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Riveted, August 2014
Hardcover / e-Book
The Science of Why Jokes Make Us Laugh, Movies Make Us Cry, and Religion Makes Us Feel One with the Universe
Palgrave
August 2014
On Sale: August 5, 2014
290 pages
ISBN: 113727901X
EAN: 9781137279019
Kindle: B00HY0719C
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
Why do some things pass under the radar of our attention,
but other things capture our interest? Why do some religions
catch on and others fade away? What makes a story, a movie,
or a book riveting? Why do some people keep watching the
news even though it makes them anxious? The past 20 years have seen a remarkable flourishing of
scientific research into exactly these kinds of questions.
Professor Jim Davies' fascinating and highly accessible
book, Riveted, reveals the evolutionary underpinnings
of why we find things compelling, from art to religion and
from sports to superstition. Compelling things fit our minds
like keys in the ignition, turning us on and keeping us
running, and yet we are often unaware of what makes these
"keys" fit. What we like and don't like is almost always
determined by subconscious forces, and when we try to
consciously predict our own preferences we're often wrong.
In one study of speed dating, people were asked what kinds
of partners they found attractive. When the results came
back, the participants' answers before the exercise had no
correlation with who they actually found attractive in
person! We are beginning to understand just how much the
brain makes our decisions for us: we are rewarded with a
rush of pleasure when we detect patterns, as the brain
thinks we've discovered something significant; the mind
urges us to linger on the news channel or rubberneck an
accident in case it might pick up important survival
information; it even pushes us to pick up People
magazine in order to find out about changes in the
social structure. Drawing on work from philosophy, anthropology, religious
studies, psychology, economics, computer science, and
biology, Davies offers a comprehensive explanation to show
that in spite of the differences between the many things
that we find compelling, they have similar effects on our
minds and brains.
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