Look Again

November 1, 2023
A lively look at how conscious change is the way to break out of stale thinking to recover joy and passion. There is a part of the human mind that seeks the comfort of habit. Establishing patterns is an essential aspect of living, but there is a dangerous downside, according to Sharot, a professor of neuroscience and author of The Optimism Bias and The Influential Mind, and Sunstein, one of the nation's top legal scholars. Habit can blunt our sense of enjoyment and awareness of problems, and predictability can turn into stagnation. You look around one day and realize that it has been years since you have thought a new thought, listened to any new music, or spoken to someone you don't know. The authors provide plenty of examples of this descent into inertia, as well as describing experiments and research that reveal the underlying factors. Habit can also allow for the acceptance of awful things because the steps to get to there are small and seemingly unimportant. Another interesting aspect is that people are more likely to believe a lie if it is repeated often, as the brain becomes habituated to it. The authors are equally interested in ways to break out of the psychological trap. One way is to take a vacation--not to somewhere like home but to a different environment, one with unfamiliar rules and methods of interaction. Travel is good but not always necessary; simply reading an unusual book, taking some risks, or meeting new people are worthwhile endeavors. Eventually, the mind becomes more open, flexible, and willing to ask questions. With intelligence and humor, Sharot and Sunstein provide guidance on how to refresh the spirit and see the world anew. If your world is starting to look gray and dull, this book might be your road map out of the comfort zone.

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Starred review from November 27, 2023
Even the most “exhilarating” stimuli—a favorite song, an exciting romance—lose their luster over time, acknowledge cognitive neuroscientist Sharot (The Optimism Bias) and behavioral economist Sunstein (The World According to Star Wars) in this eye-opening study of how that process may be reversed. According to the authors, the brain acclimates to negative and positive stimuli over time as it “prioritize what is new and different... filter out the old and expected.” However, some of that sensitivity can be restored by “temporarily changing your environment, changing the rules, changing the people with whom you interact, and taking real or imagined minibreaks from ordinary life.” Briefly leaving a quiet restaurant table with a beautiful view to visit a noisier area can enhance enjoyment of the meal, for example. It’s also possible to dishabituate to risk—in Sweden, switching the side of the road on which people drove temporarily decreased the rate of accidents (it returned to previous levels after about two years). Corralling a wealth of fascinating examples, including how vigilance against Covid-19 slackened the longer the pandemic wore on and the manner in which Germans acclimated to Nazism (“The collapse of freedom and rule of law occurred in increments, some of which seemed relatively insignificant”), Sharot and Sunstein provide a revelatory investigation of a phenomenon that’s as complex as it is common. This enthralls. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency.