Intuition : its powers and perils /

Entertaining, intelligent, and easy to read, Myers's book offers an abundance of research findings dealing with what is more aptly called the "nonconscious" mind. To his credit, Myers (Hope College) stays away from parapsychology and the Freudian "unconscious" in his investigation of intuition. He divides the discussion into three sections: "The Powers of Intuition," "The Perils of Intuition," and "Practical Intuition." The perils section is especially interesting, since it focuses in part on how individuals fool themselves (reminiscent of Daniel Goleman's Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception, CH, Oct'85). The author intersperses relevant anecdotes and quotes from artists, musicians, writers, mathematicians, scientists, etc., many of them humorous as well as enlightening. Including extensive resources and both classic studies and contemporary findings across a wide range of situations, this book--with its excellent summary of research--will be particularly useful in collections serving undergraduates and general readers. J. Bailey Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute

With humor and warm disinterestedness, Myers, professor of psychology at Michigan's Hope College, marshals cognitive research on intuition, or "our capacity for direct knowledge, for immediate insight without observation or reason" or what is sometimes called ESP. He finds that the mind operates on two levels, "deliberate" and "automatic." The nondeliberate mode (aka the intuitive) can be an effective way of knowing and doing, helping us empathize with others, intuit social cues or perform rote tasks like driving cars. It can also lead us astray: illusory correlations, self-fulfilling prophecies, dramatic anomalies and other misleading heuristics may feel like direct perception, but are not. Statistically random events may appear to have patterns, but "random sequences are streaky." The book treats scientific method as an attractive intellectual tool and shuns "truth is personally constructed" evasions; it is thus delightfully readable and deliberately provocative. (Sept.) Forecast: Myers has written two previous trade books for Yale, A Quiet World: Living with Hearing Loss, and The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty. Hope College is affiliated with the Reformed Church in America, so the book may reach a spiritually oriented readership looking for answers on direct perception, and could make for some grumbling within the ESP community. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Myers (psychology, Hope Coll.) presents here accessible research findings on intuition that are a welcome change from obscure self-help guides on the subject. He holds that people often rely on hunches without factoring in personal backgrounds, scientific fact, and unperceived influences, such as random streaks of occurrence, making those hunches less effective than we might think. Covered here are intuition's general strengths and weaknesses and its relationship to investment, psychotherapy, and employment settings. While some would argue that trying to gauge intuition is futile, Myers argues convincingly that we can measure how we arrive at a conclusion. By and large Myers is not making a case for intuition so much as for logic: he invites us to sharpen our insights and self-knowledge so that when impulse strikes, we can make sounder and less costly decisions. For the psychology sections of larger public libraries and academic libraries. Lisa Liquori, M.L.S., Syracuse, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.