Reality? Things are seldom what they seem...

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a really persistent one.” (Albert Einstein)

Here is an image that illustrates the central concept of this essay: things are seldom what they seem. Almost everyone who views this image describes it as red strawberries:



Even when told there are no red pixels in the image, almost everyone still sees the strawberries as red.

This popular visual illusion demonstrates the gap between our experience of reality and  reality itself  Exploring and accepting the existence of this gap has changed the way I understand and interact with the world.

Background:

I grew up in a household that revered knowledge: data derived by scientific inquiry, and facts validated - or at least corroborated by - reliable sources. Intuition and ‘gut feelings’ were accepted as useful tools, but were not to be trusted without confirmation by objective examination.  Truth was a core value.  In  junior high school I realized to my great distress that reasoning based on shared knowledge did not consistently result in consensus. Smart and well-educated people, with access to accurate information, often legitimately and in good faith came to wildly different understandings of issues, conflicting answers to mysteries, opposite solutions to problems, and divergent beliefs about moral behavior.

From that insight grew my lifelong commitment to understanding human behavior and especially human cognition, the relationship of our knowledge about reality to reality itself, and how this impacts the ways we connect and interact with individuals and with society.

One significant development during that time has been the development of new technologies that have changed the nature of the available information. For decades, human behavior and cognition (and medical care) were studied primarily using aggregate population data from the real world supplemented by small group psychological or medical experiments, mostly in an artificial setting, and without the ability to observe the inner workings of the brain or body. Medicine developed diagnostic and treatment best practices for the mythical average patient with the typical presentation. Psychology explained thought, emotion, and behavior based on people (plural) rather than individuals. The limitations of this are obvious. This approach is better than magic or dogma, but is flawed: the best treatment on average for a studied population may not be appropriate for an individual patient.  Over the last two decades, new knowledge and technology has allowed us to begin developing personalized medicine and study the neurobiology of cognition and behavior in individuals.

Here is an executive summary of where I am today on my journey to understand:

Every individual experience and interacts with reality from within their own private and unique Perception Box, which is built and constantly updated by their brain. Their brain collects, modifies, and stores information and creates a Perception Box that  uses both current input and stored information to find (or invent) patterns and build models in order to create predictions and prioritize possible responses based on estimated benefits related to survival and procreation value. The brain also creates for each individual a central avatar which we experience as our conscious self and which serves variously (and often simultaneously) as the unreliable narrator, hero, victim, and observer of our own story. We rarely notice that this central avatar is not just a participant and narrator of our reality, but the creator of our reality. This system is miraculously complex and powerful, but is always subject to built-in constraints and the gravity of our own personal Planet Ego.

There are several overlapping concepts I will discuss individually: (1) the brain; (2) the Perception Box and its relationship to reality; (3) the central avatar; and (4) the constraints of the brain’s firmware, software, and the impact of Planet Ego. I will conclude with some comments about how this has made a difference for me.

The Brain.

The brain is a problem-solving machine with two core tasks: (1) maintain the homeostatic internal functioning of the organism (circulation, metabolism, temperature and the like);  and (2) create models, based on external and internal data, that allow predictions and decisions to keep us alive and able to procreate.

The human brain is only 2% of our body by weight but uses ~ 20% of our energy when we are at rest. (By contrast, the bonobo brain is ~ 0.8% of its body weight and uses 8-9% of its energy at rest.) Because of the high energy demand of the human brain, and because so much of its output is very time-sensitive, our brains have evolved to prioritize efficiency and efficacy over accuracy and truth.  Brains use shortcuts to make best guesses about what is happening now, what will happen next,  possible responses and possible outcomes for different responses. These models and solutions serve fitness, not truth. They have to be good enough to improve survival and procreation but they need not be perfect..

(Note: neurocognitive processing shortcuts are related to and sometimes overlap or interact with - logical fallacies and cognitive biases like anchoring effect, availability and recency bias, base rate fallacy, but they are not the same.)

