Go to your local drugstore and you will find a wide range of medications that promise to dry a runny nose, reduce a fever, and quiet a cough. Every one of these medications will work exactly as promised, and every one will have its dangers clearly labeled. Now wander down to the local bookstore. You will find an aisle filled with self-help books that offer a wide range of techniques for becoming happier and more successful, thinner and richer, smarter and sexier, a better parent, a better partner, a better friend. As it turns out, many if not most of these techniques are utterly worthless, and some may actually harm you. What’s the difference between the drugstore and the bookstore?
Tim Wilson knows. He’s a scientist, and he’s spent the majority of his life studying human behavior by randomly assigning people to experimental or control conditions in the laboratory and the field, objectively measuring their cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses, using sophisticated mathematical techniques to analyze his data, and subjecting his findings to peer review and public scrutiny. So he is more than a little impatient with all the self-appointed experts in the self-help aisle who have skipped right over the hard work and gone directly to making grand claims about the best ways to improve our lives and our world.
Did I say impatient? Okay, he’s downright annoyed—but his pique is your prize.
Redirect is the result of three decades of head-shaking and head-scratching—a wise and wonderful book about changing human behavior that explains what works, what doesn’t, and how we can tell the difference between the two. Like Wilson, you will be annoyed when you discover that among the many things that do not work are governmental programs to which millions of your tax dollars flow, psychological treatments that are standard practice in many hospitals, and the advice that Oprah dispenses to a legion of followers. And like Wilson, you will be delighted—and probably surprised—when you discover what does work: a simple set of psychological techniques that are as effective as anything you will find on the pharmacy shelves.
We all want our lives and our world to be better. That’s what we’re doing here in the self-help aisle. Wilson understands and he’s right here with us. But he sees us reaching for How to Have It All in Ten Easy Steps and he asks us to pause—just long enough to go on a journey with him and see what can happen when we approach behavior change with the same scientific sensibilities that got antibiotics into our drugstores and snake oils out. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime invitation from an accomplished and insightful scientist who thinks deeply, writes beautifully, and cares about the truth.
My advice? Accept it, and prepare to be redirected.
—Daniel Gilbert