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Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know Hardcover – February 2, 2021
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“THIS. This is the right book for right now. Yes, learning requires focus. But, unlearning and relearning requires much more—it requires choosing courage over comfort. In Think Again, Adam Grant weaves together research and storytelling to help us build the intellectual and emotional muscle we need to stay curious enough about the world to actually change it. I’ve never felt so hopeful about what I don’t know.”
—Brené Brown, Ph.D., #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dare to Lead
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Potential, Originals, and Give and Take examines the critical art of rethinking: learning to question your opinions and open other people's minds, which can position you for excellence at work and wisdom in life
Intelligence is usually seen as the ability to think and learn, but in a rapidly changing world, there's another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn. In our daily lives, too many of us favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. We listen to opinions that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard. We see disagreement as a threat to our egos, rather than an opportunity to learn. We surround ourselves with people who agree with our conclusions, when we should be gravitating toward those who challenge our thought process. The result is that our beliefs get brittle long before our bones. We think too much like preachers defending our sacred beliefs, prosecutors proving the other side wrong, and politicians campaigning for approval--and too little like scientists searching for truth. Intelligence is no cure, and it can even be a curse: being good at thinking can make us worse at rethinking. The brighter we are, the blinder to our own limitations we can become.
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant is an expert on opening other people's minds--and our own. As Wharton's top-rated professor and the bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take, he makes it one of his guiding principles to argue like he's right but listen like he's wrong. With bold ideas and rigorous evidence, he investigates how we can embrace the joy of being wrong, bring nuance to charged conversations, and build schools, workplaces, and communities of lifelong learners. You'll learn how an international debate champion wins arguments, a Black musician persuades white supremacists to abandon hate, a vaccine whisperer convinces concerned parents to immunize their children, and Adam has coaxed Yankees fans to root for the Red Sox. Think Again reveals that we don't have to believe everything we think or internalize everything we feel. It's an invitation to let go of views that are no longer serving us well and prize mental flexibility over foolish consistency. If knowledge is power, knowing what we don't know is wisdom.
- Reading age1 year and up
- Print length320 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions6.25 x 1.1 x 9.35 inches
- PublisherViking
- Publication dateFebruary 2, 2021
- ISBN-101984878107
- ISBN-13978-1984878106
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Renowned Wharton professor Grant spotlights one of the most important and impactful themes of our time: questioning one's own deeply held beliefs. Grant frames true knowledge as not knowing everything, but rather, listening as if we knew nothing at all in this intrepid book that is what our present moment requires."
—Newsweek, "Our 21 Favorite Books of 2021"
“In a world of aggressive certitude, Adam Grant’s latest book is a refreshing mandate for humble open-mindedness. Think Again offers a particularly powerful case for rethinking what we already know . . . that is not just a useful lesson; it could be a vital one.”
—Financial Times
“In his latest book, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, [Grant] is in vintage form.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Think Again delivers smart advice on unlearning assumptions and opening ourselves up to curiosity and humility.”
—The Washington Post
“Adam Grant’s latest book pushes us to reconsider, rethink, reevaluate and reimagine our beliefs, thoughts, and identities and get to the core of why we believe what we do, why it is so important to us, and why we are steadfast to hold on to those ideas and beliefs. . . . It teaches us to stop digging our heels and doubling down and consider other people’s points of view so that we may grow our own. Once again, Adam Grant succeeded in turning our very way of thinking upside down as he pushes us to examine the obvious.”
—Forbes
"This book blends psychology and self-help to prove how doubt, failing, and rethinking are instrumental to improving ourselves and our world. . . . In three sections, he outlines why we struggle to embrace feedback, how we can help others rethink effectively, and how our communities can shift to encourage rethinking."
—Business Insider
“Grant is a born communicator—engaging and impossibly articulate. . . . Think Again . . . digs into the synaptic weirdness of why we think how we do and how we know what (we think) we know. The bottom line: In a world that’s constantly changing, we could all benefit from deliberately reassessing our cherished opinions.”
—Goodreads user
“Adam Grant believes that keeping an open mind is a teachable skill. And no one could teach this hugely valuable skill better than he does in this wonderful read. The striking insights of this brilliant book are guaranteed to make you rethink your opinions and your most important decisions.”
—Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winner in economics and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Thinking, Fast and Slow
“THIS. This is the right book for right now. Yes, learning requires focus. But, unlearning and relearning requires much more - it requires choosing courage over comfort. In Think Again, Adam Grant weaves together research and storytelling to help us build the intellectual and emotional muscle we need to stay curious enough about the world to actually change it. I’ve never felt so hopeful about what I don’t know.”
—Brené Brown, Ph.D., #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dare to Lead
“Adam Grant makes a captivating argument that if we have the humility and curiosity to reconsider our beliefs, we can always reinvent ourselves. Think Again helped me learn about how great thinkers and achievers don’t let expertise or experience stand in the way of being perpetual students.”
—M. Night Shyamalan, director of The Sixth Sense and Split
“Readers will find common ground in many of his compelling arguments (ideologies, sports rivals), making this a thought-provoking read.”
—Booklist
“[A] fast-paced account by a leading authority on the psychology of thinking.”
—Library Journal, (starred review)
“For anyone who wants to create a culture of learning and exploration at home, work or school, Grant distills complex research into a compelling case for why each of us should continually question old assumptions and embrace new ideas and perspectives.”
—Entrepreneur
“It’s the idea of flexibility and how to achieve it that I found most compelling in Think Again. As I read the book, I couldn’t help but reflect on the times I’d clung to an opinion past its expiration date or imagine what I might have learned from a debate, had I asked a question instead of hurling a rebuttal.”
—Behavioral Scientist
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
A Preacher, a Prosecutor, a Politician, and a Scientist Walk into Your Mind
Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
-George Bernard Shaw
You probably don't recognize his name, but Mike Lazaridis has had a defining impact on your life. From an early age, it was clear that Mike was something of an electronics wizard. By the time he turned four, he was building his own record player out of Legos and rubber bands. In high school, when his teachers had broken TVs, they called Mike to fix them. In his spare time, he built a computer and designed a better buzzer for high school quiz-bowl teams, which ended up paying for his first year of college. Just months before finishing his electrical engineering degree, Mike did what so many great entrepreneurs of his era would do: he dropped out of college. It was time for this son of immigrants to make his mark on the world.
Mike's first success came when he patented a device for reading the bar codes on movie film, which was so useful in Hollywood that it won an Emmy and an Oscar for technical achievement. That was small potatoes compared to his next big invention, which made his firm the fastest-growing company on the planet. Mike's flagship device quickly attracted a cult following, with loyal customers ranging from Bill Gates to Christina Aguilera. "It's literally changed my life," Oprah Winfrey gushed. "I cannot live without this." When he arrived at the White House, President Obama refused to relinquish his to the Secret Service.
Mike Lazaridis dreamed up the idea for the BlackBerry as a wireless communication device for sending and receiving emails. As of the summer of 2009, it accounted for nearly half of the U.S. smartphone market. By 2014, its market share had plummeted to less than 1 percent.
When a company takes a nosedive like that, we can never pinpoint a single cause of its downfall, so we tend to anthropomorphize it: BlackBerry failed to adapt. Yet adapting to a changing environment isn't something a company does-it's something people do in the multitude of decisions they make every day. As the cofounder, president, and co-CEO, Mike was in charge of all the technical and product decisions on the BlackBerry. Although his thinking may have been the spark that ignited the smartphone revolution, his struggles with rethinking ended up sucking the oxygen out of his company and virtually extinguishing his invention. Where did he go wrong?
Most of us take pride in our knowledge and expertise, and in staying true to our beliefs and opinions. That makes sense in a stable world, where we get rewarded for having conviction in our ideas. The problem is that we live in a rapidly changing world, where we need to spend as much time rethinking as we do thinking.
Rethinking is a skill set, but it's also a mindset. We already have many of the mental tools we need. We just have to remember to get them out of the shed and remove the rust.
Second Thoughts
With advances in access to information and technology, knowledge isn't just increasing. It's increasing at an increasing rate. In 2011, you consumed about five times as much information per day as you would have just a quarter century earlier. As of 1950, it took about fifty years for knowledge in medicine to double. By 1980, medical knowledge was doubling every seven years, and by 2010, it was doubling in half that time. The accelerating pace of change means that we need to question our beliefs more readily than ever before.
