Author | Margaret Heffernan |
---|---|
Language | English |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
Publication date | March 2011 |
Pages | 304 |
ISBN | 9780802777959 |
Wilful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril is a non-fiction book by businesswoman and writer Margaret Heffernan. [1] [2] The book was first published in 2011 by Walker & Company. [3]
Wilful Blindness delves into the psychology behind why individuals and institutions often choose to ignore or overlook evident, harmful information or truths, even when acknowledging them would lead to better outcomes. Heffernan utilizes real-world examples such as the Enron scandal and the Catholic Church sexual abuse cases. [4]
The book covers a range of fields including psychology, history, neuroscience, and social behavior to explain how institutional and individual failure often results from willful blindness. Heffernan discusses various factors that contribute to this phenomenon, such as cognitive dissonance, obedience to authority, and love and fear. [5]
The book was a finalist for the Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year in 2011. [6]
Brainwashing, also known as mind control, menticide, coercive persuasion, thought control, thought reform, and forced re-education, is the concept that the human mind can be altered or controlled by certain psychological techniques. Brainwashing is said to reduce its subject's ability to think critically or independently, to allow the introduction of new, unwanted thoughts and ideas into their minds, as well as to change their attitudes, values, and beliefs.
Margaret Thaler Singer was an American clinical psychologist and researcher with her colleague Lyman Wynne on family communication. She was a prominent figure in the study of undue influence in social and religious contexts, and a proponent of the brainwashing theory of new religious movements.
A chief executive officer (CEO) is the highest officer charged with the management of an organization – especially a company or nonprofit institution.
A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how individuals relate to each other and to their environments.
The Financial Times (FT) is a British daily business newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nikkei, with core editorial offices across Britain, the United States and continental Europe. In July 2015, Pearson sold the publication to Nikkei for £844 million after owning it since 1957. In 2019, it reported one million paying subscriptions, three-quarters of which were digital subscriptions. In 2023, it was reported to have 1.3 million subscribers of which 1.2 million were digital. The newspaper has a prominent focus on financial journalism and economic analysis rather than generalist reporting, drawing both criticism and acclaim. It sponsors an annual book award and publishes a "Person of the Year" feature.
Self-help or self-improvement is a self-directed improvement of oneself—economically, physically, intellectually, or emotionally—often with a substantial psychological basis.
Daniel Goleman is an American psychologist, author, and science journalist. For twelve years, he wrote for The New York Times, reporting on the brain and behavioral sciences. His 1995 book Emotional Intelligence was on The New York Times Best Seller list for a year and a half, a bestseller in many countries, and is in print worldwide in 40 languages. Apart from his books on emotional intelligence, Goleman has written books on topics including self-deception, creativity, transparency, meditation, social and emotional learning, ecoliteracy and the ecological crisis, and the Dalai Lama's vision for the future.
APA style is a writing style and format for academic documents such as scholarly journal articles and books. It is commonly used for citing sources within the field of behavioral and social sciences, including sociology, education, nursing, criminal justice, and anthropology, as well as psychology. It is described in the style guide of the American Psychological Association (APA), which is titled the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. The guidelines were developed to aid reading comprehension in the social and behavioral sciences, for clarity of communication, and for "word choice that best reduces bias in language". APA style is widely used, either entirely or with modifications, by hundreds of other scientific journals, in many textbooks, and in academia. The current edition is its seventh revision.
Margaret Floy Washburn, was a leading American psychologist in the early 20th century, was best known for her experimental work in animal behavior and motor theory development. She was the first woman to be granted a PhD in psychology (1894); the second woman, after Mary Whiton Calkins, to serve as president of the American Psychological Association (1921); and the first woman elected to the Society of Experimental Psychologists. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Washburn as the 88th most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with John Garcia, James J. Gibson, David Rumelhart, Louis Leon Thurstone, and Robert S. Woodworth.
