I liked this book, probably because I really wanted to like this book, but it has a few problems. Even if you don't agree with everything in the book (and you won't) it will make you think. It would have been better to put only citation in the back, and use the asterisk at the bottom of the page for additional comments.Overall - this is a book I will reread again - or maybe read later editions of the book if the author updates this book with newer information.To summarize - this book will make you question how you make decisions and what you believe. All (as far as I can tell) sources are extensively cited, although he will add additional comments inside the source - which I found rather tedious - because I couldn't tell if reading a citation would add more to the story and because each chapter starts anew from citation number one, they were difficult to find quickly. I like the idea of the old brain vs the new brain. I think it helps to have a small understanding of the brain before going into this book. The author is skilled at taking complex ideas, and summing them up for a lay person. even for somebody like me, who sees the hint of truth in it, but likes to believe that my choices are intentional. Also, there is a lot of discussion about how people are very much a thing of evolution, even down to how we create our landscaping. But once you get around the voice - you find an excellent book that explains how your brain uses information that it receives to make a view of the world. I suspect that there are a lot people don't like the author's voice in this book - it is a bit snarky, a bit condescending, especially towards religion. When the results came back, the participants' answers before the exercise had no correlation with who they actually found attractive in person! We are beginning to understand just how much the brain makes our decisions for us: we are rewarded with a rush of pleasure when we detect patterns, as the brain thinks we've discovered something significant the mind urges us to linger on the news channel or rubberneck an accident in case it might pick up important survival information it even pushes us to pick up People magazine in order to find out about changes in the social structure.ĭrawing on work from philosophy, anthropology, religious studies, psychology, economics, computer science, and biology, Davies offers a comprehensive explanation to show that in spite of the differences between the many things that we find compelling, they have similar effects on our minds and brains. In one study of speed dating, people were asked what kinds of partners they found attractive.

What we like and don't like is almost always determined by subconscious forces, and when we try to consciously predict our own preferences we're often wrong. Professor Jim Davies's fascinating and highly accessible book, Riveted, reveals the evolutionary underpinnings of why we find things compelling.

Riveted by Jim Davies