This is not an easy task. As we sit with our beliefs, they tend to become more extreme and more entrenched. I'm still struggling to accept that Pluto may not be a planet. In education, after revelations in history and revolutions in science, it often takes years for a curriculum to be updated and textbooks to be revised. Researchers have recently discovered that we need to rethink widely accepted assumptions about such subjects as Cleopatra's roots (her father was Greek, not Egyptian, and her mother's identity is unknown); the appearance of dinosaurs (paleontologists now think some tyrannosaurs had colorful feathers on their backs); and what's required for sight (blind people have actually trained themselves to "see"-sound waves can activate the visual cortex and create representations in the mind's eye, much like how echolocation helps bats navigate in the dark). Vintage records, classic cars, and antique clocks might be valuable collectibles, but outdated facts are mental fossils that are best abandoned.
We're swift to recognize when other people need to think again. We question the judgment of experts whenever we seek out a second opinion on a medical diagnosis. Unfortunately, when it comes to our own knowledge and opinions, we often favor feeling right over being right. In everyday life, we make many diagnoses of our own, ranging from whom we hire to whom we marry. We need to develop the habit of forming our own second opinions.
Imagine you have a family friend who's a financial adviser, and he recommends investing in a retirement fund that isn't in your employer's plan. You have another friend who's fairly knowledgeable about investing, and he tells you that this fund is risky. What would you do?
When a man named Stephen Greenspan found himself in that situation, he decided to weigh his skeptical friend's warning against the data available. His sister had been investing in the fund for several years, and she was pleased with the results. A number of her friends had been, too; although the returns weren't extraordinary, they were consistently in the double digits. The financial adviser was enough of a believer that he had invested his own money in the fund. Armed with that information, Greenspan decided to go forward. He made a bold move, investing nearly a third of his retirement savings in the fund. Before long, he learned that his portfolio had grown by 25 percent.
Then he lost it all overnight when the fund collapsed. It was the Ponzi scheme managed by Bernie Madoff.
Two decades ago my colleague Phil Tetlock discovered something peculiar. As we think and talk, we often slip into the mindsets of three different professions: preachers, prosecutors, and politicians. In each of these modes, we take on a particular identity and use a distinct set of tools. We go into preacher mode when our sacred beliefs are in jeopardy: we deliver sermons to protect and promote our ideals. We enter prosecutor mode when we recognize flaws in other people's reasoning: we marshal arguments to prove them wrong and win our case. We shift into politician mode when we're seeking to win over an audience: we campaign and lobby for the approval of our constituents. The risk is that we become so wrapped up in preaching that we're right, prosecuting others who are wrong, and politicking for support that we don't bother to rethink our own views.
When Stephen Greenspan and his sister made the choice to invest with Bernie Madoff, it wasn't because they relied on just one of those mental tools. All three modes together contributed to their ill-fated decision. When his sister told him about the money she and her friends had made, she was preaching about the merits of the fund. Her confidence led Greenspan to prosecute the friend who warned him against investing, deeming the friend guilty of "knee-jerk cynicism." Greenspan was in politician mode when he let his desire for approval sway him toward a yes-the financial adviser was a family friend whom he liked and wanted to please.
Any of us could have fallen into those traps. Greenspan says that he should've known better, though, because he happens to be an expert on gullibility. When he decided to go ahead with the investment, he had almost finished writing a book on why we get duped. Looking back, he wishes he had approached the decision with a different set of tools. He might have analyzed the fund's strategy more systematically instead of simply trusting in the results. He could have sought out more perspectives from credible sources. He would have experimented with investing smaller amounts over a longer period of time before gambling so much of his life's savings.
That would have put him in the mode of a scientist.
A Different Pair of Goggles
If you're a scientist by trade, rethinking is fundamental to your profession. You're paid to be constantly aware of the limits of your understanding. You're expected to doubt what you know, be curious about what you don't know, and update your views based on new data. In the past century alone, the application of scientific principles has led to dramatic progress. Biological scientists discovered penicillin. Rocket scientists sent us to the moon. Computer scientists built the internet.
But being a scientist is not just a profession. It's a frame of mind-a mode of thinking that differs from preaching, prosecuting, and politicking. We move into scientist mode when we're searching for the truth: we run experiments to test hypotheses and discover knowledge. Scientific tools aren't reserved for people with white coats and beakers, and using them doesn't require toiling away for years with a microscope and a petri dish. Hypotheses have as much of a place in our lives as they do in the lab. Experiments can inform our daily decisions. That makes me wonder: is it possible to train people in other fields to think more like scientists, and if so, do they end up making smarter choices?
