<div> <b>The author of the bestselling You Are Not So Smart gives readers a fighting chance at outsmarting their not-so-smart brains. </b><br> <br> A mix of popular psychology and trivia, <i>You Are Now Less Dumb</i> is grounded in the idea that we all believe ourselves to be objective observers of reality--except we’re not. But that’s okay, because our delusions keep us sane.<br> <br> Expanding on this premise, McRaney provides eye-opening analyses of seventeen ways we fool ourselves every day, including:<br> <ul> <li> Enclothed Cognition (the clothes you wear change your behavior and influence your mental abilities)</li> <li> The Benjamin Franklin Effect (how you grow to like people for whom you do nice things and hate the people you harm).</li> <li> Deindividuation (Despite our best intentions, we practically disappear when subsumed by a mob mentality)</li> <li> The Misattribution of Arousal (Environmental factors have a greater effect on our emotional arousal than the person right in front of us)</li> <li> Sunk Cost Fallacy (We will engage in something we don’t enjoy just to make the time or money already invested ?worth it”)</li> </ul> McRaney also reveals the true price of happiness, and how to avoid falling for our own lies. </div><br>