Danielle Steussy

Spring Quarter 2010

Book Review:
A Mind of its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives by Cordelia Fine

Overview

When you think about, and really think about it, the brain is absolutely incredible. It can
process language and construct comprehendible sentences. It can calculate math
equations and give us a number to spew out. It allows us to ponder the everyday wonders
of our world. Even more amazingly, it creates emotions and trigger tears, laughs, and
other bodily functions. We can look at a pencil on the table and tell our brain that we
need to pick it up. Magically, it gives us the ability to do so. Yes, the brain is a mystically
complex and sophisticated piece of human functionality. As wonderful as it is, does the
brain actually have a dark side? Is there a part of the brain that mysteriously plans our
actions for us behind our backs? Dr. Cordelia Fine argues for the human brain having
such a devious side in her book A Mind of its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and
Deceives.
Dr. Cordelia Fine, an academic psychologist, explores the dark side of the brain
and all the way it distorts situations and deceives its own self. She separates the human
from the actual brain, addressing the brain as a completely separate entity from the body,
and something that humans have limited control over. The brain manipulates information
from its surroundings to create a completely different reality for itself. It finds ways to
twist our thoughts and essentially do whatever it wants. As Dr. Fine puts it, “your brain is
vainglorious. It’s emotional and immoral. It deludes you. It is pigheaded, secretive, and
weak-willed. Oh, and it’s also a bigot”(2).
Throughout the book, Dr. Fine examines each of these less than flattering parts of
the brain—the vain brain, the emotional brain, the immoral brain, the deluded brain, the
pigheaded brain, the secretive brain, the weak-willed brain, the bigoted brain, and finally
the vulnerable brain. The vain brain essentially tells us that we are simply the best. We as
individuals are unique, which is true, but the vain brain takes this egotistical thought
further. The brain even goes as far to convince us that our weaknesses are ordinary while
our strengths are extraordinary. As Dr. Fine puts it, “we believe that our weaknesses are
so common that they are really just part and parcel of normal human fallibility, while our
strengths are rare and special”(7).
We seem to have control over our emotions, but Dr. Fine claims that “it is often
our emotions that are wearing the pants”(33). The emotional brain affects how we
perceive the world around us, and even our own world within. The emotional brain then
has a tremendous influence on our immoral brain, allowing us to form our own moral
verdicts on the basis of how we feel about certain situations. This can ultimately create a
bias and wreak havoc on how we judge the world around us.
The deluded brain allows for these biases created by the immoral brain to lead us
away from the truth. Humans draw correlations out of what they want to see, not
necessarily what the evidence says. As a result, we are quite delusional about the world.
 The pigheaded brain “evades, twists, discounts, misinterprets, even makes up
evidence—all so that we can retain the satisfying sense of being in the right”(106). We
surround ourselves with what we want to hear and what reinforces our beliefs and
justifies our opinions.
The secretive brain is essentially the unconscious or the part of the brain that
makes decisions quietly and without our permission. Luckily, we seem to be fine with
many of the decisions because most require an autopilot anyway. Dr. Fine reminds one to
“never forget that your unconscious is smarter than you, faster than you, and more
powerful than you. It may even control you. You will never know all of its secrets”(150).
Dr. Fine compared the weak-willed brain to a prima donna—extremely
temperamental and capricious. It takes a significant amount of effort to control our brains
and can easily be drained by emotions and intense concentration. The will of the brain is
weakened when it is spread too thin, leading it to give in to many situations instead of
persisting. It’s not that it can’t continue to think and concentrate—the brain simply can’t
handle that much stress.
Finally, the brain is bigoted. Despite how nonjudgmental a person claims to be,
the mind is still full of stereotypes that direct the emotions and actions of that person. We
see exactly what we want to see which consequently owns our behaviors and even the
behaviors of others.
Despite all these seemingly horrible sides of our brains that we have limited
control over, if any at all. The brain is vulnerable. If we are aware and knowledgeable
about the ways that it manipulates and deceives us, we can guard against the evils within
and avoid the environments that create biases and irrational emotions.

Contribution to knowledge

A Mind of Its Own is brilliantly written with the combination of humor, wit, and scientific
evidence about how the brain works when we aren’t looking. The entire book feels like a
conversation between Dr. Fine and the reader. She shares intimate details of her own
humorous life, making the reader want to return the favor. She makes the material
personal and makes a dull and detailed subject incredibly fascinating. It appeals to people
of all ages and backgrounds. Despite the sophisticated use of vocabulary and rhetoric, all
academic backgrounds would thoroughly enjoy this book. Furthermore, it’s as
informative as it is incredibly entertaining.

