Book Review : 59 Seconds - Richard Wiseman

This is the second Richard Wiseman book I read (the first being Quirkology) and it was as good as I expected it to be. Now that can mean any number of things so let me just clarify that I really enjoyed it.

I am a big fan of science and psychology and love discovering weird and wonderful aspects of the way we behave, act and react and this book was perfect as it was full of very interesting stuff. But where 59 Seconds differs from Quirkology, is that in this book there is practical advice given on the strength of the studies and experiments that are explained in the book.

The chapters are broken into various aspects of human behaviour/experience, like Happiness and Motivation. And there are also social based chapters like Relationships and Parenting (for me the Parenting chapter was especially eyeopening).

In each chapter, common self-help myths are debunked and shown, not only to be incorrect or inaccurate but also explanations as to why. This last part is key as otherwise it would be one just another book pushing another point of view. But this book has science on its side. The advice in this book is not waffle from a puffed up, overpaid guru, but is advice as a result of detailed studies.

The 59 Seconds refers to the amount of time you need to apply the findings from these studies to help you. I did feel that this was stretched a bit for some aspects and for some ideas (i.e. The Big Five Personalities) I would have liked to have had a 'further reading' or 'more information' section at the back as there is so much more to it than could have been covered in the book.

Richard was also very good in making it clear that in some studies, the results could not be taken at face value as they may not be a result of causation but of correlation. In some cases, he followed up with another study that tried to test these and remove the doubt. This not only highlights an important aspect of the scientific method but also shows that Richard (and the scientists involved in the studies) is being careful to avoid letting bias influence the results.

Richard clearly has a big interest in these topics and has covered a lot of ground so that we don't have to. Like I said I would have liked a further reading type section but there are extensive notes and I'm sure I will be able to get more details from there.

It is a good book, from a practical point of view (I have applied some of the tips already to great effect) but also from a purely intellectual point of view. After the reading the book, it is clear from what Richard has told us, we are a strange bunch of people and regardless of what we already know about ourselves, there is much more to learn.