The Why You Do the Things You Do
Categories: Science , Staff Picks , Nonfiction
There have recently been so many fascinating books set at the intersection of psychology, neurology, sociology, and evolutionary biology to explain why people act the way they do. Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink was probably one of the first to hit the bestseller lists. The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why, Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others, and This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession are a few that I’ve blogged.
Add to those Tom Vanderbilt’s Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says about Us) and Daniel Gardner’s The Science of Fear: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn’t—And Put Ourselves in Greater Danger.
Technology writer Vanderbilt explains in the prologue to Traffic that one of his inspirations for writing his book was the firestorm of reaction he got when he posted to a question-and-answer website: is it better to be an early merger, getting over cooperatively as soon as the road signs tell you your lane is going to end ahead, or a late merger, making as long as possible a use of the emptier lane and tucking into traffic at the last second?
As you can imagine, opinion was divided and passionate. But which strategy actually improved traffic flow overall?
That’s just one of the fascinating questions Vanderbilt explores. The complex range of factors (from road engineering to cultural differences to physical/perceptual limits to gender differences to the evolutionary aspects of risk analysis) that comes into play in our driving decisions may make you wonder whether any of us should dare to venture out on the road at all. It all makes for utterly absorbing reading.
Risk analysis is the basis of Daniel Gardner’s The Science of Fear. He cites some of the same studies as Vanderbilt does in explaining why what we perceive as risky isn’t necessarily the greatest danger to us.
After 9/11, so many people avoided flying (which had a much higher perceived than actual risk) that increased road congestion led to almost 1,600 additional traffic fatalities in the following year. And that without so much as a blink from media, politicians, or the average person (much lower perceived than actual risk).
Why? Gardner explores a whole list of reasons why evolution hasn’t prepared us for understanding the dangers of modern life. Perfectly valid strategies for assessing, say, the odds that that rustle in the tall grass is a saber-toothed tiger, may be useless in determining the level of danger you face from internet pedophiles or razorblades in apples, or in deciding the level of preparedness you need against terrorists or tsunamis. Particularly in light of the way our news media and our political systems work
You may have to get in line to get either one of these intriguing titles, but they’re worth the wait. What else have you read in this line lately?
