WGBH Forum Network; Shankar Vedantam: The Hidden Brain
Description:
Washington Post columnist Shankar Vedantam discusses his book The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives.The hidden brain is Vedantams shorthand for a host of brain functions, emotional responses, and cognitive processes that happen outside of our conscious awareness, but that have a decisive effect on how we behave. The hidden brain has its finger on the scale when we make all of our most complex and important decisionsit decides who we fall in love with, whether we should convict someone of murder, or which way to run when someone yells fire!Vedantam, longtime author of the Washington Posts popular Department of Human Behavior column, takes us on a tour of this phenomenon and explores its consequences. Using original reporting that combines the latest scientific research with narratives that take readers from the American campaign trail to terrorist indoctrination camps, Vedantam illuminates the dark recesses of our minds while making an argument about how we can compensate for our blind spotsand what happens when we don't.
