two 5-* books back to back. I very seldom give a book 5*, but this is another one I'd recommend to anyone and everyone. It's great for self-evaluation and as a tool to help others. I love his very comprehensive approach and willingness to take a look at the good in everyone without excusing malicious behavior. Ariely makes so many great points about so many things about how and why people believe the unbelievable/irrational. This book helps the reader develop more compassion for those gone down the rabbit hole, tools to help, to prevent, and to self-evaluate with more scrutiny.
October 22, 2023
An excellent and "Dan-Ariely-Thorough" exploration of what has caused conspiracy theories to wildly take over the garden. Ariely leads us through the funnel of disbelief, gently guiding us toward understanding and away from judgement and its not-so-subtle companion, the eye-roll. Indeed, he challenges us to remain open and in conversation and has inspired me to try just that when next confronted with something so wildly out of the range of the plausible I'd rather just leave the room.
December 21, 2023
Witty and informative. If you’ve ever wondered how your normal friend/family member fell down the Qanon hole never to return to normal society, this is the book to read.
January 17, 2024
I love social psychology in general, but this book is particularly timely with all the misbelief surrounding COVID-19.
June 23, 2025
D. Ariely ukazuje, jak marné je bojovat proti bludům, kterým někdo věří. Celkem depresivní kniha. Zdá se, že to nemá moc řešení. Na začátku autor ukazuje na svém vlastním příběhu, jak moc je to marné. A to je odborník na psychologii.
November 2, 2023
It's a nice and useful read, but I couldn't help comparing this book to Ariely's previous ones, hence the rating.
December 22, 2025
Author Dan Ariely, in 2022, intended to define and explain "conspiracy theorists" as "Misbelievers" - only to be later proven by 2025 that he himself turned out to be an actual "Misbeliever" himself -without even realizing it.
Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things
creates a model he calls a "Funnel of Misbelief" into which people "fall" deeper and deeper into believing and even advocating on behalf of misinformation.
If ever there was a book that indirectly informs/advises me of the necessity to hurry up and write my own book about my own exclusive topic that I call "Imposerism," this book is it. Over and over as I read Misbelief , I was noting that the leading most missing element to the author's claim about the period that I call the "tyranny of Covid1984," was the human nature reality that
"IMPOSITION Creates OPPOSITION ™.
For anyone curious, here is a 17 minute speech to explain that message:
https://youtu.be/yBNy_8QA2yk?si=5lAsr...
That point will be made even more clearly later on here; namely,
"IMPOSITION Creates OPPOSITION ™.
Readers here may note: I developed and use the term "Covid1984" to refer to the tyrannical period of the Covid-19 pandemic in the early 2020s. My use of the year "1984" refers to the book by George Orwell, as an illustration of how truly tyrannical governments were during that period.
Author Dan Ariely opens the book with a lengthy personal story introduction, titled,
"Demonized:
An Introduction That You Should Read Even If You Are the Kind of Person Who Usually Skips Introductions"
Therewith, readers learn how this elite Academic (claiming to not be elite) was demonized mercilessly online for his work on "incentivizing adherence to pandemic restrictions and mask wearing" (Page 2) during the tyranny of Covid1984. While I do believe that he only saw his work as not directly part of the global attack on the freedom of individuals that came with that period of tyrannical overreach of oppression, he still reveals himself as believing and trusting whatever the bubble of government, media, and academia present as supposed "science" and fact. Nevertheless, I would not say he deserved any of the over-the-top cruelty that too many sent his way. The problem is that author conflates such over-the-top abuse as if definitive of "all" who opposed the outright egregious tyranny of Covid1984. Moreover, one can rightly oppose the coerced vaccinations being rushed to implementation while also supporting long-proven vaccines such as fighting polio. The term, "anti-vaxxer" was a government propaganda term of slanderously actual misinformation to falsely define people, even if they believed both positions.
Anyway, the "Demonized" introduction does make one sympathetic of the author for the wrong abuse he received by the over-the-top opposers of the "forced jab."
