I looked at records of my reading and before I read "Incognito" by Eagleman and "Seven and a Half Lessons about Your Brain" by Barrett, I read Bargh's "Before You Know It" and Fine's "A Mind of Its Own". I looked at my files of highlights of both books. These struck me as worth posting.
Cordelia Fine in "A Mind of Its Own"
The vain brain that embellishes, enhances, and aggrandizes you. The vain brain that excuses your faults and failures, or simply rewrites them out of history. The vain brain that sets you up on a pedestal above your peers. The vain brain that misguidedly thinks you invincible, invulnerable, and omnipotent. The brain so very vain that it even considers the letters that appear in your name to be more attractive than those that don't.
The vain brain that embellishes, enhances, and aggrandizes you. The vain brain that excuses your faults and failures, or simply rewrites them out of history. The vain brain that sets you up on a pedestal above your peers.
The vain brain that misguidedly thinks you invincible, invulnerable, and omnipotent. The brain so very vain that it even considers the letters that appear in your name to be more attractive than those that don't.
John Bargh in "Before You Know It"
Half a century ago, Princeton professor George Miller pointed out that if we had to do everything consciously, we'd never be able to get out of bed in the morning. (That's often hard enough as it is.) If you had to painstakingly decide which muscle to move, and do so in the correct order, you would be overwhelmed. In the helter-skelter hustle of each day, we don't have the luxury to reflect carefully on the best response in each and every moment, so our unconsciously operating evolutionary past provides a streamlined system that saves us time and energy. As we will soon explore, however, it also guides our behavior in other important, less obvious ways—for instance, in such things as dating and immigration policy.
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It is only comparatively recently that psychologists and others have begun to grasp how complex our brains are and how much of what we do, think and feel comes from other parts of us than our known, conscious minds.