Major attributes and weaknesses

A Mind of Its Own gives so much to the reader besides just knowledge. The readability of
the writing is enough to stand on its own. The humor and wit in Dr. Fine’s writing bring a
whole new meaning and interest to the topic of cognitive psychology. Even the tiniest of
details are enough to make the reader stop and laugh out loud. For instance, when talking
about an experiment, Dr. Fine says “the experiment should have had the male clinicians
blushing into their beards. (It was the dawn of the seventies and they were
psychoanalysts: of course they had beards)”(87). The humor saves the book from
becoming an unbearably boring read about lengthy detailed experiments. The immense
amount of detail from the research itself is balanced with personality and prose
sophistication, a rare feat for an academic.
What I loved most about this book was Dr. Fine’s insertion of personal anecdotes
that reinforced all of her research, instead of the other way around. Immediately, she took
herself off the pedestal that most psychoanalysts put themselves on when viewing other
people’s problems and instead, put her own self under close examination. When
discussing the pigheaded brain, Dr. Fine begins the chapter by saying,
On the matter of the correct receptacle for draining spaghetti, my husband
demonstrates a bewildering pigheadedness. He insists that the colander is
the appropriate choice, despite the manifest ease with which the strands
escape through the draining holes. Clearly the sieve, with its closer-knit
design is a superior utensil for this task. Yet despite his stone blindness to
the soggy tangle of spaghetti clogging the drain in the sink after he’s used
his method, my husband claims to be able to observe starchy molecules
clinging to the weave of the sieve for weeks and weeks after I have chosen
to use that. We have head astonishingly lengthy discussions on the issue; I
have provided here merely the briefest of overviews. But after four years
of marriage, the problem remains unsolved (105).
Dr. Fine is able to use her own insignificant problems to brilliantly illustrate the
stubbornness of the brain. She includes both insight about her husband as well as herself,
a sign of self-understanding as well as a unconscious reinforcement of her expertise in the
field of psychology.
Most people, particularly those who are traveling to a foreign country, can most
benefit from the chapter on the bigoted brain. Again, the bigoted brain is the part of the
brain that judges other people on the basis of stereotypes. Stereotypes are based on a
subgroup of what Dr. Fine calls “schemas” which is the “filing system the brain uses to
organize information into various categories”(179). All the information about a certain
group, for instance people from Asia, is pooled in the same area of the brain. If the person
sees an Asian, all the thoughts about Asians in general comes running to the forefront of
the brain and the person automatically judges that person. Discrimination and judgment is
inevitable even when a person tries to convince him or herself that he or she isn’t a
judgmental person.
What people do with these thoughts and stereotypes is what counts. Dr. Fine
asserts that people’s stereotypes of a group will “unconsciously affect the judgment of
everyone, not just the bigot”(183). Therefore people will act and react to what their
stereotypes tell them and the other person’s behavior in return can reinforce the
stereotype. Ultimately, this creates an unnecessary tension between the two groups of
people that can really be avoided by acknowledging that the stereotype exists in the first
place. Dr. Fine states that “stereotypes…are powerful enemies of equality”(194).
Dr. Fine goes into such fine detail of analysis, particularly in the section of the
bigoted brain and offers the reader a way to overcome prejudices, or at the very least turn
negative discrimination into a more positive view. Ultimately, she leaves the decision up
to the individual to acknowledge the way the mind works and make a positive change as
a result.
 Lastly and what seems almost secondary to Dr. Fine’s writing style, is the
research that reinforces her thoughts and statements. Every chapter is filled with detailed
explanations of social experiments and their results. And to avoid contradicting her own
statement on how the brain can select only the information that reinforces its own views,
she uses experiments that have been successful in the past, but are now outdated and
inaccurate. Dr. Fine acknowledges that psychologists are wrong at times and tends to rely
on recent data or constantly reinforced experiments.
I saw very few, if any at all, weaknesses in Dr. Fine’s book. It is well written and
well researched, giving little room at all for weakness.

Comments

What the reader stands the most to take away from this book is a practical way to
view the world and particularly a way to view other people. We can resist the use of the
stereotypes that Fine mentions, which is essential when touring a foreign country. The
group of students that are going to India has to see that they already have a stereotype
labeled on all Indians, even if the stereotype isn’t necessarily true. Some students have
concerns with a different culture, while others deny that they will be affected by the
change. Either way, we have done enough research about the country and its people to
have already formulated a very strong schema about the Indian culture. The challenge is
to not let those stereotypes allow us to treat people in a way that could offend them and
create conflict. On the other side, we need to recognize that Indians have developed
schemas about Americans. The objective is to not react in a way that reinforces their
stereotypes of us. Ultimately, cooperating and overcoming our own egos can lead to a
better understanding of the culture and people in general.

Impressions

I would highly recommend A Mind of Its Own to any person, of any age and educational
background. From beginning to end, it is an entertaining and enthralling book and is
incredibly well researched and well written. The topic of the different parts of the brain
has allowed me to examine my own actions in a completely different light and long to
better understand the world around me. I believe that any person, whether they consider
themselves to be in control of their brain or not, can benefit from reading this book, if not
just to read it for the pure enjoyment of good literature. It’s eye-opening, provocative,
and gives humans such a clear view into how their brains deceive and distort.