Creating plausible and actionable shortcuts is where the Perception Box comes from. 

The Perception Box.

Think about a map you have used. That map is a useful analogy for The Perception Box. Maps are tangible abstractions, drawn based on  how they will be used. They contain limited and selected information and use symbolic representations in order to help the user navigate a territory. As they say, the map should not be confused with the territory,  

Our Perception Box is a virtual abstraction. It is conjured up using selected and modified data from and about reality. It creates an incomplete, inaccurate, and dynamic hologram as a model of reality that distorts, hides, and highlights information to make a point. The caricature it creates of reality protects us from having to experience the overwhelming detail of reality the same way our computer desktop allows us to create and manipulate documents while it protects us from having to deal with electrons coursing through circuits and using rules built with reams of ones and zeros.

The brain has a monumental task. Each individual is exposed to roughly 1 billion bps ( bits per second) of information, the equivalent of 100 HD movies/second.  Our external and internal sensory apparatus feeds roughly 11 million bps of this to the brain. Because our brain can only consciously process 10-50 bps, it filters and funnels the data tsunami, directing most of it to the processes outside of our awareness that manage bodily function: automatic behavioral responses, and some of Kahneman’s System 1 intuitive processing. It selects at most 1 of every incoming 200,000 bits of information for conscious processes (what we call thought).  This is the equivalent of distilling Shakespeare’s collected works (which contain over 800,000 words)  into 4 words from his plays.

An example of how this works is the visual experience we call red. Imagine a ripe apple on a tree in your yard. Natural outdoor light, consisting of photons, hits the apple, which consists of vibrating energy, waves and particle probabilities. Certain photons, based on their wave length and energy, bounce off and reach our eyes, where they interact a specific subset of sensitive cones in  our retina. This generates neural impulses that are sent to the visual cortex, whereupon the input is shared and compared with previously stored information in various regions of the brain, where the association is made with the concept of redness and the word ‘red’ and other objects we have learned to associate with that word (fire engines, poppies, strawberries, cranberries, blood, pomegranates, beets, stop signs, lipstick, balloons). The result is that we experience the apple as ‘red’. Understood this way, redness is a construct of our Perception Box rather than a property of the apple or entity in the real world.

Most of our human activity depends on algorithms, shortcuts, heuristics, and patterned automatic responses. All of our conscious and unconscious perceptions are guesses based on very incomplete data. This system works amazingly well: we rarely confuse an apple with a strawberry. However, it is imperfect and gives rise to illusions and false perceptions where the brain and its models misinterpret the input., or hallucinate input in order to fill in for missing data. Remember the gray strawberries that looked red? When this illusion was first introduced, it was explained as a product of cognitive penetration: previously stored experiences associated with strawberries caused the observer to perceive the strawberries as red. (Cognitive penetration is the phenomenon underlying the joke of the clinical radiologist: “I’ll see it when I believe it.”)  Subsequent research with different images has shown that observers often see gray as red even in the absence of contextual framing. Neither the ‘R’ on the left nor the background on the right in the image below contain any red pixels. 

This false perception of red is a result of color constancy where the brain interprets something as red as a result of a mix of factors: lighting, size, shape, brightness, contrast. This is also why an apple continues to be perceived as red rather than blue when in shadow and a banana does not appear to change color when we move from outdoor to indoors and incandescent light or flourescent light.

We have perceptual illusions for every form of external sensory input: visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, proprioceptive. Pilots learn to deal with the  ICEFLAGS illusions (Inversion, Coriolis, Elevator, False Horizon, Leans, Autokinesis, Graveyard Spiral, and Somatogravic illusions). These are fun, fascinating, and useful for studying how the brain creates models. Spend some time enjoying them with your favorite music or beverage.

We also have illusions for internal stimuli.

Memory is the obvious example:  the brain takes a few stored data points and creates a plausible narrative or experience. In the process it adds, changes. and removes information. When the memory is put back into storage it has been altered and the next time we retrieve it in a different context, it will have changed.