From there, author Dan Ariely structured the book in 6 two-chapter Parts.
PART I: THE FUNNEL OF MISBELIEF
- Ch.1 - How could THAT Person Believe THAT Thing?
- Ch.2 - The Funnel at Work
PART II: THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENTS
AND THE STORY OF STRESS
- Ch.3 - Pressure, Stress, Bending, and Breaking
- Ch.4 Picking a Villain as a Way to Regain Control
PART III: THE COGNITIVE ELEMENTS
AND THE STORY OF OUR DYSFUNCTIONAL INFORMATION-PROCESSING MACHINERY
- Ch.5 - Our Search for the Truth We Want to Believe In
- Ch.6 - Working Hard to Believe What we Already Believe
PART IV: THE PERSONALITY ELEMENTS
AND THE STORY OF OUR INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
- Ch.7 - Lessons on Personality from Alien Abductees
- Ch.8 - An Attempt to Classify the Role of Personality in the Funnel of Misbelief
PART V: THE SOCIAL ELEMENTS
AND THE STORY OF TRIBALISM
- Ch.9 - Ostracism, Belonging, and the Social Attraction of Misbelief
- Ch.10 - The Social Accelerator
PART VI: MISBELIEF, TRUST,
AND THE STORY OF OUR FUTURE
-Ch.11 - Can We Afford to Trust Again---
---------and Can We Afford Not to?
- Ch.12 - Why Superman Gives Me Hope: A Final Word (Not Really)
That content is followed by a two-page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, a 12-page INDEX, and a one-page ABOUT THE AUTHOR sections.
Essentially, the book develops a model called, "the Funnel of Misbelief." That funnel is comprised of four descending (downward spiral) elements: the Emotional, Cognitive, Personality, Social Elements. Hence, Parts II through V each address the respective elements. (Part I introduces the "funnel" and Part VI concludes the topic.)
The attempted illustration of the funnel on age 36 was printed in such dark black ink that it was difficult people even with normal book-reading vision to make out the imagery it was intending.
In closing Part I, Dan Ariely notes the following:
Ariely's lamentation hopes to restore "trust at a societal level."
Yet he completely misses the fundamental mots important factor of the opp
osition to the tyranny of Covid1984. Namely, my own book-to-write's main point:
"IMPOSITION Creates OPPOSITION ™.
Indeed, the author never finds fault with IMPOSERS IMPOSING IMPOSITIONS of tyranny. Rather, he labels the OPPOSERS of the IMPOSERS' IMPOSITIONS as "Misbelievers" simply because they do not "trust" whatever the IMPOSERS IMPOSING IMPOSITIONS on them purport. Therein, Dan Ariely 's book, Misbelief completely misses the real story of such matters as happened during the tyranny of Coviid1984.
In the "Emotional Elements" in Part II, he asserts that would-be Misbelievers are simply being stressed. So, in order to take control over their lives for that stress, they "go looking for a villain." TALk about missing the real picture! That's as offensive as claiming that a woman who was raped was "merely stressed" and thereafter pointed a finger at the rapist because she supposedly "needed to find a villain" in order to take back control over her life! Talk about ignoring the facts! For both the oppressed rape victim and the oppressed victims of the tyranny of Covid1984, the reality is visibly clear: "IMPOSITION Creates OPPOSITION ™. OPPOSERS were not OPPOSERS until after the IMPOSERS IMPOSED the IMPOSITIONS.
The only real; way to restore the trust (as the author laments) is simple:
STOP IMPOSING!
Alas, this book completely misses that point, and instead finds faults with the victims, labelling the OPPOSERS as "Misbelievers."
Ironically, the very "Elements" that the Author describes are actually applicable to himself! His biased support support for progressive ideology (from "climate change" to gun control) and hubris about all things that the media misrepresented about President Trump were all out in the open in this book. No wonder, he lives in a bubble of academia (an industry with nearly 95% of professors adhere to politically progressive propaganda/ideology). He trusts the media, which are better known as the Manufactured News Corporations. And he trusts whatever the progressive leaders in government declare is supposed "fact." Hence, every single element in his '"Funnel of Misbelief" completely apply to how and why he, HIMSELF, is actual "Misbeliever" by his own terms.
