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Why We Think What We Think: The Unexpected Origins of Our Deepest Beliefs
'Fizzing with insights and ideas... I loved it'
Jenny Kleeman, author of The Price of Life
‘Fascinating, incredibly valuable and accessible – a compelling view of why we see the world and each other the way we do’
Bobby Duffy, author of The Perils of Perception
Without knowing it, almost all our opinions – whether we believe in God or in ghosts, our views on sex or animal rights or immigration, our basic sense of what’s right – are shaped by an astounding web of hidden forces. The age-old idea that our views are forged by reason and evidence alone is we are influenced by everything from the quirks of distant history, through the lines of our genetic code, to the geology of where we grew up.
This eye-opening book takes us through culture, biology, geography, history, psychology and much more to uncover the hidden DNA of our opinions. It
Why the descendants of rice farmers have fundamentally different social values to the descendants of grain farmersHow our physical appearance shapes the way we see the world – and why conventionally attractive people tend to support the free marketWhy liberals are more likely than conservatives to think pineapple should go on pizza – and why conservatives prefer smooth peanut butter to crunchyWhy hot and humid countries favour authoritarian leaders
Packed with surprising stories and counterintuitive discoveries, Why We Think What We Think does more than reveal how our beliefs are formed. By showing where our beliefs really come from, it invites us to step outside our own assumptions – and learn how to think more clearly, and more generously, about the world we all share.
Jenny Kleeman, author of The Price of Life
‘Fascinating, incredibly valuable and accessible – a compelling view of why we see the world and each other the way we do’
Bobby Duffy, author of The Perils of Perception
Without knowing it, almost all our opinions – whether we believe in God or in ghosts, our views on sex or animal rights or immigration, our basic sense of what’s right – are shaped by an astounding web of hidden forces. The age-old idea that our views are forged by reason and evidence alone is we are influenced by everything from the quirks of distant history, through the lines of our genetic code, to the geology of where we grew up.
This eye-opening book takes us through culture, biology, geography, history, psychology and much more to uncover the hidden DNA of our opinions. It
Why the descendants of rice farmers have fundamentally different social values to the descendants of grain farmersHow our physical appearance shapes the way we see the world – and why conventionally attractive people tend to support the free marketWhy liberals are more likely than conservatives to think pineapple should go on pizza – and why conservatives prefer smooth peanut butter to crunchyWhy hot and humid countries favour authoritarian leaders
Packed with surprising stories and counterintuitive discoveries, Why We Think What We Think does more than reveal how our beliefs are formed. By showing where our beliefs really come from, it invites us to step outside our own assumptions – and learn how to think more clearly, and more generously, about the world we all share.
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Kindle Edition
Published May 14, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 16, 2026
I want to say essential reading, but - if anything - this book is simply a timely and extremely interesting reminder to move against polarisation. Filled with stories, fascinating statistics, biopolitics and political science. Really enjoyed and definitely think this book would appear on some ‘what books define your worldview’ Reddit post, if I were into that kind of thing!
May 27, 2026
Beautifully written and researched. I loved this book. From the extraordinary stories-how languages deepen on outdoor temperature, how brain scans can predict politics, how genetics inform religiosity- to the full-throated defence of pluralism as the best form of politics, not just for society but also for individuals.
June 12, 2026
Turi Munthe’s Why We Think What We Think is the most important book I have read in a while. In a world of depressing polarisation it makes an elaborate, well-researched and brilliantly written case for the value of a pluralist society.
What I found especially powerful is its argument for tolerance, not as a soft or passive virtue but as something essential to the future of democracy. The book is thoughtful, humane and intellectually generous whilst remaining highly readable and often genuinely fun.
This is a must-read for anyone interested in how we live together, how we disagree better and how we protect the future of our pluralist democracy.
What I found especially powerful is its argument for tolerance, not as a soft or passive virtue but as something essential to the future of democracy. The book is thoughtful, humane and intellectually generous whilst remaining highly readable and often genuinely fun.
This is a must-read for anyone interested in how we live together, how we disagree better and how we protect the future of our pluralist democracy.
Review of advance copy
The central question of Turi Munthe's ambitious and entertaining second book is deceptively simple: why do we hold the opinions we hold? The answer, it turns out, is far stranger and more humbling than we'd like to admit.
After co-founding Parlia — an online encyclopaedia of human opinion designed to map the arguments on every contested question — Munthe noticed something troubling. People weren't swayed by the best arguments. They weren't even engaging with arguments much at all. What they were doing, in their millions, was voting for positions that seemed to track something deeper and harder to name than logic or evidence. This book is the result of his attempt to figure out what that something is. The answer unfolds across nine chapters and two broad sections.