Our emotions are arguably also, at least in part, a Perception Box generated mix of cognitive and physical illusions created based on a combination of visceral, neural, and hormonal inputs interpreted based on memory, context, and culture.

The existence of the Perception Box and the way it creates our experience of reality is not just something quaint and amusing, useful to entertain children or amaze friends at a party. There are important implications of the fact that we are each locked into, and interacting with, our own unique version/illusion of reality:

• Our version is only one of many possible versions and it isn’t static - it changes.
• Our version is not the version others have because different brains build different versions.
• Our version may not be the best or correct version. 
• Our Perception Box is very skilled so our individual version is not just plausible but is extremely persuasive. Even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary, our version will feel true.  As a result, when confronted with information inconsistent with our version, or with  version of reality different from our one, the commonest innate response is dissonance and a sense of existential threat rather than curiosity. (More about this later.)

For me, without question, the most fascinating and important cognitive illusion created by the Perception Box is our Avatar of the Conscious Self.

The Central Avatar

Our brain creates an avatar or virtual ‘self’ which functions as an interface with the selected aspects of  reality that our Perception Box chooses. (Filters, funnels, algorithms, and all that are hard at work behind the curtain.) This central avatar feels top us like the actor in and observer of our reality. That is an illusion. It is the creator of our reality.

The avatar has predictable traits which can be identified and have been studied, some much more than others. Once considered a product of nurture (our upbringing, life experience, education, and the like) there is increasing evidence for a significant component of nature (our underlying and innate neurocognitive systems and genetic predispositions).

The real world impacts of this are fascinating and wide-ranging. They include the theory of mind, socialization, empathy, personal and social identities, predispositions for flexibility or rigidity of thought, formation of in-groups and out-groups, polarization, imagination, creativity, and even the perception of free will.  I will explore some of these interconnected and overlapping aspects of consciousness.