Recently, a quartet of European researchers decided to find out. They ran a bold experiment with more than a hundred founders of Italian startups in technology, retail, furniture, food, health care, leisure, and machinery. Most of the founders' businesses had yet to bring in any revenue, making it an ideal setting to investigate how teaching scientific thinking would influence the bottom line.
The entrepreneurs arrived in Milan for a training program in entrepreneurship. Over the course of four months, they learned to create a business strategy, interview customers, build a minimum viable product, and then refine a prototype. What they didn't know was that they'd been randomly assigned to either a "scientific thinking" group or a control group. The training for both groups was identical, except that one was encouraged to view startups through a scientist's goggles. From that perspective, their strategy is a theory, customer interviews help to develop hypotheses, and their minimum viable product and prototype are experiments to test those hypotheses. Their task is to rigorously measure the results and make decisions based on whether their hypotheses are supported or refuted.
Over the following year, the startups in the control group averaged under $300 in revenue. The startups in the scientific thinking group averaged over $12,000 in revenue. They brought in revenue more than twice as fast-and attracted customers sooner, too. Why? The entrepreneurs in the control group tended to stay wedded to their original strategies and products. It was too easy to preach the virtues of their past decisions, prosecute the vices of alternative options, and politick by catering to advisers who favored the existing direction. The entrepreneurs who had been taught to think like scientists, in contrast, pivoted more than twice as often. When their hypotheses weren't supported, they knew it was time to rethink their business models.
What's surprising about these results is that we typically celebrate great entrepreneurs and leaders for being strong-minded and clear-sighted. They're supposed to be paragons of conviction: decisive and certain. Yet evidence reveals that when business executives compete in tournaments to price products, the best strategists are actually slow and unsure. Like careful scientists, they take their time so they have the flexibility to change their minds. I'm beginning to think decisiveness is overrated . . . but I reserve the right to change my mind.
Just as you don't have to be a professional scientist to reason like one, being a professional scientist doesn't guarantee that someone will use the tools of their training. Scientists morph into preachers when they present their pet theories as gospel and treat thoughtful critiques as sacrilege. They veer into politician terrain when they allow their views to be swayed by popularity rather than accuracy. They enter prosecutor mode when they're hell-bent on debunking and discrediting rather than discovering. After upending physics with his theories of relativity, Einstein opposed the quantum revolution: "To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself." Sometimes even great scientists need to think more like scientists.
Decades before becoming a smartphone pioneer, Mike Lazaridis was recognized as a science prodigy. In middle school, he made the local news for building a solar panel at the science fair and won an award for reading every science book in the public library. If you open his eighth-grade yearbook, you'll see a cartoon showing Mike as a mad scientist, with bolts of lightning shooting out of his head.
When Mike created the BlackBerry, he was thinking like a scientist. Existing devices for wireless email featured a stylus that was too slow or a keyboard that was too small. People had to clunkily forward their work emails to their mobile device in-boxes, and they took forever to download. He started generating hypotheses and sent his team of engineers off to test them. What if people could hold the device in their hands and type with their thumbs rather than their fingers? What if there was a single mailbox synchronized across devices? What if messages could be relayed through a server and appear on the device only after they were decrypted?
As other companies followed BlackBerry's lead, Mike would take their smartphones apart and study them. Nothing really impressed him until the summer of 2007, when he was stunned by the computing power inside the first iPhone. "They've put a Mac in this thing," he said. What Mike did next might have been the beginning of the end for the BlackBerry. If the BlackBerry's rise was due in large part to his success in scientific thinking as an engineer, its demise was in many ways the result of his failure in rethinking as a CEO.
As the iPhone skyrocketed onto the scene, Mike maintained his belief in the features that had made the BlackBerry a sensation in the past. He was confident that people wanted a wireless device for work emails and calls, not an entire computer in their pocket with apps for home entertainment. As early as 1997, one of his top engineers wanted to add an internet browser, but Mike told him to focus only on email. A decade later, Mike was still certain that a powerful internet browser would drain the battery and strain the bandwidth of wireless networks. He didn't test the alternative hypotheses.
