The World's Best Book Summaries
What were early hunter-gatherers’ food choices? What did they eat? How did their food affect their health? Hunter-gatherers ate broadly: termites, berries, roots, rabbits, bison, and mammoth, among other foods. Their varied diet likely contributed to their health and lack of disease. We’ll cover why hunter-gatherers’ food choices were healthy and how hunter-gatherers lived.
What is social stratification? What are social stratification examples that make clear how class and ethnic divides create and foster inequality? How is social stratification based on mythmaking and accident? Social stratification is the ranking of people into imagined hierarchies. These rankings have no basis in reality–they’re created to maintain the status quo, allowing the most powerful to retain power. We’ll cover a social stratification example that looks at how imaginary hierarchies and random events created the race divide in America.
What is the certainty effect? How does it blind us to options that are less than optimal, but still pretty good? The certainty effect is the tendency of people to feel disproportionately better about outcomes that are certain compared to outcomes that are probable or possible. This leads people to overweight certainty when making judgments. We’ll cover how the certainty effect works and its role in Daniel Kahneman’s prospect theory.
What is a global society? How did our various societies merge into one, global culture? A global society is a society in which practices and beliefs are similar across the world. Increasing communication throughout the world leads to a more global society. We’ll cover the history of how individual societies merged to create a global society.
What are the basic events in the history of humankind? What revolutions characterized the cognitive and cultural evolution of homo sapiens? The history of humankind is punctuated by four major revolutions: The Cognitive Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the Scientific Revolution. These revolutions changed the history of humankind in ways both positive and negative. We’ll look at each revolution and how it dramatically redirected the course of human history, but to understand these upheavals, we need to go back to a time when Homo sapiens was just one of multiple human species (and not a very distinguished
What is duration neglect? What does it have to do with our overall happiness? Duration neglect is the psychological principle that the length of an experience has little effect on the memory of that event. This factor affects how remember pain and joy. We’ll cover the concept of duration neglect, how it affects overall happiness, and the experiments that demonstrate its power.
What is the meaning of the pygmalion effect? How do our expectations affect results? The pygmalion effect is a phenomenon in which a person’s expectation of a target person affects the target person’s performance. If you have higher expectations of a person, he or she will tend to do better. Learn what the pygmalion effect means in everyday life and how bias plays a part in whether the pygmalion effect is positive or negative.
What is the “mere exposure effect”? How does it work? What’s a good mere exposure effect example? The mere exposure effect is the idea that exposing someone to an input repeatedly makes them like it more. For example, having a memory of a word, phrase, or idea makes it easier to see again. We’ll cover mere exposure effect examples that demonstrate its power, and how you can use the mere exposure effect to create cognitive ease.
Gender is a social construct. This is confusing because it has its basis in biology. When it comes to gender, what’s the relationship between societal norms and biology? Gender is a social construct because, while it’s related to your sex, it’s not based on your biology. It’s influenced by how you fit (or choose to fit) the “man” or “woman” mold created by your particular culture’s myths about men and women. We’ll cover the difference between “gender” and “sex” and look at how these distinctions have played out over the history of humanity.
What are the major events in the cultural evolution of man? How did these events shape our cultures today? The cultural evolution of man has been shaped by changes in the ways we think, our language, and the ways by which we relate to each other. Language, especially, has had a powerful role in creating the global culture we recognize today. We’ll cover the events of man’s cultural evolution and how language brought people together to create a global society.