• Our fictive self feels real but is a subjective experience created by the brain.. (I am explicitly denying dualism when I say this.) This powerful feeling of a self is persuasive in the same way, and for the same reasons, that sensory illusions persist even when we intellectually know they are illusions. Those gray strawberries LOOK red. 
• Our fictive self convinces us that other bipedal beings in the world who look and act like us are also agents with selves like us. Our avatar provides the convincing narrative that they are perceiving and interacting with the same objective reality that we interact with. This is the theory of mind. The illusion of self and the theory of mind combine to form the platform on which an overlapping and interdependent collection of other cognitive and behavioral pro-social constructs have evolved. For example, this experience of a self combined with the theory of mind are  necessary for the evolutionary development of: communication in the form of language, cooperation, and collaboration; the formation of relationships and groups based on kinship;  in-groups and out-groups; personal and social identities; and empathy and enmity. 
• Empathy is worth exploring, as the neurocognitive basis of empathy has been studied. When an individual interacts with or observes another individual with some degree of overlapping social identity, the hormone oxytocin is released by the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) in the hypothalamus. Oxytocin, sometimes called the love hormone, facilitates trust, bonding, and attachment. The release of oxytocin triggers the release of serotonin in the brainstem, a hormone which enhances mood, as well as dopamine in the ventral tegmental area, which activates the reward centers in the nucleus accumbens and frontal cortex. This cascade facilitates the feelings and behaviors that characterize affective or emotional empathy. This process occurs within 1-2 tenths of a second and is part of the default System 1 of intuitive cognition. We become aware of it after it happens. The amount of oxytocin released is proportional to the salience of the connection to the other person, in descending order: kinship, physical similarity, ethnicity, and previous positive interactions. The empathic cascade is also activated - although it is weaker - with very superficial in-group assignments such as dividing a group up based on even or odd numbered birthdays. It even occurs when groups are assigned randomly.  Interestingly, if the other individual is part of an out-group, the oxytocin release and subsequent neurohumoral cascade is more likely to generate anger, fear, and hostility than empathy. Another form of empathy, intellectual empathy, is triggered in a different way through the slower and often consciously induced System 2 processes, where we intentionally seek and find commonalities and/or reasons to pretend there are commonalities. It can also be based on the need for cognitive resonance - thinking and behaving in a way consonant with our personal identity. (“I am a good person and good people feel empathy in this setting.”) Intellectual empathy is triggered by a lower and several-times slower release of oxytocin and a relatively muted neurohumoral cascade. 
• Trust and cooperative/collaborative behavior are facilitated by a similar and overlapping mechanism as empathy.
• Memory. Our past and future are abstract intellectual constructs, not real things. (Some philosophers make the argument that reality is limited to what exists now and that past and future are invented concepts, not things that exist.). Our conscious self uses memory to construct an image or narrative that we perceive as the past and modeling to envision an image or narrative that we perceive as the future. This ability to believe (and believe strongly) in the reality of things that are illusions rather than truth is the basis of both imagination and creativity. It is a reasonable explanation for the universality of mythologies and spiritual or religious traditions.  It is also why we are capable of believing we are able to perceive and believe in both good and bad things that are not real. Which is a good segue to epistemology.
• Epistemology. There are fascinating and useful  neurocognitive implications for the different ways individuals process information and search for truth. Individuals vary considerably along a continuum of how intellectually flexible (open) or rigid (closed) they are. We are not fixed at one point on the continuum: considerable variation is seen by context and over time. However, most individuals have a fairly consistent default approach.  Individuals who are more intellectually flexible tend to be more comfortable with high cognitive load (they enjoy System 2 cognition), uncertainty, and nuance. Individuals who are more rigid tend to avoid cognitive load (default to System 1) and prefer certainty and clarity. This has been described as scout and soldier mindsets. (It is important to stress that everybody has some of both, that both cognitive styles have strengths and weaknesses and are better or worse adapted for different situations. This is not a good-bad category.) Stress, anxiety, pain, and threat will predictably move everyone towards the faster, lower-cost, less nuanced, rigid style. These two styles are neither randomly nor evenly distributed between conservative and liberal groups, or between devoutly religious and non-religious groups. A manifestation of this is seen with conspiracy theories and lesser forms of susceptibility to misinformation and disinformation, which are driven by innate needs for three things: cognitive resonance (a narrative that feels good because it conforms to prior personal and social identity), a sense of clarity/control/safety (supplied by the absence of nuance and an identified target or enemy), and group membership (which supplies social support and relieves anxiety/fear).. 
• Social identities, in- and out-groups, self-sorting, and polarization. Humans are obligate pro-social beings because we are not strong, tough, fast, or weaponized enough to survive as isolated individuals. The simultaneous development of bipedal mobility and larger heads holding larger brains at birth (relative to the rest of the body) required that babies be born ‘prematurely’ in the sense of not being mature enough to survive without an extended period of feeding and protection. The change in head size along with the change in pelvic shape necessary for bipedal gait required that infants be born face down, rather than face up as is seen with apes. This requires an attendant at birth. These and related factors made collaborative social behavior necessary for survival of the species. Homo evolved many neurocognitive processes and traits that predispose to and support social behavior. We have a host of innate (System 1) programming to foster relationships and bonding with kin and small in-groups coupled with the reverse: innate recognition of out-groups generating defensiveness, fear and hostility. We see the results of this all the time, but we rarely take the time to understand the underlying mechanisms and often settle on simplistic explanations (comfortable or persuasive narratives) that are false or only partly true. Problematic behavior on social media is a great example. Echo chambers and toxic polarization in social media have been commonly attributed to the algorithms that use outrage (that suppresses System 2 cognition) to generate attention and clicks along with filters to control what people see. While these explanations surely contain some truth, there is observational and experimental evidence that the algorithms are neither necessary nor sufficient to cause the problems we see. Five decades of neurocognitive research (which predates the internet) show that we don’t need social media algorithms to generate polarized echo chambers, severely unequal voices in conversations, and social media prisms where more polarized voices get the most attention. Fifty years ago, Schelling, working in the context of segregated neighborhoods, showed that even without social constraints like zoning and red-lining, humans will self-sort into segregated groups. The Schelling model has been extended to behavior in networks and shows that even without algorithms, self-sorting results in the same commonly named bad outcomes. We are neurocognitively designed to self-sort into in-groups and out-groups.
• Free will is another example of a cognitive perception that feels incredibly real but is illusory. The feeling that we are autonomous agents with free will probably evolved because it serves important fitness and survival needs: a sense of agency enhances attention and engagement, and it supports planning for medium and long-term futures. Sapolsky has explored this provocative idea well in his book Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will.
• The self is not merely a passive and manipulated observer of the output of our Perception Box. It also functions as a change agent, acting on itself, impacting both the output of the Perception Box and the behavior and biological systems of the body. A few examples. Meichenbaum (whom I met during residency training) demonstrated that ‘self-talk’ was capable of changing mood and behavior. Crum and Langer demonstrated that hotel housekeepers who were made aware of how much exercise their work entailed experienced not just improved self image, but improved biometrics like weight and blood pressure. The Milk Shake Study showed that what a person believed about the caloric intake from a standard milk shake changed their level of the hunger/satiety hormone grehlin by 3-fold. And, of course, there is the placebo effect. And clinical hypnosis which I found to be a useful tool in practice and leverages suggestion and belief to cause psychological and physiological change.

