You Are Not So Smart
You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You’re Deluding Yourself is a 2011 book by journalist David McRaney. It explores the gap between how people think they make decisions and how they actually do.
Key facts
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Author: David McRaney
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Published: 2011 (Gotham Books)
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Genre: Nonfiction, popular psychology
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Subject: Cognitive biases, self-delusion, metacognition
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ISBN: 978-1-59240-659-3
Themes and purpose
McRaney catalogues dozens of cognitive biases, logical fallacies, and social delusions that distort self-perception and decision-making. The core message is that introspection is unreliable: people are largely unaware of the unconscious processes driving their beliefs and behaviors.
Structure and content
The book is organized into short, standalone chapters each covering a single bias or phenomenon—confirmation bias, hindsight bias, the Dunning-Kruger effect, cognitive dissonance, the bystander effect, and many more. Each chapter explains the research, provides examples, and ends with a summary of the illusion.
Reception and impact
Accessible and entertaining, the book grew out of McRaney’s popular blog of the same name. It serves as an excellent entry-level survey of cognitive biases for readers new to the field. Praised for its conversational tone and broad coverage, though some critics noted it lacks the depth of primary-source works.