Description
Book SynopsisHow our once-helpful instincts got hijacked by our garish modern world.
Trade Review"The concept of a supernormal stimulus is essential to understanding the influence of evolution on organisms in artificial environments—which in the case of humans is almost every aspect of our surroundings. In this clear and thoughtful book, Deirdre Barrett offers the first comprehensive overview of the many ways in which we stimulate ourselves in ways that the forces of evolution never anticipated." -- Steven Pinker, Harvard College Professor, Harvard University, and author of How the Mind Works and Enlightenment Now
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Supernormal Stimuli is just super. The reader is shown how by understanding our evolutionary past we can see how our lives are guided today. This book is a great example of the ancient wisdom that to ‘know thyself’ is the key to the good life." -- John Ratey, MD, Associate Clinical Professor, Harvard Medical School, and author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain
"Deirdre Barrett’s new book is a super stimulus to our normal imagination. She shows us that biology will be our destiny if we do not recognize our inherited tendency to overvalue supernormal color, size, and taste. She travels effortlessly from the pioneers of ethology—the study of animal behavior—to our current exaggerated preoccupations with sex, food, and war. She lucidly helps us to see the ordinary in an extraordinary new light." -- David Spiegel, MD, Willson Professor and Associate Chair of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine
