A fine book by an excellent writer, although I would've titled it "Instinctual" , as it's main premise is the dominance of the unconscious mind over the conscious one - of instinct over intellect. He makes a compelling case, but artfully dodges the obvious (to me, anyway) implications: the demise of morality and free will. Not sure I believe a lot of this, but well reasoned and well written - it makes you think, which is exactly the purpose of a book. ( )

An absolutely fascinating read ! I've often heard that we only use 10 % of our brains and that statement has always bothered me Well, as the author of this book demonstrates,time and time again,our subconscious mind is constantly at work. It drives us and influences in so many surprising and usual ways, that that statement is something that's no longer going to trouble me. A very encouraging read. Beacuse after all, the mind is a terrible thing to waste. ( )

Fascinating and well researched book about how our mind processes things we aren't even aware of. A little bit of body language, horses that can count, and optical illusions add to the fun and wonder that is the human brain. ( )

not as readable as malcolm gladwell, but a lot of the same studies are in here. Recommended for those who enjoy interesting psych studies. ( )

A really enjoyable book, basically an exploration of system 1 processes with a heavier emphasis on neuroscience and decision-making experiments. I liked this book better than Drunkard's Walk, and I learned interesting material that isn't just a rehash of the trifecta of Misbehaving, Thinking Fast and Slow, and Predictably Irrational. I'm really impressed by the breadth of experiments that Mlodinow covers, from early forays into barely perceptible weights to the latest work on branding and fMRI (the famous "solution" to the pepsi puzzle). I appreciate that his chapters have their own themes and he uses many experiments to show the different facets of the theme rather than the other way around.

Generally the book is a good blend of history (of the study of the unconscious), short but revealing descriptions about experiments, historical examples (one that remains salient in my mind is Thatcher's conscious deepening of her voice to project authority), and personal examples that are both touching and memorable (one in which he recounts how his father's eye contact with a holocaust death camp guard saved his life, and one where his father optimistically teaches his mother sewing so she could work a job his father snoozed her into). The earlier material is the most interesting and fresh to me. In particular, I was blown away by the experiments demonstrating blindsight, and how our brains fill in gaps in sound, sight and memory (suggestions can create memories for example) automatically with guesses that do not feel like guesses to our conscious mind. I was really interested in particular about unconscious body language that we demonstrate (the ratio of eye contact while talking to eye contact while listening strongly correlates positively to higher positions of the speaker in the social hierarchy) and the ability for our minds to read that language also unconsciously (perhaps a vindication of "gut" feelings). A fascinating fact I learned from the social chapters (my personal favorite) were that lonely people die younger (very applicable), in times of distress we tend to seek company, the neo-cortex to brain ratio correlates to size of social groups (for humans roughly 150) for different species, and social rejection activates the same part of the brain that experiences physical pain. The later chapters had material that I was more aware of, so I found it generally less interesting. This included the implicit bias test, misattribution of our emotions, confirmation bias, and in/out group dynamics. However, there were some really fascinating in/out group experiments showing that it was really easy to create in/out groups but also easy to ease the line when people are forced to work together. One experiment that blew me away experimentally demonstrated that when given the chance, people choose to maximize the difference between in and out group payoffs, even at the expense of giving an in group member more payoff.

Mlodinow demonstrates how many "classical" conceptions of the human mind are wrong. That we do not recall memories from a record, but actively reconstruct memories based off of a general gist. That we are not scientists allowing evidence to accumulate to form a conclusion but lawyers who find a conclusion first and then bend evidence to fit our stories. Or that discrimination is always a conscious choice rather than an automatic categorization mechanism of the mind. More broadly, that our decisions and judgments are affected by all types of seemingly unrelated phenomena (more likely generally to get a date if touching the other person, deeper voices in males are more attractive to women). While this has many costs, Mlodinov argues that many of these make sense evolutionarily. While we are taking many signals through our senses, our conscious mind cannot process all of them. Other characteristics of the mind have a more direct impact on our early survival such as the ability to categorize, form social groups, read body language and confidence bias (encouraging people to strive and reach for the unlikely). While I am personally pursued by this line of thought. I have two general critiques of this kind of argument. One is possibility that the classical view is a contrived construction to act as a foil. This is a classic argumentative technique that might not be based on fact. The second critique is that evolutionary psychology, while convincing narratives are essentially unfalsifiable, since the story can always be changed to explain why x characteristic contributed to the survival of the species. Regardless, a fun and enjoyable book that is broad and communicates its ideas in a clear and entertaining way. ( )

Good coverage of the topic for the layman. It is written with interesting stories that make it readable. I found the last 2 chapters less readable than the rest due to the number of studies presented which seemed hard for me to follow. It began to seem repetitive to me. It's possible that my problem was the nature of the topics which were feelings and self. Those topics might have been a bit less tangible for me.