By 2025, the masses had turned against the lies of media, government, and academia and opted President Trump back into office. And numerous hoaxes have been outed since, including the money-laundering of government tax dollars to "non-profits" (NGOs, non-governmental organizations) who then funnel the money back to the politicians and their pet projects (such as through the USAID frauds). And the FDA has now called for a "black box" warning label on the vaccines for COVID-19, admitting they are not necessarily safe. (And this does not even address how the media lied during Covid1984 by wrongly reporting "deaths BY Covid" when even the official Covid1984 website showed a small footnote that 94% of the deaths had a co-morbidity rate of 2.8 other death-cause ailments. Hence, they should have been reported as "deaths WITH Covid" which are very different things indeed. Anyway, history has proven that the mere OPPOSERS who simply distrusted the IMPOSERS (not to be confused with the over-the-top people and lunatics) were not wrong. The real "Misbelievers" turned out to be those who blindly followed and supported the misinformation of the tyrannical IMPOSITIONS of the IMPOSERS, including Author Daniel Ariely.
I have previously read two other books that this author had written over a decade before, back in 2008 and 2010.
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
My book review is at this link:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home
My book review is at this link:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I had wanted to read Dan Ariely's latest 2022 book, Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things as soon as I had seen it was going to be published. I had enjoyed his past two books (in which he at least made better attempts as end-notes and bibliographies). On the heels of those two much-better books, I was greatly disappointed by the blatant hubristic belief that all things progressive are somehow "the normal truth" when they are manifestly the result of propagandistc misinformation of that ideology!
In the end, I am of the opinion that, when looking at, realizing, and admitting Dan Ariely's own act of being a Misbeliever, he himself does appear to illustrate the accuracy of his model "the Funnel of Misbelief." He was wrongly attacked by over-the-top people who were oppressed by the tyranny of Covid1984, that understandably stressed him emotionally. So he "went looking for a villain" as he would call it (even though he was merely reacting to OPPOSE their IMPOSITION of hostile over-the-the misinformation that he wanted to believe, it worked with his personality, and he bonded with the hubris of his own progressive supporters in academia, media, and government which he trusted. Indeed, his point is well made when applied to himself!
I read this 320-page book over a period of 27 days - from November 25 through December 21, 2025. (It actually would have been one less day, as I missed one day of reading.)
It took me 761 minutes (12 hours and 41 minutes) to completely read in entirety - including underlining and making margin commentaries and notes.
This book, Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things , was given to me as a Wedding Anniversary 2023 gift from my beloved bride. (She knew I wanted this book as I had previously enjoyed two earlier books from this same author.) It is now the 23rd such gift-book that I have read since she breathed her last breath peacefully in my arms over a year and a half ago (as I write this on December 21, 2025).
With all this mind, I finds this book to be a let-down from the higher bar this author set with his earlier books. It felt hastily written in order to get through the emotional turmoil of how unkindly he had been unfortunately mistreated by those who were over-the-top. As history has since proved him to be wrong about much of the tyranny of Covid1984 (because he believed the misinformation of the sources he trusted), although he was unjustly abused for his own "misbelief," I can nevertheless give a rating better than 1 star, but nothing more than 2 stars. I liked this author and I hope he comes upn with something that better fits him.
Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things
by Dan Ariely
is a 2-Star book.
If ever there was a book that indirectly informs/advises me of the necessity to hurry up and write my own book about my own exclusive topic that I call "Imposerism," this book is it. Over and over as I read Misbelief , I was noting that the leading most missing element to the author's claim about the period that I call the "tyranny of Covid1984," was the human nature reality that
"IMPOSITION Creates OPPOSITION ™.
For anyone curious, here is a 17 minute speech to explain that message:
https://youtu.be/yBNy_8QA2yk?si=5lAsr...