Product details
- Publisher : Viking (February 2, 2021)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 320 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1984878107
- ISBN-13 : 978-1984878106
- Reading age : 1 year and up
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.25 x 1.1 x 9.35 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,067 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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About the author
ADAM GRANT is an organizational psychologist at Wharton, where he has been the top-rated professor for seven straight years. A #1 New York Times bestselling author and one of TED’s most popular speakers, his books have sold millions of copies and been translated into 45 languages, his talks have been viewed over 35 million times, and his podcasts Re:Thinking and WorkLife have been downloaded over 65 million times. His pioneering research has inspired people to rethink fundamental assumptions about motivation, generosity, creativity, and potential. Adam has been recognized as one of the world’s 10 most influential management thinkers and Fortune’s 40 under 40, and has received distinguished scientific achievement awards from the American Psychological Association, the Academy of Management, and the National Science Foundation. His viral piece on languishing was the most-read New York Times article of 2021 and the most-saved article across platforms. He received his BA from Harvard and his PhD from the University of Michigan, and he is a former junior Olympic springboard diver and magician. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife Allison and their three children.
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Since the time of Russell, what’s become known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect has been experimentally validated. Research shows—and personal experience confirms—that those who are the least knowledgeable in a subject tend to be the ones who overestimate their own knowledge and abilities, while those that are full of doubt know enough about the topic to better gauge the extent of their ignorance.
And so the telltale sign of a lack of knowledge is, paradoxically, arrogance and overconfidence, whereas in those with actual expertise you often see the opposite: humility, doubt, and open-mindedness.
Far more people fall on the side of overconfidence. This is due, at least in part, to widespread access to the internet, where people can quickly read articles and watch videos (of varying quality and credibility) on any conceivable topic, creating the impression that one has attained deep knowledge in a subject when only a very superficial understanding has been gained.
Overcoming this unfortunate state of affairs is the subject of organizational psychologist Adam Grant’s latest book, Think Again, which seeks to show us how to overcome our own unjustified overconfidence by developing the habits of mind that force us to challenge our own beliefs and, when necessary, to change them.
Grant begins by telling us that when we think and talk, we often slip into the mindset of three distinct professions: preachers, prosecutors, and politicians. We become preachers when the unwarranted strength of our convictions compels us to convert others to our way of thinking; prosecutors when our sole aim is to discredit the beliefs of others; and politicians when we seek to win favors from our chosen constituency.
What all of these mindsets have in common is the assumption that our beliefs are infallible, and that no one could possibly have anything to teach us. Trapped in the prison cell of our own dogma, we don’t set out to learn anything or update our own beliefs; our job is simply to convert others to our way of thinking because, of course, we are right.
These habits of mental imprisonment can happen to anyone at any level of knowledge or experience, and intelligence itself has actually been shown at times to be a disadvantage, as those with high IQs have the most difficulty updating their beliefs. As Dunning himself said, “The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club.” You may think all of your beliefs are correct (otherwise you wouldn’t hold them), but there is little doubt that at least some (probably many) of them are false or oversimplified. If your mind remains closed, you’ll never discover which of these beliefs require updating.
The key question, then, is this: If most of us are unaware of the extent of our own ignorance, how can we hope to overcome our own resistance to change?
The first step, as Grant recommends, is to detach your sense of self from any specific beliefs. If you identify with a specific set of fixed core beliefs, you will be far less likely to change your mind in the face of new evidence or better reasoning.
Grant recommends instead to ground your sense of self in mental flexibility, taking pride in the fact that you’re willing to change your mind and update your beliefs. To achieve this, you must consider all of your beliefs to be provisional hypotheses and then seek to disprove them, in the process becoming more knowledgeable by being wrong more often. Using this approach, you will have discovered the ideal mindset for personal development and learning—not the mindset of a preacher, prosecutor, or politician, but the mindset of a scientist.
The scientist, Grant tells us, has one overarching concern: the truth. The individual that adopts a scientific mindset will be equally motivated to challenge their own beliefs as the beliefs of others, testing hypotheses against the evidence and continually updating their beliefs in the process.
Of course, as Grant points out, being an actual practicing scientist does not guarantee the adoption of this mindset. There are plenty of dogmatic scientists that don’t abide by the principles of their own training. The scientific mindset is not, as Grant is describing it, the mindset adopted by scientists necessarily, but rather the ideal mindset that follows the principles of science as an open-ended pursuit of knowledge that is constantly updated in the face of new evidence.