All in all it was a very good read for this type of book and had a lot of information and examples that were helpful. I'm glad I read it. ( )

So fascinating. Though I am writing this review about oh, four months after I have read it so I have forgotten all the specific things, I think. But I still remember that my brain is an illogical , delusional thing. ( )

Written in a pleasing conversational style, Leaonard Mlodinow’s Subliminal is not a book of lectures or a science text, but it is an intriguing and enticing introduction to the advantages and disadvantages of our human makeup, conscious and subconscious selves alike. The author presents enough historical information to orient the reader between Freud and the present day, often surprising with his description of how much has changed in the last fifty years. Where once we imagined ourselves in control of our thoughts and decisions (especially voting preferences, though Freud allowed us little control at all), now we’re presented with experiments which show that control manipulated in the simplest (scariest) ways. Which, of course, could leave readers imagining a hopeless world where only those with power and money to manipulate can succeed. But there’s more to it than that, and our weaknesses can also be our strengths.

As an aspiring (dreaming) author, I found the section on how we delude ourselves, overvaluing our own skills and undervaluing others’, quite depressing. But it’s followed at once with the story of persistence rewarded—our very self-delusion keeps us going. So I’ll persist, but perhaps with a bit more knowledge than before. Even if my cynical conscious self denied the value of some of the experiments , I still really enjoyed the book and couldn’t stop talking about it. However, please don’t force me to choose which jam I prefer, because I can promise I’ll change my mind in an eyeblink.

Disclosure: I didn’t see the subliminal messages on the cover. If I had, I probably wouldn’t have bought it. But it was next to a book on a similar topic on the bookshelf, so I bought them both. ( )

The book started a little slow for me. But I found when I thought about it, this would be a nice book to pull off your shelf when you are thinking about how our perceptions can be deceptive. He writes well and in a thought provoking manner = enough to make you think but not always convincing. ( )

The central point of this book is that many, if not most, of the choices we make result from other than a conscious decision making process, and it summarizes some of the research done in the past few decades that demonstrates this. Some of this unconscious process is due to instinct or physical limitations in our brains, and some is due to subconsciously internalized ways of thinking that we absorb from our culture. The book is interesting but could have done more to distinguish between these. ( )

I generally like Mlodinow's work and this one is pretty good but he uses a few too many flippant cute little phrases for my taste in this one. I guess that is what it takes to get a science book published for a popular audience these days. Other than that, there was a lot of interesting stuff about how and why people act, decide and respond to things the way they do. ( )

I discontinued my audio in lieu of purchasing the hardcover.
It needs more explicit attention

Six-word review: Something about how our minds work.

Extended review:

While I'm reading one of Leonard Mlodinow's books, I always enjoy a pleasant, even exhilarating, sense of understanding the workings of some very complex process.

Afterward I can't remember the explanations or even necessarily what it was that was being explained. But I invariably come away full of the conviction that there are sound, rational answers to the questions raised and that the author knows what they are. If this sounds a little too much like taking things on blind faith, I try not to let myself be too disturbed by that. After all, I did follow the reasoning at the time, and I am no physicist or mathematician or psychologist.

So: I liked this book, much as I enjoy most books I read that explain something I didn't already know about the workings of the mind, and it has probably added something to my understanding; but apparently it has done nothing to increase my retention of a certain kind of content. ( )

I really enjoyed this book! I think the author's thoughts on the subconscious are even more important than the cosmological books he co-authored with Stephen Hawking. Mlodinow did a very good job of organizing the subject matter in easily consumable bits and then revisiting those bits, as necessary. The end result was a very cogent and entertaining insight to our unconscious thoughts and their impact on our conscious lives. ( )

Good for a science book - will make you think about your subconscious and perceptions differently. It was s nice break from all of the novels I typically read in a year. ( )

This book is a good popular science introduction to social neuroscience. Mlodinow is skilled at moving between scientific descriptions, discussions of studies, and personal anecdotes, which means the book is both informative and entertaining. But if you've read other books even remotely on this topic, you may not find all that much that's new in this one. I was surprised to realize that I was already familiar with many of the studies that he talks about, and I don't think of myself as being all that knowledgeable in this field. I thought the first part of the book ("The Two-Tiered Brain") held together better than the second half ("The Social Unconscious"), which had something of an episodic feel to it: here's a chapter on X, here's a chapter on Y... But really, I'm getting picky about these things: generally, I enjoyed reading it and recommend it to others who are interested in this sort of thing. And extra points for the clever cover design which uses "subliminal" writing to urge you to buy the book. ( )

When I first saw this book, I knew I had to read it. Not only is it written by an author I've already had a positive experience with (The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives), but the book had one of the funniest cover designs I've seen all year. In black text on a green background, it says, "Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior." In the spaces in between, in green only slightly lighter than the background, it says, "Psst: Hey There, Yes: You, Sexy. Buy This Book Now. You Know You Want It." I laughed when I saw it and obeyed--well, not to the point of buying it, but I did pick it up.

