MNA Online Book Club — Misbelief by Dan Ariely

Join us online Sunday July 13th at 2 p.m. to discuss Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things by Dan Ariely.

Please note! We will meet at 2 p.m. this month. This time seems to work best for the majority of the group, so we will go back to meeting at 2:00.

In Misbelief, preeminent social scientist Dan Ariely argues that to understand the irrational appeal of misinformation, we must first understand the behavior of “misbelief”—the psychological and social journey that leads people to mistrust accepted truths, entertain alternative facts, and even embrace full-blown conspiracy theories. Misinformation, it turns out, appeals to something innate in all of us—on the right and the left—and it is only by understanding this psychology that we can blunt its effects. Grounded in years of study as well as Ariely’s own experience as a target of disinformation, Misbelief is an eye-opening and comprehensive analysis of the psychological drivers that cause otherwise rational people to adopt deeply irrational beliefs. Utilizing the latest research, Ariely reveals the key elements—emotional, cognitive, personality, and social—that drive people down the funnel of false information and mistrust, showing how under the right circumstances, anyone can become a misbeliever.

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Tentative future books are:
1984 by George Orwell
Farhenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physicists Astray by Sabine Hossenfelder
The Wisdom of Plagues by Donald McNeil

If you are interested in any of these titles, or have other book suggestions, please message me or leave a comment below.