How the Mind's Bureaucracy Works
September/October 2002 -- Intuition: Its Powers and Perils . By David G. Myers. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002. 322 pp. $24.95.) If you wanted to fathom the workings of a complex corporation, with many units, goals, and operations, you would not limit your investigation to its CEO. Although his decisions might be most visible, you would realize that thousands of other employees supported him and gave his decisions effect (and perhaps had their own agendas, as well). This is one of the metaphors that cognitive psychologist David G. Myers uses in describing the relationship between our conscious mind and our automatic mental processes, which he calls intuition. Intuition: Its Powers and Perils probably could not have been written even a decade ago. Its depth comes from relatively recent discoveries in brain science and hundreds of experiments over the last two decades in cognitive psychology--the study of how we think. Myers can refer to brain science to mount a cogent case that certain mental processes are genuinely automatic and nonconscious; and, when he talks about the astonishing capabilities and systematic errors of intuition, he can cite chapter and verse from cognitive experiments. There are fifty-six pages of endnotes in this non-academic book.
Aug 30, 2010
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