In one interesting study described by Grant (the book is filled with fascinating examples and studies of a similar sort), two groups of entrepreneurs were provided training. One group was taught the principles of scientific thinking while the control group was not. The researchers found that the scientific-thinking group “brought in revenue twice as fast—and attracted customers sooner, too.” As Grant wrote:
“The entrepreneurs in the control group tended to stay wedded to their original strategies and products. It was too easy to preach the virtues of their past decisions, prosecute the vices of alternative positions, and politick by catering to advisers who favored the existing direction. The entrepreneurs who had been taught to think like scientists, in contrast, pivoted more than twice as often.”
Individuals that enjoy the prospect of being wrong—and so expand their knowledge more often—tend to be more successful and tend to hold more accurate, nuanced beliefs. It’s not that they lack confidence, it’s that their confidence is of a different nature. Flexible-minded individuals have confidence in their ability to learn and to unlearn beliefs that are outdated or are no longer serving them well. Their confidence lies in their ability to change and to adapt rather than in strength of their convictions concerning any single set of beliefs. As Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman put it, “Being wrong is the only way I feel sure I’ve learned anything.”
There is definitely a line to walk, and the reader may wonder just how far they should take this advice. To constantly question every one of your beliefs would result in paralyzing doubt. Sometimes, it is the strength of our convictions that give us the energy and perseverance to pursue and accomplish our goals. So this is surely a balancing act, and while we all have to find the sweet spot between timidity and arrogance, conviction and doubt, there is little question that too many of us tend toward the extreme of overconfidence.
After showing us how to become better rethinkers ourselves, in the second part of the book we learn how to open other people’s minds. Grant shows us how world-class debaters win debates, how a black musician talked white supremicists out of their bigoted views, and how doctors persuaded anti-vaxxers to get their children immunized.
In every case, we learn the same lesson in the art of persuasion: to change someone else’s mind, you have to help them find their own internal motivation to change.
This is not easy. The mindsets we typically slip into tend to have the opposite effect. Act as a preacher, and people will resist being told what to think (even if the facts are on your side). Act as a prosecutor, and people will resent your condescension and will become further entrenched in their original views. Act as a politician, and you’re just saying what you think people want to hear.
None of these approaches are effective as tools of persuasion. It turns out that your best bet is to adopt, once again, the mindset of a scientist—and to try to get others to do the same. This will transform disagreements from battles to be won and lost into a collaborative pursuit of the truth.
The most skilled negotiators, debaters, and persuaders all use similar tactics: they first find common ground and points of agreement, ask more questions to get the other person thinking deeper, present a limited number of stronger points, and introduce complexity into the topic to move the person’s thinking away from black-and-white and into shades of gray.
It turns out that complexifying the issue is always key. Most people exhibit what psychologists call binary bias, or the “basic human tendency to seek clarity and closure by simplifying a complex continuum into two categories.” If you can show people—through the use of skillful questioning—that the topic they think they understand deeply (Dunning-Kruger Effect) is actually far more complex than they originally thought with more than two distinct positions, then you can plant the seeds of doubt that eventually lead to real change.
One example Grant uses is climate change. We tend to think that people fall into one of two categories—climate-deniers or alarmists—when in fact there are six distinct positions people can take from dismissive, doubtful, or disengaged to cautious, concerned, or alarmed—with shades of nuance in between. It’s often the recognition of this complexity that can get people talking and engaged in productive debate.
In the final part of the book, Grant shows us how to use the skills of rethinking to engage in more productive political debates, to become better teachers, and to create more innovative cultures at work. Grant provides a host of compelling examples, but my favorite is the middle-school history teacher who gets her students to think like scientists by rewriting textbook chapters that failed to cover important historical events in sufficient depth. Her students pick a time period and topic that interests them and then, through independent research, rewrite the textbook chapter, in the process cultivating the skill to always question what they read. This is a far better approach than simply delivering a lecture and forcing students to regurgitate the information on a test.
Bertrand Russell was once asked in an interview if he was willing to die for any of his beliefs. His response was this: “Of course not. After all, I may be wrong.”
It’s a shame that most people adopt the opposite attitude, and Grant’s latest book will go a long way to remedying this. Think Again is a timely exploration of the importance of humility and the capacity to rethink your own positions while helping others do the same.
