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1-Page Summary of The Influential Mind

Overview

In today’s world, there are any number of books that claim to help people improve themselves and their lives. These books include magical thinking, autosuggestion and catchy mantras like “if you believe it, you can be it.” But many of these self-help books underestimate the power of human nature – how resistant we are to change.

Just like how an old computer wouldn’t be well-suited to running the latest apps, our brains are hardwired in ways that can make it difficult to start thinking in bold new ways. For this reason, the field of neuroscience can point us in the right direction for managing difficult or stubborn people, and getting them to change their bad habits. In these key points, you’ll find out what not to do when someone stubbornly refuses to believe the truth; how one grumpy employee can ruin the mood of an entire team; and how you can make people think they’re changing their own bad habits.

Big Idea #1: People aren’t very flexible in their ways, and this rigidity is hard-wired into our brains.

We all have been influenced by our friends, the news or popular beliefs at one point in time. We even tend to copy mannerisms and behaviors of those we admire.

Once we make up our minds about things, it can be very hard to change them.

We tend to be inflexible in our thinking and behavior. This is true for both life and work: even when we’ve had negative experiences with certain behaviors, we don’t change them. For example, traders on the floor of the stock exchange should be quick to change their routines when new information points to new alternatives that are more profitable, but they don’t seem to catch on.

In a 2014 study, 50 traders were asked to make 100 consecutive investment decisions. Each time they chose the high-risk stock, they received information about the current dividend and had a chance to change their decision. When the dividend was revealed to be high, participants stuck with their choice; however, when it was revealed to be low, they ignored that warning sign and persisted in choosing the high-risk option. This indicates that once people decide on something, they tend not to change their minds regardless of what else is presented. Researchers believe this inflexibility is programmed into our brains because during this experiment brain activity was measured while participants made these decisions.

When people make a decision and then receive information that contradicts their choice, their brain activity drops significantly. This suggests that when people commit to a decision, there is some sort of defense mechanism preventing them from facing the fact that they made the wrong choice.

How can you make someone change their mind? Let’s find out.

Big Idea #2: Certain prejudices die hard, and the best way to defeat them is to present new ideas.

For a moment, imagine that you’re a pediatrician and you meet parents who don’t believe their child should be vaccinated for measles, mumps and rubella. You explain how safe it is to do so, but the parents say they’ve heard that the vaccine can cause autism in children.

Some people have a prejudice against those who are overweight. However, it’s not easy to get rid of that prejudice because it has become one of the most common prejudices in society.

Even though the idea has been thoroughly debunked, there is still a link between vaccines and autism. The link goes back to 1998 when Andrew Wakefield published his research in “The Lancet”. He concluded that the vaccine could cause neuronal damage such as autism. However, subsequent research showed that he was wrong. Nonetheless, the original report continued to get attention which led parents to stop vaccinating their children which resulted in more measles outbreaks. In 2013 and 2014, measles cases tripled from about 150 cases per year to over 600 cases per year in America.