Sunday, April 3, 2011

How The Mind Works

Last night I watched David Brooks discuss his new book The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement on CSPAN.  It is about how our unconscious mind influences our intelligence, character and biases.  He also discusses innovation and why we make certain choices. 

One of many interesting points, he says a group was given a math problem to solve. They were in the same room and solved it in under10 minutes. A second group was given the same math problem, but they were working via email, no face-to-face contact. The second group solved the problem, but it took over 30 minutes. His point is face-to-face communication is usually far more productive, if the group dynamics are right. 

Mr. Brooks is an interesting man with an interesting idea.  He spent years researching this and talked to numerous experts. From my perspective, he does an excellent job relating his findings to non-experts like me.

It is worth watching. He talks for about 45 minutes. You can stop after the Q&A session starts. For those of you that do not know, David Brooks is a columnist for the “New York Times.”  The link is: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/TheSoc.

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