Black and White Thinking

Timely popular psychology which explains how by understanding that our brains are evoluntionarily programmed to think in binary we can learn to override the system and begin to make more nuanced and better decisions.Dr Dutton is an expert in persuasion, social influence and the psychopathic personality. He is media friendly, and has regularly appeared on Good Morning Britain to discuss psychopathy. He is a high performance coach, and an experienced and compelling speaker.Topical subject for a politicized market, including Radio 4, Radio 2 and podcasts. Digital campaign appealing to core Thinkers audience. Events and festivals, as possible.For readers of Malcolm Gladwell and Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (580K pb); The Widsom of Psychopaths by Kevin Dutton (23.5K pb); Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed (152K pb).

Dr Kevin Dutton is a researcher at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, and a member of the Oxford Centre for Emotions and Affective Neuroscience (OCEAN) research group. He regularly publishes in leading international scientific journals and speaks at conferences around the world. He is the author of the acclaimed Flipnosis: The Art of Split-Second Persuasion.

Dutton provides simplifying, clarifying and essential insights into the character of human choice and decision-making. You'll not think about thinking the same way afterwards.Kevin Dutton has the great gift of being able to see patterns in human behaviour… He talks about his discoveries, and about their implications for all of us, with the flair and clarity of a practised storyteller. Fascinating, important, and entirely convincing.Kevin Dutton is a Special Forces style psychologist. Daring. Original. All-action. No nonsense.

A Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Daniel Pink and Adam Grant NEXT BIG IDEA book club read about how to avoid the pitfalls of too little, and too much, complexity.

'Essential insights into the character of human choice and decision-making.' ROBERT CIALDINI, bestselling author of Influence
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In this groundbreaking exploration of how our brains work, psychologist Professor Kevin Dutton explains that by understanding the nature of our hardwired black and white thinking we are better equipped to negotiate life's grey zones and make subtler and smarter decisions.

Our brains are hardwired to sort, categorize and draw lines. It's how we navigate the kaleidoscope of everyday information. Yet imagine failing an exam by a mere 1 per cent. Or being caught speeding at just 1 mph over the speed limit. We have to draw the line somewhere, we say. But lines can be unhelpful or even dangerous when drawn where they aren't wanted, or in too thick a hand.

By thinking in terms of ' 'them' or 'us' and 'this' or 'that' we isolate ourselves from ideas we don't agree with and people who are not the same as us. We fail to listen to the other side of the argument and beliefs become polarized. Intolerance and extremism flourish. The human race has survived by making binary decisions, but such thinking might also destroy us. We may be programmed to think in black and white but rainbow thinking is the key to our cognitive future.
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'Fascinating, important and entirely convincing.' SIR PHILIP PULLMAN