But in the spirit of the book—and to “complexify” the topic—it’s worth considering when displaying doubt and humility might actually backfire. Grant wonders this himself, and points out, for example, that displays of doubt and humility have been shown to have negative effects in the workplace in those who have not already established their competence. It can also be less effective when delivering a presentation to an already sympathetic audience. Does Grant downplay the frequency of these types of situations?
Another area where excessive doubt and humility might backfire is an area that Grant fails to consider in much depth at all: arguing with bad faith actors. When discussing politics, Grant seems to assume that in most cases both sides are equally motivated by the truth, and that each side has simply failed to understand the complexity of the topic or the merits of the other side.
But we know that this is not always the case. In politics, people have a host of motives when arguing that sometimes have very little to do with the truth: the desire for power, money, influence, and sometimes simply the desire to offend and get a rise out of people. Grant does not cover how to handle these situations—or how to identify them—and it is highly unlikely that the tactics of the book will work in these situations.
Additionally, it seems that the masses respond better to confidence when electing political representatives, because we know that Trump was not elected based on his knowledge or competence—and certainly not on his humility.
When dealing with bad faith actors, perhaps a good strategy would be to start with a simple question, one Grant mentions in the book: “What evidence would change your mind?” If the answer is “nothing,” then it’s probably best to walk away. Either way, a chapter or section on bad faith actors and the questions you can ask to identify them would have been a welcome addition to the book.
But of course, this book is not the final word on the topic, and Grant wouldn’t want it to be. As we gain better evidence and more experience, it’s our responsibility to continually rethink and update our beliefs. As Russell said, “If you’re certain of anything, you’re certainly wrong, because nothing deserves absolute certainty.”
I bought Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant because I’ve learned a lot from his books, blogs, and articles. I expected the same level of lucid writing and penetrating insight that I got from Originals and Give and Take. For me, this was the best book yet.
Think Again is the best book Grant has written for business leaders. That VUCA world we keep hearing about requires flexibility and unlearning. Most of the books I’ve seen on the kind of learning you need for today’s world focus on corporate cultures, on creating “learning institutions.” Think Again is different. Think Again is about the learning culture between your ears. Here’s how Grant states the purpose of the book.
“This book is an invitation to let go of knowledge and opinions that are no longer serving you well, and to anchor your sense of self in flexibility rather than consistency. If you can master the art of rethinking, I believe you’ll be better positioned for success at work and happiness in life. Thinking again can help you generate new solutions to old problems and revisit old solutions to new problems. It’s a path to learning more from the people around you and living with fewer regrets. A hallmark of wisdom is knowing when it’s time to abandon some of your most treasured tools—and some of the most cherished parts of your identity.”
The first section of the book is about opening your mind. It’s about what “thinking again” really means. The second part of the book looks at ways to encourage others to think again or to think along with you. The third section is about creating communities of lifelong learners.
A key to getting the most from this book is the different mindsets that Philip Tetlock discovered. Here’s Grant’s brief description from Think Again.
“Two decades ago my colleague Phil Tetlock discovered something peculiar. As we think and talk, we often slip into the mindsets of three different professions: preachers, prosecutors, and politicians. In each of these modes, we take on a particular identity and use a distinct set of tools. We go into preacher mode when our sacred beliefs are in jeopardy: we deliver sermons to protect and promote our ideals. We enter prosecutor mode when we recognize flaws in other people’s reasoning: we marshal arguments to prove them wrong and win our case. We shift into politician mode when we’re seeking to win over an audience: we campaign and lobby for the approval of our constituents. The risk is that we become so wrapped up in preaching that we’re right, prosecuting others who are wrong, and politicking for support that we don’t bother to rethink our own views.”
Grant uses Tetlock’s terms for the different mindsets. I found digging around on the web and in the scholarly literature for more on the mindsets helped me squeeze even more value from this book.
This is not a book where you can skip around and get much value. The description of thinking in the first section sets up later lessons and insights. The second section builds on the first and applies the lessons to debate and persuasion. The third section builds on the first two. It extends the basic mindset idea to groups.
Suggestion. As a warmup for Think Again, take a minute to read a Farnam Street blog post: "Jeff Bezos on Why People that Are Often Right Change Their Minds Often."
In A Nutshell
Think Again is an excellent book that will give you techniques you can use to think more effectively at work and everywhere else. You’ll get more from the book if you do a little bit of homework. Learn about Tetlock’s mindsets and the general idea of changing your mind as a way of thinking.
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Reviewed in Germany on March 8, 2024