That point will be made even more clearly later on here; namely,
"IMPOSITION Creates OPPOSITION ™.
Readers here may note: I developed and use the term "Covid1984" to refer to the tyrannical period of the Covid-19 pandemic in the early 2020s. My use of the year "1984" refers to the book by George Orwell, as an illustration of how truly tyrannical governments were during that period.
Author Dan Ariely opens the book with a lengthy personal story introduction, titled,
"Demonized:
An Introduction That You Should Read Even If You Are the Kind of Person Who Usually Skips Introductions"
Therewith, readers learn how this elite Academic (claiming to not be elite) was demonized mercilessly online for his work on "incentivizing adherence to pandemic restrictions and mask wearing" (Page 2) during the tyranny of Covid1984. While I do believe that he only saw his work as not directly part of the global attack on the freedom of individuals that came with that period of tyrannical overreach of oppression, he still reveals himself as believing and trusting whatever the bubble of government, media, and academia present as supposed "science" and fact. Nevertheless, I would not say he deserved any of the over-the-top cruelty that too many sent his way. The problem is that author conflates such over-the-top abuse as if definitive of "all" who opposed the outright egregious tyranny of Covid1984. Moreover, one can rightly oppose the coerced vaccinations being rushed to implementation while also supporting long-proven vaccines such as fighting polio. The term, "anti-vaxxer" was a government propaganda term of slanderously actual misinformation to falsely define people, even if they believed both positions.
Anyway, the "Demonized" introduction does make one sympathetic of the author for the wrong abuse he received by the over-the-top opposers of the "forced jab."
From there, author Dan Ariely structured the book in 6 two-chapter Parts.
PART I: THE FUNNEL OF MISBELIEF
- Ch.1 - How could THAT Person Believe THAT Thing?
- Ch.2 - The Funnel at Work
PART II: THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENTS
AND THE STORY OF STRESS
- Ch.3 - Pressure, Stress, Bending, and Breaking
- Ch.4 Picking a Villain as a Way to Regain Control
PART III: THE COGNITIVE ELEMENTS
AND THE STORY OF OUR DYSFUNCTIONAL INFORMATION-PROCESSING MACHINERY
- Ch.5 - Our Search for the Truth We Want to Believe In
- Ch.6 - Working Hard to Believe What we Already Believe
PART IV: THE PERSONALITY ELEMENTS
AND THE STORY OF OUR INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
- Ch.7 - Lessons on Personality from Alien Abductees
- Ch.8 - An Attempt to Classify the Role of Personality in the Funnel of Misbelief
PART V: THE SOCIAL ELEMENTS
AND THE STORY OF TRIBALISM
- Ch.9 - Ostracism, Belonging, and the Social Attraction of Misbelief
- Ch.10 - The Social Accelerator
PART VI: MISBELIEF, TRUST,
AND THE STORY OF OUR FUTURE
-Ch.11 - Can We Afford to Trust Again---
---------and Can We Afford Not to?
- Ch.12 - Why Superman Gives Me Hope: A Final Word (Not Really)
That content is followed by a two-page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, a 12-page INDEX, and a one-page ABOUT THE AUTHOR sections.
Essentially, the book develops a model called, "the Funnel of Misbelief." That funnel is comprised of four descending (downward spiral) elements: the Emotional, Cognitive, Personality, Social Elements. Hence, Parts II through V each address the respective elements. (Part I introduces the "funnel" and Part VI concludes the topic.)
The attempted illustration of the funnel on age 36 was printed in such dark black ink that it was difficult people even with normal book-reading vision to make out the imagery it was intending.
In closing Part I, Dan Ariely notes the following:
"Mistrust begets mistrust...
...mistrusting... government, the medical profession, nonprofits, the media, and the elites."
Ariely's lamentation hopes to restore "trust at a societal level."
Yet he completely misses the fundamental mots important factor of the opp
osition to the tyranny of Covid1984. Namely, my own book-to-write's main point:
"IMPOSITION Creates OPPOSITION ™.