Some constraints and limitations

My understanding of how our brains work (and don’t work) is limited by the fact that all the knowledge we have about this is derived from within the systems we are studying. Max Planck said “We cannot solve the ultimate mysteries because we are part of the mysteries we are trying to solve.”

Neurocognitive science is a young field so what we think we ‘know’ today is certainly incomplete, and much of it may prove to be wrong in the future.

Our human perception and experience of reality is also constantly constrained by our innate programming. We need to protect our personal and social identity and most individuals will prioritize social over personal identity, and both over truth or accuracy.  

Some implications for me IRL:

• I am constantly in awe of how fascinating and complex the human brain is.
• My understanding of the brain and how it works generates more questions than answers. It makes me fiercely curious. It insists that I explore a wide range of ideas. The awareness that things are seldom what they seem I find stimulating, engaging, enticing.  What is the external world really like. How much more can I learn about what is happening neurocognitively behind the curtain?  A modified version of a quote from Frank Herbert in Dune Chronicles #1 (which he appears to have lifted from Soren Kierkegaard) expresses it well: “The mystery of life isn’t a problem to be solved but a perception to be experienced.”
• Humility. Recognizing the degree to which my sometimes rational fictive self is a passenger rather than a driver. Knowing that many of my carefully developed and good-faith ‘reasons’ are back-fill rationalizations of an algorithmic System 1 response creates self-skepticism and demands that I make time and energy to pause for a ‘reality’ check. This fit well with my approach to clinical medicine: every diagnosis and therapeutic plan should be challenged with three questions. (1) What information did you have to discard or minimize to reach this decision? (2) What are you going to look for going forward as evidence that you are wrong? (3) What are your back-up (next best) diagnoses or treatments?  It also fits with my internal habit of self-questioning: What else might this be? What else could explain this? Science thrives on questions, not answers.
• Tolerance. Everyone is subject to their own private but powerful illusions. I shouldn’t assume our realities are identical - or even overlapping. I should guard against becoming frustrated, angry and outraged by people and groups who my gut says are acting out of stupidity and/or malevolence. I should be curious rather than furious and listen to learn rather than debate to prove my version of reality is better or more accurate. This is incredibly pertinent (and useful) in the setting of our current cultural and political partisan divides.
• Relationships.  This framework is useful for building and maintaining healthy relationships with others, whether family, close friends, patients, colleagues, acquaintances,  strangers, organizations, or groups. Or people whose beliefs and behaviors are different from mine. 
• Different is not malevolent or stupid. The overwhelming majority of people and groups as thinking and behaving pretty much the way they are designed. 
• Beware of averages and generalizations. They are based on aggregated data and this (intentionally) obscures and misrepresents detail and individual specifics.

