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  • Black and White Thinking

  • The Burden of a Binary Brain in a Complex World
  • By: Professor Kevin Dutton
  • Narrated by: Theo Solomon
  • Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (24 ratings)

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Black and White Thinking

By: Professor Kevin Dutton
Narrated by: Theo Solomon
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Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

It is human instinct to sort and categorise. We are hardwired to discriminate and frame everything in binary black and white. It's how our brains work. Migrant or refugee? Muslim or Christian? Them or us? Rather than reaching out to those who are different, we bond with those who are similar to ourselves. Rather than challenging our own thinking about the world, we endeavour only to confirm what we believe.

The result is that the difference between polarised beliefs becomes ever greater. Dangerous possibilities arise. The Alt Right. ISIS. Brexit. Trump. Through persistent binary thinking our capacity for rational and nuanced thought - seeing the grey, rather than merely black and white - begins to erode.

Black and White Thinking is an alarm call. Amidst a rising tide of religious intolerance and political extremism, it argues that by understanding the evolutionary programming of our binary brains we can overcome it, make sense of the world and in future make much subtler - and far better - decisions.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2020 Kevin Dutton (P)2020 Penguin Audio
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Critic reviews

"Essential insights into the character of human choice and decision-making. You'll not think about thinking the same way afterwards." (Robert Cialdini, author of Influence and Pre-suasion)

"Fascinating, important and entirely convincing." (Philip Pullman)

"Kevin Dutton is a Special Forces style psychologist. Daring. Original. All-action. No nonsense." (Sir Ranulph Fiennes)

What listeners say about Black and White Thinking

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Great book, but the narrator keeps randomly shouting

Really enjoyed this book. Narrator is a bit distracting though as every now and then he suddenly and inexplicably raises his voice to almost shouting. Apart from the random shouting it’s all good.

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Narrator made it less enjoyable.

Although there was enthusiasm from the narrator and energy, the narrator kept making mistakes and it was distracting hearing all the edits with a different tone and reverb recorded at different times. Also his accent seemed to constantly change slightly and he would randomly put stress on some words which again made it difficult to hear the actual book.

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Fascinating and illuminating

Respect ! - clearly top of his field plus utilises what he teaches to construct his messages in an engaging, memorable and funny manner.
The first book I've read that gives me a satisfactory explanation for the incendiary, the divisive, the polarised and sometimes maddening society we find ourselves in.
Even as a curious person, why not take the challenge of understanding black and white thinking to see what happens to your own thinking? I know now that there are others who won't even recognise they have to but if you're not like that, this could be really right for you!

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Another Fantastic Book from Dr Dutton

Definitely a black and white review but a thoroughly Insightful and interesting book. Learned a lot. 10/10

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