An “entertaining” look at the psychology and neuroscience behind the act of influencing others (Kirkus Reviews). People try to persuade us every day. From the news to the Internet to coworkers and family, everyone and everything wants to influence our thoughts in some way. And in turn, we hope to persuade others. Understanding the dynamics of persuasion can help us to achieve our own goals—and resist being manipulated by those who don’t necessarily have our best interests at heart. Psychologist Kevin Dutton has identified a powerful strain of immediate, instinctual persuasion, a method of influence that allows people to disarm skepticism, win arguments, and close deals. With a combination of astute methods and in-depth research in the fields of psychology and neuroscience, Dutton’s fascinating and provocative book: Introduces the natural super-persuaders in our midst: Buddhist monks, magicians, advertisers, con men, hostage negotiators, and even psychopaths. Reveals which hidden pathways in the brain lead us to believe something even when we know it’s not true. Explains how group dynamics can make us more tolerant or deepen our extremism. Illuminates the five elements of SPICE (simplicity, perceived self-interest, incongruity, confidence, and empathy) for instantly effective persuasion. “[Split-Second Persuasion] offers some powerful insights into the art and science of getting people to do what you want.” —New Scientist

An “entertaining” look at the psychology and neuroscience behind the act of influencing others (Kirkus Reviews). People try to persuade us every day. From the news to the Internet to coworkers and family, everyone and everything wants to influence our thoughts in some way. And in turn, we hope to persuade others. Understanding the dynamics of persuasion can help us to achieve our own goals—and resist being manipulated by those who don’t necessarily have our best interests at heart. Psychologist Kevin Dutton has identified a powerful strain of immediate, instinctual persuasion, a method of influence that allows people to disarm skepticism, win arguments, and close deals. With a combination of astute methods and in-depth research in the fields of psychology and neuroscience, Dutton’s fascinating and provocative book: Introduces the natural super-persuaders in our midst: Buddhist monks, magicians, advertisers, con men, hostage negotiators, and even psychopaths. Reveals which hidden pathways in the brain lead us to believe something even when we know it’s not true. Explains how group dynamics can make us more tolerant or deepen our extremism. Illuminates the five elements of SPICE (simplicity, perceived self-interest, incongruity, confidence, and empathy) for instantly effective persuasion. “[Split-Second Persuasion] offers some powerful insights into the art and science of getting people to do what you want.” —New Scientist

'What if I were to tell you that a psychopathic arsonist might also be the person most likely to save you from a burning building?' *This book is about a special kind of persuasion: 'flipnosis'. It has an incubation period of just seconds, and can instantly disarm even the most discerning mind. Flipnosis is black-belt mind control. It doesn't just turn the tables, it kicks them over. *From the malign but fascinating powers of psychopaths, serial killers and con men to the political genius of Winston Churchill - via the grandmasters of martial arts, Buddhist monks, magicians, advertisers, salesmen, CEOs and frogs that mug each other - Kevin Dutton's brilliantly original and revelatory book explores what cutting-edge science can teach us about the techniques of persuasion.

From the malign but fascinating powers of psychopaths, serial killers and con men to the political genius of Winston Churchill - via the grandmasters of martial arts, Buddhist monks, magicians, advertisers, salesmen, CEOs and frogs that mug each other - this book explores what science can teach us about the techniques of persuasion.

A groundbreaking and timely book about how evolutionary biology can explain our black-and-white brains, and a lesson in how we can escape the pitfalls of binary thinking. Several million years ago, natural selection equipped us with binary, black-and-white brains. Though the world was arguably simpler back then, it was in many ways much more dangerous. Not coincidentally, the binary brain was highly adept at detecting risk: the ability to analyze threats and respond to changes in the sensory environment—a drop in temperature, the crack of a branch—was essential to our survival as a species. Since then, the world has evolved—but we, for the most part, haven’t. Confronted with a panoply of shades of gray, our brains have a tendency to “force quit:” to sort the things we see, hear, and experience into manageable but simplistic categories. We stereotype, pigeon-hole, and, above all, draw lines where in reality there are none. In our modern, interconnected world, it might seem like we are ill-equipped to deal with the challenges we face—that living with a binary brain is like trying to navigate a teeming city center with a map that shows only highways. In Black-and-White Thinking, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton pulls back the curtains of the mind to reveal a new way of thinking about a problem as old as humanity itself. While our instinct for categorization often leads us astray, encouraging polarization, rigid thinking, and sometimes outright denialism, it is an essential component of the mental machinery we use to make sense of the world. Simply put, unless we perceived our environment as a chessboard, our brains wouldn’t be able to play the game. Using the latest advances in psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology, Dutton shows how we can optimize our tendency to categorize and fine-tune our minds to avoid the pitfalls of too little, and too much, complexity. He reveals the enduring importance of three “super categories”—fight or flight, us versus them, and right or wrong—and argues that they remain essential to not only convincing others to change their minds but to changing the world for the better. Black-and-White Thinking is a scientifically informed wake-up call for an era of increasing extremism and a thought-provoking, uplifting guide to training our gray matter to see that gray really does matter.

Psychopath. The word conjurs up images of serial killers, rapists, suicide bombers, gangsters. But think again: you could probably benefit from being a little more psychopathic yourself. Psychologist Kevin Dutton has made a speciality of psychopathy, and is on first-name terms with many notorious killers. But unlike those incarcerated psychopaths, and all those depicted in movies and crime fiction, most are not violent, he explains. In fact, says Prof Dutton, they have a lot of good things going for them. Psychopaths are fearless, confident, charismatic and focused--qualities tailor-made for success in today's society. The Wisdom of Psychopaths is an intellectual rollercoaster ride that combines lightning-hot science with unprecedented access to secret monasteries, Special Forces training camps, and high-security hospitals. In it, you will meet serial killers, war heroes, financiers, movie stars and attorneys--and discover that beneath the hype and popular characterization, psychopaths have something to teach us. Like the knobs on a mixing deck, psychopathy is graded. And finding the right combination of psychopathic traits, sampled and mixed at carefully calibrated volumes, can put us ahead of the game.

Each world faith tradition has its own distinctive relationship with science, and the science-religion dialogue benefits from a greater awareness of what this relationship is. In this book, members of the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR) offer international and multi-faith perspectives on how new discoveries in science are met with insights regarding spiritual realities.The essays reflect the conviction that “religion and science each proceed best when they’re pursued in dialogue with each other, and also that our fragmented and divided world would benefit more from a stronger dialogue between science and religion.” In Part One, George F. R. Ellis, John C. Polkinghorne, and Holmes Rolston III, each a Templeton Prize winner, discuss their views on why the science and religion dialogue matters. They are joined in Part Two by distinguished theologians Fraser Watts and Philip Clayton, who place the dialogue in an international context; John Polkinghorne’s inaugural address to the ISSR in 2002 is also included. In Part Three, five members of the ISSR look at the distinctive relationships of their faiths to science: •Carl Feit on Judaism •Munawar Anees on Islam •B.V. Subbarayappa on Hinduism •Trinh Xuan Thuan on Buddhism •Heup Young Kim on Asian Christianity George Ellis, the recently elected second president of ISSR, summarizes the contributions of his colleagues. Ronald Cole-Turner then concludes the book with a discussion of the future of the science and religion dialogue.