I dove in eagerly, only to be brought to an abrupt and unpleasant halt in the first chapter. There's nothing that irritates me more than bad science, and the misapplication of statistics is on my permanent hit list. One of Mlodinow's examples of the importance of the subconscious is (according to him) that we are more attracted to people who share our last name. As "evidence", he provides a chart of raw counts of husband-wife surnames over three states which indicates that a Jones is more likely to marry a Jones even though Smiths are more common. My problem? Well, this is a perfect example of Bad Statistics: he grabs a convenient weak correlation over a ridiculously tiny sample, ignores all potential confounding variables (e.g. names aren't uniformly distributed: even though the overall population of Jones are smaller, a Jones may be more likely to meet another Jones than a Smith; last names indicate ethnicity and nationality and we know people have strong homophilous preferences that have nothing to do with melodious surnames, etc, etc.), and then extrapolates an outrageously broad and demonstrably inaccurate causal conclusion (this data indicates that we are subconsciously attracted to people who share our names). I put the book down in disgust.

And so the story ends, until one day, I ran across a version of the book on audio, read by none other than Mlodinow himself. I decided to give the book one more chance. I'm glad I did.

Subliminal isn't deep or world-changing, but it is an interesting and engaging exploration of some of the most eye-catching experiments in social psychology. If you've read a lot of books in this genre, then you're probably familiar with at least 3/4 of the experiments Mlodinow discusses, but his entertaining writing makes up for familiarity. Mlodinow has discovered how to make his writing personal: he throws in self-deprecating stories, from the time his mother immediately jumped from a night her son forgot to call to the conviction that he was dead and his roommate had hidden the body, to stories of his own childhood attempts to understand the science of dating, to stories of himself being a dad.

Mlondinow also does a great job in choosing a variety of the "sexiest" psychological experiments, from Cliff Nass's research on personification of computers and construction of group identities out of nothing at all to Bertrand and Mullainathan's racial discrimination field experiment. (They sent out identical resumes to companies, changing only the names of the applicants to traditionally white or traditionally African-American names.) Mlodinow's focus was on showing two things: first, that the "new science" of technologies such as the fMRI has allowed us to truly create a science of the subconscious (an assertion that has come under fire recently, by the way), and second, how our own subconscious biases shape our behaviour in ways that we are completely oblivious to. He discusses how and why we stereotype, how we arrive at snap decisions, how our own senses and preconceptions shape our beliefs, how we judge first and rationalize later, and how we systematically overestimate our abilities and misinterpret our own behaviour. I wasn't fond of all of the studies he used--he goes into a digression into some of the (in my opinion) rather dubious and oversensational work into understanding human sexuality--but he certainly has compiled an entertaining list of the landmark experiments of modern psychology. Overall, it's an enjoyable read and a survey of some of the standout experiments in social psychology and neuroscience--a great place to go for an introduction to a fascinating new field. ( )

Human interaction and the brain. How new imaging techniques are expanding our understanding of the brain. A traditional view of the mind as an outgrowth of brain. A few problems with the book's approach to neuroscience and its examination of self-awareness. My complete review of SUBLIMINAL is at my book review website: http://www.tgblogger.com/?p=1573. ( )

I love listening to this stuff in audiobook format, then find them really frustrating to review - I have a great time listening but then I sit down to summarize and realize that I'm missing all the specifics I'd like to have in front of me when formulating my opinion.

SUBLIMINAL is a book about automatic behaviors. Things we do without thinking, because they're dictated by our unconscious mind. The example that really hooked me into buying this book reported that couples who met for the first time on a bridge over a deep ravine, where they were frightened by the drop below, reported feeling higher levels of attraction for one another than couples who met in pleasant locations that didn't get the adrenalin pumping. So we might think we like someone, but maybe it's just our autonomic nervous system fooling us. And we can't tell the difference.

