The Science of Fear: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn't--and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger by Daniel GardnerMy review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
As someone who suffers from anxiety and fear problems that can be pretty debilitating at times, it was looking forward to reading this book to see if there were any ideas that could help me recognize and alleviate my fears. Gardner focuses on the psychological aspects of fear, quoting at lengths from researchers and their experiments. While he does bury the reader at times in numbers and studies, he narrows his thesis down to humans having split personalities: the head, thoughtful and rational, and the gut, impulsive and reckless. In this sense, it is the flipside to Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink. In that book, the gut was responsible for good decisions, in this book the gut the gut takes all information at face value and ratchets up the fear. Gardner is successful with presenting his ideas, but the scope is somewhat narrow, as he focuses on the psychological and it would have been interesting if he could have included some neurological research about how gut and head co-exist and conflict within the brain.
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