Indeed, the author never finds fault with IMPOSERS IMPOSING IMPOSITIONS of tyranny. Rather, he labels the OPPOSERS of the IMPOSERS' IMPOSITIONS as "Misbelievers" simply because they do not "trust" whatever the IMPOSERS IMPOSING IMPOSITIONS on them purport. Therein, Dan Ariely 's book, Misbelief completely misses the real story of such matters as happened during the tyranny of Coviid1984.
In the "Emotional Elements" in Part II, he asserts that would-be Misbelievers are simply being stressed. So, in order to take control over their lives for that stress, they "go looking for a villain." TALk about missing the real picture! That's as offensive as claiming that a woman who was raped was "merely stressed" and thereafter pointed a finger at the rapist because she supposedly "needed to find a villain" in order to take back control over her life! Talk about ignoring the facts! For both the oppressed rape victim and the oppressed victims of the tyranny of Covid1984, the reality is visibly clear: "IMPOSITION Creates OPPOSITION ™. OPPOSERS were not OPPOSERS until after the IMPOSERS IMPOSED the IMPOSITIONS.
The only real; way to restore the trust (as the author laments) is simple:
STOP IMPOSING!
Alas, this book completely misses that point, and instead finds faults with the victims, labelling the OPPOSERS as "Misbelievers."
Ironically, the very "Elements" that the Author describes are actually applicable to himself! His biased support support for progressive ideology (from "climate change" to gun control) and hubris about all things that the media misrepresented about President Trump were all out in the open in this book. No wonder, he lives in a bubble of academia (an industry with nearly 95% of professors adhere to politically progressive propaganda/ideology). He trusts the media, which are better known as the Manufactured News Corporations. And he trusts whatever the progressive leaders in government declare is supposed "fact." Hence, every single element in his '"Funnel of Misbelief" completely apply to how and why he, HIMSELF, is actual "Misbeliever" by his own terms.
By 2025, the masses had turned against the lies of media, government, and academia and opted President Trump back into office. And numerous hoaxes have been outed since, including the money-laundering of government tax dollars to "non-profits" (NGOs, non-governmental organizations) who then funnel the money back to the politicians and their pet projects (such as through the USAID frauds). And the FDA has now called for a "black box" warning label on the vaccines for COVID-19, admitting they are not necessarily safe. (And this does not even address how the media lied during Covid1984 by wrongly reporting "deaths BY Covid" when even the official Covid1984 website showed a small footnote that 94% of the deaths had a co-morbidity rate of 2.8 other death-cause ailments. Hence, they should have been reported as "deaths WITH Covid" which are very different things indeed. Anyway, history has proven that the mere OPPOSERS who simply distrusted the IMPOSERS (not to be confused with the over-the-top people and lunatics) were not wrong. The real "Misbelievers" turned out to be those who blindly followed and supported the misinformation of the tyrannical IMPOSITIONS of the IMPOSERS, including Author Daniel Ariely.
I have previously read two other books that this author had written over a decade before, back in 2008 and 2010.
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
My book review is at this link:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home
My book review is at this link:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I had wanted to read Dan Ariely's latest 2022 book, Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things as soon as I had seen it was going to be published. I had enjoyed his past two books (in which he at least made better attempts as end-notes and bibliographies). On the heels of those two much-better books, I was greatly disappointed by the blatant hubristic belief that all things progressive are somehow "the normal truth" when they are manifestly the result of propagandistc misinformation of that ideology!
In the end, I am of the opinion that, when looking at, realizing, and admitting Dan Ariely's own act of being a Misbeliever, he himself does appear to illustrate the accuracy of his model "the Funnel of Misbelief." He was wrongly attacked by over-the-top people who were oppressed by the tyranny of Covid1984, that understandably stressed him emotionally. So he "went looking for a villain" as he would call it (even though he was merely reacting to OPPOSE their IMPOSITION of hostile over-the-the misinformation that he wanted to believe, it worked with his personality, and he bonded with the hubris of his own progressive supporters in academia, media, and government which he trusted. Indeed, his point is well made when applied to himself!
