The Wisest One in the Room - by Thomas Gilovich & Lee Ross (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Renowned psychologists describe the five most useful insights from social psychology that will help make you "wise" wise about why we behave the way we do, and wise about how to use that knowledge to understand others and change ourselves for the better.When faced with a challenge, we often turn to those we trust for words of wisdom. Friends, relatives, and colleagues: someone with the best advice about how to boost sales, the most useful insights into raising children, or the sharpest take on a political issue. In The Wisest One in the Room, renowned social psychologists Thomas Gilovich and Lee Ross ask: Why? What do these people know? What are the foundations of their wisdom? And, as professors and researchers who specialize in the study of human behavior, they wonder: What general principles of human psychology are they drawing on to reach these conclusions? They find that wisdom, unlike intelligence, demands some insight into people--their hopes, fears, passions, and drives. It's true for the executive running a Fortune 500 company, the candidate seeking public office, the artist trying to create work that will speak to the ages, or the single parent trying to get a child through the tumultuous adolescent years. To be wise, they discover, one must be psych-wise when dealing with everyday challenges. In The Wisest One in the Room Gilovich and Ross show that to answer any kind of behavioral question, it is essential to understand the details--especially the hidden and subtle details--of the situational forces acting upon us. Understanding these forces is the key to becoming wiser in the way we understand the people and events we encounter, and wiser in the way we deal with the challenges that are sure to come our way. With the lessons gleaned here, you can learn the key to becoming "the wisest one in the room."

Review Quotes

"The wisest ones in the room are, in fact, Tom Gilovich and Lee Ross. This is a powerful book that brings the best of psychology to bear on the way we live our lives."

About the Author

Thomas Gilovich is a professor of psychology at Cornell University and author of The Wisest One in the Room (with Lee Ross), How We Know What Isn't So, Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes, and Social Psychology. He lives in Ithaca, New York.

Lee Ross is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and co-founder of the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiations. He is the author of The Wisest One in the Room (with Thomas Gilovich), The Person and the Situation, and Human Inference.