Mind over Money: The Psychology of Money and How to Use It Better

Disappointing because of author’s bias
This book is supposed to be about the psychology of money, and to do it justice, it does cover many psychological experiments on this issue. What I found very distracting was that the author, instead of objectively presenting the data in a scientific and unbiased manner, is continually giving her ethical, moral and political opinions over the results. For example, she describes an experiment in which medical students, over their four years of medical school, eventually develop a negative perspective towards poor patients. Once she mentions the results, she immediately states that this attitude developed by the medical students is reprehensible and hopefully the medical students nowadays ( the study was done a decade or more ago) have changed. Why does she assume this? Has she dealt with poor patient populations for four years the way that the medical students have? How can she be in any position to judge their experience with poor patients other that using her preconceived notion that poor patient populations are identical to affluent patient populations. In another example she describes a functional MRI study in which subjects demonstrated activity in the brain associated with the recognition of a member of the same species when shown a picture of a rich person, but when shown the picture of a homeless person, the area of the brain associated with disgust showed activity. With these results, she proceeds to pontificate that the subjects did not see the homeless man as human at all; then she proceeds to associate these results with the way that nazis dehumanized Jews by seeing them as disgusting not totally human others. What I see in the results ( as described by the author) and I believe is the only conclusion that can be made, is that pictures of homeless people caused disgust to the subjects, not that they did not see them as human. It is like saying if they showed us a picture of someone vomiting and the area of our brain activated was disgust, we would not consider the vomiting person a human being. She also, ridiculously in a supposedly scientific book, continually makes reference to political perspectives and opinions. She expresses opprobrium to any “ conservative” or “ capitalistic” view and gives obvious praise to any “ liberal” and “progressive” view. She even goes out of her way to mention Trump negatively twice.Fortunately I have a science background ( I am a physician) so I can easily see through the author’s egregious manipulation of data; but how many general readers will see thorough the author’s agenda? If the author wants to write about her political, social or utopian views, I think that would be fine; what I find pathetic is that instead, she chooses to use the facade of a scientific subject to give her opinions on morality, ethics and politics. I can see this is a growing trend. Many history and general non-fiction works written now are deeply infused with the author’s opinions and perspectives.Instead of calling her book “ Mind over Money” she should have called it “ My opinions”.

Useful and amusing
I really enjoyed this book. Lots of experiments with fascinating insights into how humans reason (or not) about money. I was surprised numerous times with the outcomes of experiments. The author has provided some quick tips for better money handling.

Better off just reading the other research from the source …
References other research more than revealing anything new. Better off just reading the other research from the source in a book like “Thinking: Fast and Slow”

You need to understand money to maintain real wealth
Very informative, constructs a logical story for Antony investing long-term or short-term, to gain a better understanding of global markets and money.

Wollen Sie sichere Rezepte, wie Sie sich laufend selber überlisten können? Wollen Sie wissen, wie Sie laufend von Gut- und Schlechtmenschen überlistet werden? Dann lesen Sie Claudia Hammonds hervorragend geschriebenes Buch. Wetten, dass noch nie eine so unglaublich grosse Anzahl wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse so dicht, so augenzwinkernd und so herrlich amüsant serviert bekommen haben!

Claudia Hammond has a easy writing style that makes the psychology here easy to understand . Plenty of research that is referenced and well documented. Now I know why some things have worked for me (and some that have not !)