The Self Illusion by Bruce Hood

In this mind-shattering book, you will bump up against some startling facts about consciousness that will shake your sense of self and give rise to a new humility. And, that’s always a good thing, I think.

Bruce Hood is a developmental psychologist who conducts research into how children develop a sense of self. Babies aren’t born self-conscious creatures. They aren’t even aware of the most basic identifiers such as whether they are a boy or girl, let alone how boys and girls are supposed to behave. So, how do they learn who they are? And, why do they even need to in the first place?

Across the fields of child development, neuroscience, behavioural economics, social psychology, and cross-cultural studies, the results are piling up. Our sense of self is a construction that arises out of the human brain and its trillions of neural connections. We perceive ourselves and the world incompletely and, yet, we remain unaware that we do so. We are more easily persuaded than we think, we are more susceptible to social pressure and mob-mind than we realize, and our integrity is far more shaky than our belief in it is.

I bet you’re thinking something like “Other people may be like that, but I’m made of slightly sterner stuff”. This little book will disarm you slowly. Crammed full with insight and evidence, The Self Illusion gets to the core of what it means to be human. We are, first and foremost, social beings.

Reviewed by Spot

Catalogue Link: The Self Illusion