Mlodinow covers a ton of really cool examples. Another favorite of mine involved photocopiers, but he also talks about how the font on menus affects the way we taste food, or whether or not we think recipes are too complicated to cook. Our self-image, racial prejudice, eyewitness accounts of crimes...by the end, it's clear that our unconscious mind interferes with just about everything.

SUBLIMINAL is definitely science-lite, but it's not one of those big-idea, Gladwell-style books. Instead of trying to blow our minds with his theory of everything, he sticks to his topic and aims to be thorough. Yes, humans can be rational actors - but we aren't always, and there's proof. Yes, there are batteries of studies that show how our unconscious mind can overpower conscious reasoning, while we remain totally unaware and, in fact, quite confident that we're thinking our way through to a decision rather than behaving instinctively. Yes, this kind of adaptation is generally useful.

I find this kind of stuff fascinating and I had a great time listening to the book. Its primary quirk is that Mlodinow peppers his text with dad jokes. If you don't know what a dad joke is...I can only assume you are a dad who makes dad jokes on a regular basis. It's cute and dorky and took a little while to get used to, but lends the book a sort of sweet earnestness that, again, sets it apart from slick Gladwell-style "big idea" tomes.

( )

Eh. A good overview, especially for the person new to the subject, but I personally was underwhelmed. Don't let it put you off, though. It is a very good introduction to a tricky and mysterious subject. ( )

Mlodinow has a knack for delving into specific fields of science that do not receive a lot of attention and popularizing them. He did this with randomness in The Drunkard’s Walk, and now he’s back with Social Neuroscience in Subliminal.

The strength of Mlodinow’s writing lies in the way he’s able to make scientific studies accessible. There are experiments galore recounted in his latest book. Here are a few of the ideas that expanded my mind:

- In the Southeastern United States, people with the most common surnames tend to marry people with the same surname (“Smiths marry other Smiths about as often as they marry people with all those other names [Johnson, Williams, Jones, Brown], combined”) (19).

- Shares on the New York Stock Exchange with easily pronounceable names are funded better (27).

- 1 in 5 average students whose teachers were informed that they were gifted gained 30 or more IQ points eight months later (114).

In addition to the fascinating experiments, Mlodinow uses compelling stories from his own history, laced with his witty sense of humour.

Unlike The Drunkard’s Walk, however, the structure of this book let me down. Despite the two-part organization in the Contents (“The Two-Tiered Brain” and “The Social Unconscious”), this book didn’t develop along any logical lines I was able to follow. While almost every chapter was interesting, they didn’t flow together or develop any overarching thesis.

In the end, Subliminal is a good popular introduction to the topics studied in the quickly developing field of Social Neuroscience. ( )

One of the best science books I've read. Mlodinow gives an outstanding recap of neuroscience and how we've come to know what we know about the unconscious mind. The author has an engaging writing style that makes something that could be dry very exciting. The book is full of experiments for readers to do that illustrate the topics being discussed. Mlodinow is a gifted writer who can bridge academia and the general public very successfully. ( )

How often does one read the blurb on a book and find the promise of an insight into modern thinking upon a subject, only to discover that one is hopelessly patronised by an author who feels that he is more intelligent than his reader and, issues a string of bamboozling statements with the unwritten challenge that, were the reader to doubt the veracity of a single word, they would simply be proving that gulf in intellect? A book upon current understanding of the mind is, of course, a prime candidate for such an approach.

It is with a certain amount of surprise, and considerable pleasure, that I can report that Mr Mlodinow spurns this opportunity and genuinely informs, in a manner that is readily comprehensible to the average reader. This is one of those works where, amongst the new information, is seeded a myriad of examples whereby one recognises an attribute that may be a little less noble than one would care to admit. At least now understands why one exercises such bias, and that it is not exclusive to oneself.

The book is written in a friendly way, with a scattering of jokes and humorous stories; but one is never allowed to forget that it is backed up by serious, scientific investigation. Suddenly, ridiculous ideas, such as 90%+ of our brain not being used, are blown out of the water. Mr Mlodinow shows that we operate on both a conscious and a sub-conscious level. The subliminal brain activity filters what is passed to the conscious brain. This is a rational state of affairs because, were we to link our senses directly to the conscious brain, it would be hit with information overload. The sub-conscious filters and informs us of the likely state of play. Were we to not use such a system, man would probably have been wiped out by the first unfriendly creature to cross his path. He would have still been debating, internally, as to the best option; fight or flight. when the animal's teeth took their first delicious mouthful of man-steak!

This is a book for the curious who genuinely wants to understand human thought. It is a joy to read and leaves one feeling wiser for the experience: of how many modern tomes can one say that? ( )