Part One is a tour of what Munthe — borrowing from the philosopher Bernard Williams — calls the "encumbrances" on our thinking: the unconscious forces that shape our beliefs before we've reasoned about anything. He moves with impressive range from meteorology to molecular biology. Hot, humid climates correlate with authoritarian politics. The descendants of rice farmers tend toward collectivism, while those of grain farmers lean individualist. People with more taste buds on their tongues are more likely to vote conservative. Brain scans can predict political affiliation with over 70 per cent accuracy. Conservatives sweat more when startled; liberals use more muscles in their faces. The cumulative effect of this catalogue is genuinely disorienting — which is precisely the point. Munthe is not arguing that we are irrational creatures but that our rationality operates within a framework of biological, geographical, historical and emotional constraints we rarely acknowledge. We think we've reasoned our way to our convictions; more often, we've rationalised our way toward them after the fact.
If Part One is a chastening exercise in epistemic humility, Part Two is a surprising and welcome pivot toward optimism. Munthe argues that disagreement, far from being a failure of civilisation, is in fact its engine. Drawing on evolutionary biology, he makes the case that left and right are not aberrations but complementary adaptations. They are different strategies for managing different kinds of risk, both necessary for a species as varied and unpredictable as ours. Reason, he argues, was never meant to be a solo performance; it evolved as a collaborative, adversarial process. Argument, in the original Latin sense of 'arguere' — to make clear — is how humanity actually thinks.
As an invitation to think differently about why we believe what we believe — and to engage more generously with those who believe otherwise — 'Why We Think What We Think' is persuasive, witty and usefully unsettling.
After co-founding Parlia — an online encyclopaedia of human opinion designed to map the arguments on every contested question — Munthe noticed something troubling. People weren't swayed by the best arguments. They weren't even engaging with arguments much at all. What they were doing, in their millions, was voting for positions that seemed to track something deeper and harder to name than logic or evidence. This book is the result of his attempt to figure out what that something is. The answer unfolds across nine chapters and two broad sections.
Part One is a tour of what Munthe — borrowing from the philosopher Bernard Williams — calls the "encumbrances" on our thinking: the unconscious forces that shape our beliefs before we've reasoned about anything. He moves with impressive range from meteorology to molecular biology. Hot, humid climates correlate with authoritarian politics. The descendants of rice farmers tend toward collectivism, while those of grain farmers lean individualist. People with more taste buds on their tongues are more likely to vote conservative. Brain scans can predict political affiliation with over 70 per cent accuracy. Conservatives sweat more when startled; liberals use more muscles in their faces. The cumulative effect of this catalogue is genuinely disorienting — which is precisely the point. Munthe is not arguing that we are irrational creatures but that our rationality operates within a framework of biological, geographical, historical and emotional constraints we rarely acknowledge. We think we've reasoned our way to our convictions; more often, we've rationalised our way toward them after the fact.
If Part One is a chastening exercise in epistemic humility, Part Two is a surprising and welcome pivot toward optimism. Munthe argues that disagreement, far from being a failure of civilisation, is in fact its engine. Drawing on evolutionary biology, he makes the case that left and right are not aberrations but complementary adaptations. They are different strategies for managing different kinds of risk, both necessary for a species as varied and unpredictable as ours. Reason, he argues, was never meant to be a solo performance; it evolved as a collaborative, adversarial process. Argument, in the original Latin sense of 'arguere' — to make clear — is how humanity actually thinks.
As an invitation to think differently about why we believe what we believe — and to engage more generously with those who believe otherwise — 'Why We Think What We Think' is persuasive, witty and usefully unsettling.
June 21, 2026
UPDATE: a number of five star reviews on this book look inauthentic - two with only one review ever and no other activity at all, accounts opened a long time ago with zero activity then suddenly reading and reviewing three or four books all on the same day including this - then nothing again. Disappointing for a major publisher.
AI gets a lot of flack for its hallucinations and misinformation and things will only get worse as the mistakes it produces corrupts its own training data,
But the same is true of the whole of the internet anyway and we’re just about surviving. Plus AI can be a great research tool for checking the dubious claims made in books like this. And dubious claims come thick and fast - I’m burning up my tokens at an unprecedented rate as one claim after another turns out to be a combination of exaggeration, misinterpretation or doubtful research to begin with.
This is the book you get if you stack every dubious or unreproducible social science study in a big pile and stapled them together. A combination of overstatement, lack of causal connection and ignoring confounding factors the like of which is rarely seen.
Difficult to know where to start. I just abandoned it at the geography section but a good example of a dubious claims is “soil geology determines voting patterns” pointing at the Southern US black belt of rich soil and the Vendee that leads to people voting for progressive parties.
Now it maybe that at certain times plantation slavery allowed the development of large farms on the fertile soil of the Black Belt (which is the sensible place to build large farms) which created related populations of black slaves who now vote Democrat - so a combination of geology, particular social institutions and history led to a strongly democratic voting pattern in the Black Belt of the southern USA today but the causal connection between geology and politics this books claims is wildly overstated.
And thanks to AI we can check a counter example fairly easily - the Texas Blackland Prairie (black for its fertile soil I should add). Its rural sharecroppers were predominantly white but, unlike their relatively nearby black neighbors, have somehow managed to resist the powerful lure of the soil when affixing crosses to their ballots and vote overwhelmingly Republican.
