The Mind of the Market: How Biology and Psychology Shape Our Economic Lives by Michael Shermer
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(Paperback)
- Pub. Date: January 2009
- 336pp
- Sales Rank: 82,476
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: January 2009
- Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Incorporated
- Format: Paperback, 336pp
- Sales Rank: 82,476
- ISBN-13: 9780805089165
- ISBN: 0805089160
Synopsis
"[A] captivating raconteur of all the greatest hits of behavioral, evolutionary and neuropsychology . . . Fascinating."—Los Angeles Times Book Review
How did we make the leap from ancient hunter-gatherers to modern consumers, and why do people get so emotional about financial decisions? The national bestseller The Mind of the Market uncovers the evolutionary roots of our economic behavior.
Drawing on the new field of neuroeconomics, psychologist Michael Shermer investigates what brain scans reveal about bargaining, snap purchases, and establishing trust in business. He scrutinizes experiments in behavioral economics to understand why people hang on to losing stocks and why negotiations disintegrate into tit-for-tat disputes. He brings together findings from psychology and biology to describe how our tribal ancestry makes us suckers for brands, why researchers believe cooperation feels (biochemically) like sex, and how even capuchin monkeys get indignant if they don’t get a fair reward for their work.
Entertaining and eye-opening, The Mind of the Market explains the real science of economics.
Biography
Michael Shermer is the author of nine previous books, including the bestselling Why People Believe Weird Things. He is a columnist for Scientific American, the publisher of Skeptic magazine, and the founder and director of the international Skeptics Society. He lives in Southern California.
Customer Reviews
The Bias of Freedomby klsmitley
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July 25, 2009: This book is biased, biased towards freedom. What the idealogue, whom wrote the previous review, fails to comprehend. Is the corruption of power inherent in any power structure, particulary that which exists in Government. Government by the people, for the people is a bi-product of societal evolution. However, we have allowed our present form of Governance to back-slide into a state of Oligarchy. The idea presented in this book is sound, rational, and based on the emergant science of Evolutionary Psychology. One should read the entire book, before rendering one's own biased assumption.
I Also Recommend: Freedom Evolves, The Brain That Changes Itself, How We Decide, The Moral Animal, The Economic Naturalist.
Why I Believed Wierd Thingsby dbray
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January 18, 2009: I had enjoyed Michael Shermer's columns in Scientific American for several years so I finally bought his latest book when it came out in paperback. I had not discerned his precise ideological stance from the columns, but two chapters into this, I finally got it. I am astounded that Michael Shermer edits a magazine called the Skeptic, because this book reveals he is not the least bit skeptical, he is a true believer. His jeremidad against The God of Government reveals him to be an ideologue and a shallow thinker. Governments, like markets, are an evolutionarily emergent phenomenon in the development of human civilization, not some irrational appendage that rationalism will do away with. I found this quote from page 20 of the paperback edition particularly amusing and instructive "And nearly everyone still holds to the folk belief that in order for our economy to be healthy, it must be heavily regulated from the top down". Folk belief? How about pressing empirical reality? How about the government having to essentially nationalize the commeanding heights of American finance because left to their own devices they led the global economy over a cliff? I am looking forward to Shermer's next column and then book "Why I Believed Wierd Things"
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