The Influential Mind, What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others, by Tali Sharot, 2017

As a break from the recent relentless Pratchettery I have managed to finish this book of popular science written by Tali Sharot, a neuroscientist who also wrote ‘The Optimism Bias’. This is timely because the paperback version comes out on 2 August in the UK, and I suspect you will see piles of this book in your local bookstores.

The author is a serious scientist: she is a Ted talker, director of the Affective Brain Lab at University College London and a Wellcome Trust Fellow and has been published on various topics including the neuroscience of optimism, emotional memories and cognitive dissonance in journals such as Nature. In other words this is more than just one of those light hearted copy and paste books on science that tell you little more than you will find on Wikipedia – this is a review of the literature and science of influence, albeit presented in an accessible fashion. Why influence? Well it’s key to understanding why people behave the way they do, and surely this world needs a bit more understanding and empathy at the moment.

‘The Influential Mind will make you gasp with surprise – and laugh with recognition. Many of our most cherished beliefs about how to influence others turn out to be wrong; Sharot sets them right. Packed with practical insights, this profound book will change your life. An instant classic’ Cass R. Sunstein, bestselling co-author of Nudge

 

No it won’t, no they aren’t, and no it isn’t.

It is understandable that the publishers chose this review to illustrate this book’s entry on their website and adorn the hardback edition’s front page. This is a classic case of log-rolling – two minutes on Google told me that Sunstein has co-authored papers with Sharot – but it is also an extreme example of hyperbole. The only way this book would change your life is if you tripped over it at the top of a stairwell. I have no recollection whatsoever of gasping as I read it – maybe the occasional slow nod of recognition at a point well made – and there are few if any laughs in here either. This is a serious book, and it really does it no favours to pretend it is life-changing or ground breaking – it is no more nor less than a thoughtful review of the existing research into this subject, presented in an accessible fashion. Popular science in other words, perhaps not at its finest but no worse than the rest of what is becoming a crowded field.

The most striking example the author cites when discussing the importance of understanding how influence works relates to the vexed topic of hand washing in hospitals. A study of how frequently doctors and nurses in US hospitals wash their hands found shocking failure rates, leading directly to infections. Monitoring the staff remotely via video had no impact – as long as they knew they weren’t going to face any punishment they simply did not change their behaviour. What had a dramatic impact however was publishing hand washing rates in real time on a screen in the staff restroom. Rates shot up. Sharot speculates that this was because positive feedback on performance was perceived by staff as a non-pecuniary reward. In other words, rewarding people can influence their behaviour. Who knew? So far as I know there were no similar punishment trials where people had a % of their salary deducted each time they failed to wash their hands, but I guess it would have had the same results.

 

Elsewhere this book hits more topical and predictable targets. Trump and his power to persuade based on emotion rather than logic, the anti-vaccine movement and how to counter it (don’t try to address the lies in the anti-vaxx case, just emphasise the positives of vaccination i.e. the avoidance of death) and the times when the wisdom of crowds can be misleading. This is all packaged in an engaging and relatively short book which you will find interesting if you are looking for an introduction to this topic.

Periodic Tales – Hugh Aldersey-Williams

Subtitled “The Curious Lives of the Elements”

A curate’s egg, this one – and how have I written 108 previous blog entries without using that dead image before now? (I have a horrible feeling that a blog entry on the origins of the phrase – a Punch cartoon, of course – might make a more interesting article than a review of Aldersey-Williams’s long and thorough book.)

I am not sure where the starting point was for this book. Was it inspired by a genuine interest in the elements, and an urge to chronicle their discovery and role in society? This is what the author claims, but the less generous reviewer in me suspects the real inspiration was those “popular science” books that proliferate, especially around Christmas – “Do Penguins Water-ski?” and “Can Elephants Sneeze?” – you know the type, scientific investigation dressed as popular entertainment, all short chapters, illustrations, and amusing anecdotes.

We see some of that here, but this is at heart an intensely serious book. Not only is the author interested in the origins of the discovery of the elements, which to be fair are not new stories, but also the sociological place of the metals, gases, etc in our society and culture. He draws from a wide range of sources, sometimes extremely so – for example the exploration of various references to sodium street lamps in popular culture goes on for far too long, where the point is slim, unoriginal, and probably deserves only a few lines.

As well as being self-indulgent – the author travels internationally and extensively in his investigations, and follows threads and ideas without much if any justification – my main reservation about this novel is the apparent absence of an editor. A decent editor would have cut the length by at least a third, and imposed some sort of structure on the book – any would have been better than what we have, with seemed to be a random wander through the periodic table, flitting mid paragraph from one element to another without any clue as to where he was going. I found this deeply frustrating, reducing the book to a collection of moderately interesting anecdotes. I know more than I did when I started about the elements, their characteristics, discovery, place in history, etc, but I am convinced a far shorter book with some meaningful pictures and charts would have done the job in far quicker time.