Could be it be that institutions, society and history influence voting patterns more than soil geology. Quite possibly, but that would make a much messier book that wouldn’t sell half as well.
AI gets a lot of flack for its hallucinations and misinformation and things will only get worse as the mistakes it produces corrupts its own training data,
But the same is true of the whole of the internet anyway and we’re just about surviving. Plus AI can be a great research tool for checking the dubious claims made in books like this. And dubious claims come thick and fast - I’m burning up my tokens at an unprecedented rate as one claim after another turns out to be a combination of exaggeration, misinterpretation or doubtful research to begin with.
This is the book you get if you stack every dubious or unreproducible social science study in a big pile and stapled them together. A combination of overstatement, lack of causal connection and ignoring confounding factors the like of which is rarely seen.
Difficult to know where to start. I just abandoned it at the geography section but a good example of a dubious claims is “soil geology determines voting patterns” pointing at the Southern US black belt of rich soil and the Vendee that leads to people voting for progressive parties.
Now it maybe that at certain times plantation slavery allowed the development of large farms on the fertile soil of the Black Belt (which is the sensible place to build large farms) which created related populations of black slaves who now vote Democrat - so a combination of geology, particular social institutions and history led to a strongly democratic voting pattern in the Black Belt of the southern USA today but the causal connection between geology and politics this books claims is wildly overstated.
And thanks to AI we can check a counter example fairly easily - the Texas Blackland Prairie (black for its fertile soil I should add). Its rural sharecroppers were predominantly white but, unlike their relatively nearby black neighbors, have somehow managed to resist the powerful lure of the soil when affixing crosses to their ballots and vote overwhelmingly Republican.
Could be it be that institutions, society and history influence voting patterns more than soil geology. Quite possibly, but that would make a much messier book that wouldn’t sell half as well.
Review of advance copy received from Author
I received an Advance Review Copy of the book.
A great book should entertain, educate and elevate. This book is terrific that does all three. You will laugh and gasp at some stories and anecdotes, you'll learn effortlessly about how we form our deepest beliefs, and you'll come away more respectful of others and humble about your own views.
This book is engaging and thought-provoking. It is better written and more engaging than the vast majority of books I've read on how humans think and have come to believe.
In these divided times, where people don't want to listen to "the other side" this book is a much needed antidote that teaches us that debate and dialogue are our human superpower.
A great book should entertain, educate and elevate. This book is terrific that does all three. You will laugh and gasp at some stories and anecdotes, you'll learn effortlessly about how we form our deepest beliefs, and you'll come away more respectful of others and humble about your own views.
This book is engaging and thought-provoking. It is better written and more engaging than the vast majority of books I've read on how humans think and have come to believe.
In these divided times, where people don't want to listen to "the other side" this book is a much needed antidote that teaches us that debate and dialogue are our human superpower.
May 14, 2026
Received an Advance Review Copy of the book.
A rare and timely book, both in its wide-ranging scope and its deeply personal reflection on the nature and causes of belief.
Rare in that it situates belief beyond the familiar claim that it is merely shaped by environment, counter-intuitively showing the deep impact of biology and evolution as well as culture - while still recognising that belief can be shaped beyond disposition. Timely in that it holds up a mirror to these polarised and weaponised times.
An important book that carries a serious and consistent thread, but does so in a way that feels distinctly personal, fun and entertaining. Recommended.
A rare and timely book, both in its wide-ranging scope and its deeply personal reflection on the nature and causes of belief.
Rare in that it situates belief beyond the familiar claim that it is merely shaped by environment, counter-intuitively showing the deep impact of biology and evolution as well as culture - while still recognising that belief can be shaped beyond disposition. Timely in that it holds up a mirror to these polarised and weaponised times.
An important book that carries a serious and consistent thread, but does so in a way that feels distinctly personal, fun and entertaining. Recommended.
June 14, 2026
I enjoyed interacting with the author on an Interintellect Virtual Salon earlier this month, which you can watch on YouTube now. In his book, Munthe looks at all the things that affect what we think of as "our" thoughts: climate, geography, culture, biology, genetics, emotions, and groupthink. Then he closes the book with some great chapters on how we evolved to reason through argument...and how we need to embrace that. The whole book was fun and encouraging, but the last chapter was particularly inspiring. He has a way of looking at how we could/should all get along that is very helpful.
Review of advance copy
Incisive, clever and wide-ranging. Munthe’s deep dive into the unconscious drivers of our deepest-held beliefs is thought-provoking, witty and illuminating. It’s the kind of intelligent writing that leaves you feeling smarter and eager to share your discoveries.
June 12, 2026
Beautifully written, well argued and, above all an essential reading at a time of seemly irreconcilable differences and baffling political events. A celebration of pluralism and of the need for opposite views for any meaningful dialogue.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews