Weekly Book Reviews - Language

This week I thought I'd try to give some books about language from a couple of different perpectives

This is a great introduction to psycholinguistics. Pinker does a great job explaining how individuals learn language and how our brains are hardwired to do this. It is a fairly easy read of a potentially complex topic and you will definitely feel smarter after completing this. From an academic standpoint, Pinker can sometimes be controversial (and he doesn't always agree with others on such topics as neuroplasticity or linguistic categorization - but these differences tend to lie in the persnickety erudite academic details) but his snarkiness makes him a great writer to read as he can turn a quick phrase and draw you into the text.






I'm a HUGE fan of Bill Bryson. And if you have time and like travel writing, I can't recommend enough, A Walk in The Woods. In that book Bryson hikes the Applachian Trail and is completely inept doing so. In Made in America, he examines the wonderful language of "American" and how it is beautifully different than "English". This is done mostly through rambling around and giving us different etymologies of  objects in America (including some interesting stuff on brand names - and how you can often tell when a product was developed by its name). It also goes into place names, regional dialects and sayings, as well as discussing the origin of many common words and sayings. It's a classic source of useless arcana.

Weekly Book Reviews - Everything you need to know about children to ruin their lives

Leaning how kids learn is important for two reasons. The first is direct and obvious; if you know how they mentally develop, you should be able to help guide them through their mental growth. You may not make them that much smarter, but you can easily prevent them from staying dumb or getting dumber. The second is a selfish reason; if you know how kid's mentally develop, you can better understand why you do all those dumb things that you do. You might just be able to prevent yourself from continuing to make those dumb mistakes (and getting dumber).

This is my all-time favorite book about child-rearing and developmental psychology. I will warn you; it is a completely difficult read. It is written by a neuroscientist, and she doesn't water things down that much or pull her punches. I still don't think I completely understand the beginning. It starts with conception (actually I think it starts even before conception) and explains all the hormonal reactions that take place in a women's body. These, it ends up, are important, because they can affect early fetal development. It then walks you through what develops throughout gestation - and I was never good at biology, so I got a little lost. I then goes on to talk about all aspects of the brain and mind development for the first five years of life (including developing motor skills, language, sensory perceptions, etc). Not only is it good to know this stuff - but knowing it allows you to better understand all the other stuff you read about development. And it will help you to understand what advice/information is truly important from a developmental standpoint and what is likely to be more trivial. This book is worth the effort.


OK, this book is an easier introduction about the mind. Like the first book, it is written by scientists; so you know they aren't just making stuff up. This one is written by developmental psychologists and is a much easier read. In fact, even thought this book takes place slightly later in the chronological development of a child (it really isn't as concerned about pre-birth) this book might help ease you into the topic and provide some frameworks for the book above. The authors do a great job really explaining not only what and when and why a child learns stuff, but also how scientists figured these things out. Usually, a clever experiment has to be designed to test for all this stuff since if you ask an infant a question, they don't tend to provide a comprehensible answer (and their tiny fingers aren't that good at holding the pencils required to fill out surveys).




By this point, you're probably worried that there is so much to know and so much you should be doing that you are guaranteed to f**k up the life of any small child you come in contact with. That is where this book steps in. This book makes you feel better by realizing that children are hardwired to learn (and we are hardwired to teach them) and the best thing we can do is just get out of our own way and play with them. And it uses science to back this up. And it gives you reasons why you should hate Baby Einstein and all those early educational toys. It's a win-win.

Weekly Book Reviews - Persuasion through two sets of 6 simple rules

This is a must read book for anyone going into sales (and pretty much anyone who has to sit on either side of a negotiation.) Cialdini presents a nice framework of 6 simple principles that act as "weapons of influence": reciprocation, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity. More importantly, he provides great examples of how these are used and how they can be leveraged in numerous domains. You will be kicking yourself as you see how easily you've been prodded into choices in the past (and hopefully, will learn some tricks on how to get your way more often).  I will warn you: after you read this book, you are going to be highly suspicious of people's actions and their underlying motives!




Of course, a big part of persuasion is communication. And there is no point in communicating ideas if they are going to be immediately forgotten. You've already had to give a lot of presentations (PowerPoint and other) so far in your life. And no matter what you do, you're going to give some more. You might as well make them interesting, memorable, and thus, more persuasive. The Heath brothers give 6 simple principles to make ideas "sticky": Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and Stories. Following their own advice (and my spelling prowess), they even give us an acronym to remember it by, SUCCESs. These two books do a great job taking what we know of social and cognitive psychology and providing direct, easily applicable advice to address a wide range of marketing scenarios.

Weekly Book Reviews - Behavioral Economics

So I've decided to start a bunch of weekly book reviews. They'll all be tagged so you can access them in the future when you are out of classes and are wondering what to read in all that free time. To lead it off, I thought I would riff a little on the Paradox of Choice. The Paradox of Choice basically covers the area where psychology intersects with economics: decision theory. This is an extremely hot area right now, filled with books such as Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational, and its sequel, The Upside of Irrationality. We also have such clever new one word titles (trying to take advantage of the Malcolm Gladwell effect) as Sway and Nudge. I thought I would approach this from the economic side this week and give you three of the older titles that I think are pretty interesting and still hold up rather well (OK to be honest, one of these titles is really, really, new). Don't worry - I have way more than enough of recommendations that have a more psychological bent coming in the future.

The Art of Choosing - Sheena Iyengar
OK, so this was written in the past year. But it does have the distinction of being written by the person who actually conducted the jam study! I actually think this book is an uneven read. The beginning is a fascinating personal history about Dr. Iyengar's life (she lost her vision during childhood) and this is followed by a great analysis of macro cultural differences in choice behavior. Then there are some uneven chapters, but the chapter on the jam study is well written and a great read. The beginning and the end definitely justify this book!








The Winner's Curse - Richard Thaler
This is a classic: one of the early popular attacks on rational economic choice theory by one of the heavyweights in the field. Thaler is the rare behavioral economist at the University of Chicago (the school famed for it's rational, free-market economists). This book is a collection of short essays that describes a bunch of times when people don't act "rationally" and explains what is really going on in these situations (or what the consequences are for their "irrational" actions). It's from a series of articles he wrote for the Journal of Economic Perspectives, but they have been slightly reworked to make them easier for the reader. There are some interesting points in here - like why auction winners almost always overpay for an item, why you shouldn't bet longshots at the racetrack at the end of the day (and why you should be the exacta), and, of course, a couple on how the stock market isn't always that efficient (and common errors investors make). I won't kid you, this can be a dense read at times, but it is rewarding. And it is a book that anyone who has an interest in finance (as well as marketing) should read!

Against the Gods - Peter L. Bernstein
This is the history of humans mathematical understanding of risk. It's an intimidating subject. And it's a long book. But it is a cracking good read (this probably oversells it, but I really recall enjoying this). It's a history book and a lesson on probability rolled up into one; what could be more desirable than that? I'd say that if you read this and A Random Walk Down Wall Street you'd be all set to hold your own in most financial conversations (and be much better off when managing your personal investments). You'll probably have much more interesting financial cocktail conversational nuggets than any of those finance gurus as well!