Subliminal

How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior

By: Leonard Mlodinow

Narrated by: Leonard Mlodinow

Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

Leonard Mlodinow, the best-selling author of The Drunkard’s Walk and coauthor of The Grand Design (with Stephen Hawking), gives us a startling and eye-opening examination of how the unconscious mind shapes our experience of the world and how, for instance, we often misperceive our relationships with family, friends, and business associates, misunderstand the reasons for our investment decisions, and misremember important events.

Your preference in politicians, the amount you tip your waiter - all judgments and perceptions reflect the workings of our mind on two levels: the conscious, of which we are aware, and the unconscious, which is hidden from us. The latter has long been the subject of speculation, but over the past two decades researchers have developed remarkable new tools for probing the hidden, or subliminal, workings of the mind. The result of this explosion of research is a new science of the unconscious and a sea change in our understanding of how the subliminal mind affects the way we live.

Employing his trademark wit and lucid, accessible explanations of the most obscure scientific subjects, Leonard Mlodinow takes us on a tour of this research, unraveling the complexities of the subliminal self and increasing our understanding of how the human mind works and how we interact with friends, strangers, spouses, and coworkers. In the process he changes our view of ourselves and the world around us.

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

©2012 Leonard Mlodinow (P)2012 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Mlodinow never fails to make science both accessible and entertaining.” (Stephen Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time)

“Think you know the whys and hows of your choices? Follow Mlodinow on a gorgeous journey that will make you think again.” (David Eagleman, author of Incognito)

All Around Good Book

This is such an enjoyable listen, I highly recommend it. Leonard Mlodinow is a great writer and narrator. He used so many good examples I was captivated throughout. I listened to it at work while I was doing tedious tasks and it carried me through easily. If you want to understand why you do certain things, this book will help you. I'm looking forward to listening to more books by this author.

Great Author, OK Book

Not as good as 'The Drunkard's Walk' but in all a good book. Seems a little short compared to his other work. I found it interesting and as always he has great examples. But overall it could have been better. If you are new to Mlodinow I would say read TDW instead.

Eye Opening

You may think you understand human bias, but you really don't. Once you go through this book, you will then have a more solidified understanding.

you'll learn alot

Would you listen to Subliminal again? Why?

i learned a lot from this book. it took me awhile to get used to the author's voice, but once i did i thoroughly enjoyed it. a must read if you want to understand more about our world and the human condition.

A great insight into our true selves.

finished with ease. my favorite part besides the fascinating stories that are designed as metaphors to prove a point that the subconscious has a underdeveloped power that passes below our threshhold of intent. I really enjoyed learning about dominant and submissive behaviors.

Fun to listen to, I enjoyed it a lot, though...

What made the experience of listening to Subliminal the most enjoyable?

....I cannot remember much of it now (but that is probably only me.). It is the classical "get the gist of many interesting social science and psychology experiments together" and it was all really well brought together. It was interesting that all the research cited has strong links to behavioral economics, but (as far as I can remember), Kahnemann and Tversky are not mentioned, as you would expect. But this just shows how things come togeher from many angles.The author narrates it, which comes out really well, I think.

What did you learn from Subliminal that you would use in your daily life?

Curiously, there are many things I thought I would want to remember and use, but now I do not remember any ony of them anymore :)

Wonderful

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. I enjoyed "thinking fast and slow" by Daniel Kahneman but this book helped answer some questions Daniel raised in my mind. Yes our minds make mistakes when we think we are being perfectly rational, but there are times when our "gut" is correct. There is action going on behind the scenes that use the same hardware and influence our thinking, that is very helpful.

The last part of the book goes over more of the ways our thinking is not as objective as we think.

A very adequate summary of the current knowledge on the unconscious

The book is a blend of fun and information

As a physician, I often wanted it to be a bit drier and more organized to deliver the information. I would consciously think that, all while I binge read the book and laughed at the jokes. If it wasn’t also deliberately fun, I might have complained of it being to dry and info heavy.

The unconscious is beautiful. Best lawyer.

Difficult Listen

The narrator who was also the author was very hard to listen to. He sounded stuffed up and speech was slurred. I stopped reading half way through. Content was interesting as far as I got.

Interesting...

It's interesting, but I guess that the bottom line is that I don't remember much about the audio book even though I just listened to it not more than a week ago, but that would be okay since my memory betrays me according to the author. It's another book to make the drive to and from work more interesting...