The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in

The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

Kevin Simler, Robin Hanson
T3 no Open Library recordgoodreads

Hanson and Simler make the most provocative claim in this list: that self-deception is not a flaw but an adaptive strategy — we hide our real motives from ourselves so we can more convincingly hide them from others. If true, the entire bias-correction project has a ceiling. This book belongs at the end so it reframes everything before it.

Psychology and Behaviour

Where it sits in the reference 1

Behavioural Edge and Market Psychology

Philosophy

Who recommended it 1

Tyler Cowenreported

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Superbook reading list

“Cowen has called this one of the most important social science books of the past decade. Simler and Hanson's thesis — that most human behavior is driven by hidden status motives we systematically misrepresent to ourselves — maps onto questions Cowen pursues across many fields: why institutions behave as they do, why signaling is so costly, what philanthropy actually accomplishes.”