Shankar Vedantam on the Hidden Benefits of Delusion

Description

Honesty seems like the obvious policy, yet people lie to each other and to themselves all day, and some of those lies do real good. In this course, Shankar Vedantam, host of the Hidden Brain podcast and co-author of Useful Delusions, walks through what researchers have found about the useful side of self-deception. Lessons cover the small lies that keep conversations polite, the stories that change how wine tastes, why couples who think highly of each other stay together, and how rituals and shared beliefs hold groups together.

Each lesson pairs a video from Vedantam with readings and short activities, including flashcards and a matching exercise.

About the expert

Shankar Vedantam is the host and executive editor of the Hidden Brain podcast and radio show and the author of a 2010 book of the same name. With Bill Mesler, he wrote Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Deceiving Brain, which this course follows. In the opening video he explains how reading hundreds of research papers changed his view of self-deception.

What you’ll be able to do

• Explain why a person’s circumstances predict their susceptibility to self-deception better than their intelligence does
• Describe the experiment that showed how a rude greeting lowers performance and a polite one raises it
• Recognize the lies people tell children and the seriously ill, and why those lies can be kind
• Describe how a label or price changes the way a product is experienced, including what brain scans showed
• Explain cognitive dissonance using the story of the failed 1955 prophecy
• Describe how rituals calm performance nerves and synchronize a community
• Apply the three questions Vedantam suggests for weighing a self-deception’s costs against its benefits

Who it’s for

Anyone curious about how the mind works. It also suits managers who want to understand why shared stories and rituals matter to a team.

What’s inside

10 lessons, self-paced:

1. Welcome
2. We All Need a Little Hot Air
3. Love, Kindness, and Lies
4. How Stories Become Our Reality
5. In a Good Relationship? You’re Probably Delusional
6. Why People Believe in Conspiracy Theories
7. Rituals Really Work—Just Not in the Way You Think
8. Myth, Delusion, and the Soul of a Nation
9. Have a Little Faith—It’s Good for You
10. Conclusion

What you get

• 365 days of access from the date of purchase
• A certificate of completion when you finish the course
• Your place is saved, so you can stop and come back whenever you like
• Works on a computer, tablet or phone

You can also get this course, and every other course in the library, with All Access for $99.99 a year.