Elliot Aronson is an American psychologist who has carried out experiments on the theory of cognitive dissonance and invented the Jigsaw Classroom, a cooperative teaching technique that facilitates learning while reducing interethnic hostility and prejudice. In his 1972 social psychology textbook, The Social Animal, he stated Aronson's First Law: "People who do crazy things are not necessarily crazy", thus asserting the importance of situational factors in bizarre behavior. He is the only person in the 120-year history of the American Psychological Association to have won all three of its major awards: for writing, for teaching, and for research. In 2007, he received the William James Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Association for Psychological Science, in which he was cited as the scientist who "fundamentally changed the way we look at everyday life". A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Aronson as the 78th most cited psychologist of the 20th century. He officially retired in 1994 but continues to teach and write.
Dating is a stage of romantic relationships in which two individuals engage in an activity together, most often with the intention of evaluating each other's suitability as a partner in a future intimate relationship. It falls into the category of courtship, consisting of social events carried out by the couple either alone or with others.
Feminist psychology is a form of psychology centered on social structures and gender. Feminist psychology critiques historical psychological research as done from a male perspective with the view that males are the norm. Feminist psychology is oriented on the values and principles of feminism.
Sheena S. Iyengar is the S.T. Lee Professor of Business in the Management Department at Columbia Business School, widely and best known as an expert on choice. Her research focuses on the many facets of decision making, including: why people want choice, what affects how and what we choose, and how we can improve our decision making. She has presented TED talks on choice and is the author of The Art of Choosing (2010).
Margaret Heffernan is an entrepreneur, CEO, writer and keynote speaker. She is currently a professor of Practice at the University of Bath School of Management in the UK.
Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award is an annual award given to the best business book of the year as determined by the Financial Times. It aims to find the book that has "the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues". The award was established in 2005 and is worth £30,000. Beginning in 2010, five short-listed authors each receive £10,000, previously it was £5,000.
The history of evolutionary psychology began with Charles Darwin, who said that humans have social instincts that evolved by natural selection. Darwin's work inspired later psychologists such as William James and Sigmund Freud but for most of the 20th century psychologists focused more on behaviorism and proximate explanations for human behavior. E. O. Wilson's landmark 1975 book, Sociobiology, synthesized recent theoretical advances in evolutionary theory to explain social behavior in animals, including humans. Jerome Barkow, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby popularized the term "evolutionary psychology" in their 1992 book The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and The Generation of Culture. Like sociobiology before it, evolutionary psychology has been embroiled in controversy, but evolutionary psychologists see their field as gaining increased acceptance overall.
The Super-chicken model refers to a manner of team recruitment that favors bringing together highly driven overachievers. It is argued that this can be counterproductive because of the negative effects of hyper-competitiveness on a group's dynamic, and that recruitment that emphasizes collaboration over individual excellence can result in greater productivity. The name makes analogy to the interactions among chickens observed in a study by Purdue University evolutionary biologist William Muir.
A tone argument is a type of ad hominem aimed at the tone of an argument instead of its factual or logical content in order to dismiss a person's argument. Ignoring the truth or falsity of a statement, a tone argument instead focuses on the emotion with which it is expressed. This is a logical fallacy because a person can be angry while still being rational. Nonetheless, a tone argument may be useful when responding to a statement that itself does not have rational content, such as an appeal to emotion.
Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can Do About It is a non-fiction book by Chris Clearfield and András Tilcsik, published in March 2018 by Penguin Press. It explores how complexity causes problems in modern systems and how individuals, organizations, and societies can prevent or mitigate the resulting failures. Meltdown was named a best book of the year by the Financial Times and won Canada's National Business Book Award in 2019.
The Art of Choosing: The Decisions We Make Everyday – What They Say About Us and How We Can Improve Them is a non-fiction book written by Sheena Iyengar, a professor at Columbia Business School known for her research in the field of choice. The book was first published by the imprint Twelve Books of Hachette Book Group in March 2010.