I read this 320-page book over a period of 27 days - from November 25 through December 21, 2025. (It actually would have been one less day, as I missed one day of reading.)
It took me 761 minutes (12 hours and 41 minutes) to completely read in entirety - including underlining and making margin commentaries and notes.
This book, Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things , was given to me as a Wedding Anniversary 2023 gift from my beloved bride. (She knew I wanted this book as I had previously enjoyed two earlier books from this same author.) It is now the 23rd such gift-book that I have read since she breathed her last breath peacefully in my arms over a year and a half ago (as I write this on December 21, 2025).
With all this mind, I finds this book to be a let-down from the higher bar this author set with his earlier books. It felt hastily written in order to get through the emotional turmoil of how unkindly he had been unfortunately mistreated by those who were over-the-top. As history has since proved him to be wrong about much of the tyranny of Covid1984 (because he believed the misinformation of the sources he trusted), although he was unjustly abused for his own "misbelief," I can nevertheless give a rating better than 1 star, but nothing more than 2 stars. I liked this author and I hope he comes upn with something that better fits him.
Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things
by Dan Ariely
is a 2-Star book.
November 15, 2025
An interesting and surprisingly personal look at how misbelief takes root and spreads like a virus. The author, Dan Ariely, weaves some of his first hand accounts during the COVID days and cites example after example of flawed cognitive processes.
It was a bit dry at times but very thought provoking.
It was a bit dry at times but very thought provoking.
March 1, 2024
It was a little ironic to read Misbelief after reading the fairly recent article on Dr. Ariely's alleged number fudging, but I think without taking any of this into account, the book itself is very insightful, informative, and warm. It didn't take too long to read when I sat down and stuck with it, and I will definitely be applying some of his points to my own intake of information. I think Ariely tends to lean toward the left in this book despite his attempts to tamp down any bias, which I think is a flaw even as someone who agrees with many of the ideas he implicitly agrees within the book. This is just due to the overall message he's trying to send, really, and I don't find too much trouble with it, but someone on the other side of the political spectrum might disagree with me haha. Overall I'd say this was a good 3.5 out of 5 for me!
October 13, 2023
The author has a uniquely personal interest in conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers because one day he found himself the target of their scorn, bizarre theories and even death threats. To his credit, he attempted to reach out to some, both to try to convince them he isn’t part of the Illuminati but also to try to understand why they think the way they do. It isn’t very productive. The one person who changes his mind realizing Ariely isn’t some evil cabalist is unwilling to say it to others in his cohort, because he doesn’t want to lose any prestige in their eyes.
The author does an interesting job of putting together a model for how people descend into an embrace of absurd misinformation, going through the emotional, cognitive, personality and social quirks of our thinking that add up to a funnel of misbelief for some people. It may not all be right, but it’s a valiant and thought-provoking attempt to understand this weird and disturbingly pervasive phenomenon of this age.
October 24, 2024
This book was such a treasure to read. Presented with an informal, and at times witty, prose, Ariely catalogues the primary factors needed to push someone down the "funnel of disbelief". I found his findings very interesting and enlightening. He presented social science theories in such an accessible manner, and really dug right into the topic. I felt like I had attended a semester long module on misbelief by the time I finished the book, it was so educational and insightful. Would definitely recommend.
March 3, 2025
A balanced and insightful look at the various social and psychological factors that can lead one down the “funnel of misbelief”. A fantastic crash course reminder of different ways our brains work and make shortcuts. A great reminder that we all have biases and need to be mindful of the information we consume, especially on how we have evolved to communicate and the failure of social media to reflect and respect that. Also the importance of trust and the erosion there of that has caused a great many people to embrace misinformation. Recommend this book to anyone with a Human brain!
October 15, 2023
Everything you want in a book from Dan Ariely. Loved it.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 301 reviews