Appendix: Annotated Bibliography

The following list contains some of the books I have found useful over the last half century in my pursuit of understanding the human mind, how it works (and doesn’t), how it creates a conscious self, and how it interacts with both internal and external reality. I have not included the myriad talks, articles, panels, and one-on-one discussions that have added to my perspective. Because space limitations force me to weed my personal library every few years, this list is artificially weighted toward recent books. Many of the authors have an online presence with access to lectures, talks, and articles. A search engine is your friend. Properly used, AI can also be your friend.

Ariely, Dan. Predictably Irrational. The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. (2008). The systematic and predictable forces that lead to irrational decisions. 

Barrett, Lisa Feldman. 7 1/2 Lessons About The Brain. (2021). A collection of short and readable essays about the brain.

Barrett, Lisa Feldman. How Emotions Are Made. The Secret Life of the Brain. (2017). Argues that emotions are not automatic, innate and universal, but are constructed by interplay of brain, body, and culture. 

Brafman, Ori and Brafman, Rom. SWAY: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior. (2008). Social psychology, behavioral economics perspective on how our logical thinking gets derailed. 

Burton, Robert. On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not. (2008). The feeling of certainty is a mental sensation, not evidence of fact.

Chabris, Christopher and Simons, Daniel. The Invisible Gorilla. How Our Intuitions Deceive Us. (2009)  Intuitions and heuristics lead us astray. 

Deci, Edward. Why We Do What We Do; Understanding Self-Motivation. (1995). The important role of a sense of autonomy in motivation. Of particular interest to me for two reasons: as a medical student in Rochester, NY I was a subject in some of his experiments and he was involved in early work on George Engel’s bio-psycho-social model of medicine.

Dehaene, Stanislas. Consciousness and the Brain. Deciphering How The Brain Codes Our Thoughts. (2014). Neurocognition and consciousness. 

Dennett, Daniel. Consciousness Explained. (1991). Comprehensive discussion of a viable model for human consciousness. 

Falk, Emily.  What We Value. The Neuroscience of Choice and Change. (2025) Newly published. I have not yet finished reading this, read it.

Fuentes, Agustin. Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being (Foundational Questions in Science).  (2019) Explores the proposition that the ability to commit passionately to an idea (religious, economic, philosophical) is central to the way humans exist and interact in the world.

Gazzaniga, Michael. The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind. (2018). The brain is not ‘a’ machine but a network of modules working to make predictions and solve problems. Consciousness is potentially a solution to a problem.

Gazzaniga, Michael; Phelps, Elizabeth; Bassett, Dani; Mangun, George; Ivry, Richard. Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind, 6th Edition. (2025). The gold standard text of cognitive neuroscience. (I have used the 4th and 5th Editions but have not yet had access to the 6th Edition.)

Gazzaniga, Michael. Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique. (2008). Cognitive neuroscience approach to consciousness, social and personal identity, and art. 

Grant, Adam. Think Again. The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. (2021) The value and practice of intellectual humility and curiosity.

Graziano, Michael. Rethinking Consciousness. A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience. (2019). Neurocognitive and evolutionary approach to consciousness as both a means of controlling attention and modeling that control for self-regulatory purposes. 

Heffernan, Margaret. Willful Blindness. Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril. (2011). Discussion of ways humans often prefer a false narrative to the truth, 

Hoffman, Donald. The Case Against Reality. How Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes. (2019). Argues for reality existing, not as a fixed and universal entity, but as something only definable in relation to the observer.

Kahneman, Daniel. Slovic, Paul. Tversky, Amos. Judgement Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. (1982). Detailed discussion of many of the experiments underlying their theories.

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. (2011). Discussion of  two categories or processes of cognitive behavior in humans.

Kucharski, Adam and Priestley, Nathanial. Proof. The Art and Science of Certainty (2025). I have just begun reading this. The reviews say it addresses issues of how we can know whether our beliefs are true. 

Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark. Metaphors We Live By. (1980) The role of metaphor as part of the way the brain builds models and the interactions between language and our understanding of reality.

Loftus, Elizabeth. The Myth of Repressed Memory. False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse. (1994). One of multiple books by this author on memory.
Loftus, Elizabeth. The Malleability of Memory. (2020)

McRaney, David. How Minds Change. The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion. (2022). Focused on beliefs and persuasion, touches on how beliefs are formed, maintained, and altered.

Metzinger, Thomas. The Ego Tunnel. The Science of Mind and the Myth of Self.  (2010). The conscious self is not real, just a model constructed by the brain.

Pennycook, Gordon.  The New Reflectionism in Cognitive Psychology. Why Reason Matters. (2018). Reviews evidence that analytic thinking (reason) is important, a counterbalance to the perspective that humans are overwhelmingly intuitive/emotional with reason simply second guessing. He has an extensive collection of papers also worth reading, listed under his name in Google Scholar and on his Cornell University web page.

Piattelli-Palmarini, Massimo. Inevitable Illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds. (1994) Fun and informative discussion of cognitive illusions, the reasoning equivalent of optical illusions. 

Pink, Daniel. Drive: The surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.  (2009). A discussion of the roles of autonomy, mastery, and sense of purpose[pose in motivation. 

Prat, Chantel, PhD. The Neuroscience of YOU. How Every Brain Is Different and How to Understand Yours.  (2022)  Annotation: 

Rose, Todd. Collective Illusions. Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions. (2022). The need to align with a social identity coupled with false assumptions about others drives conformity, self-censorship, and decisions that run counter to our self-interest.

Sanderson, Catherine. Why We Act. Turning Bystanders Into Moral Rebels. (2020) Discussed cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and social context as basis for innate tendency not to act.

Sapolsky, Robert. Behave. The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst. (2017). Discussion of multifactorial causation of human behavior, including biology (hormones, neural circuits, genetics), environment, culture. Touches on free will. 

Sapolsky, Robert. Determined. A Science of Life Without Free Will. (2024) He argues that free will is an illusion

Schulz, Kathryn. Being Wrong. Adventures in the Margin of Error. (2010). Excellent and fun.

Shaw, Julia. The Memory Illusion. Remembering, Forgetting, and the Science of False Memory. (1988). Fun, fascinating, and useful discussion of what memory is, what it can do, what it cannot do.

Tomasello, Michael. Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny. (2019) Argues for eight identifiable developmental pathways by which humans are different from primate relatives: social cognition, communication, cultural learning cooperative thinking, collaboration, pro sociality, social norms, moral identity.

Tomasello, Michael. The Evolution of Agency: Behavioral Organization from Lizards to Humans, (2022). Argues that freedom of choice (agency) is not unique to humans but exists widely among other animals.

Walker, Matt. Why We Sleep. (2017) Best seller with some very good information, but read with some skepticism as he is known to have cherry picked and falsified some data. 

Wilson, Patrick. Second-Hand Knowledge: An Inquiry Into Cognitive Authority. (1983). An epistemological discussion of how we determine what information to trust. 

Wu, Wei (editor). Oxytocin and Social Function. (2024). Chapters 4 (on empathy) and 7 (social and behavior change) are particularly relevant.

Young, Dannagal Goldthwaite. Wrong. How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation. (2023). Excellent coverage that focuses on political polarization, misiniformation, and conspiracy theories.

Zmigrod, Leor. The Idseological Brain: The Radical Science of Flexible Thinking. (2025). Excellent discussion of the origin of the concept/term of ideology, how ideologies originate and behave.

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