"Nudge" by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein is a book that explores the concept of nudges and how they can be used to influence people's choices for the better. A nudge refers to any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people's behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives.

Richard H. Thaler (b. 1945) is a professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago. Cass R. Sunstein (b. 1954) is a professor at Harvard Law School and serves as an advisor to president Barack Obama.

Summary & Key Learnings

The book argues that small changes in the way choices are presented can have a significant impact on people's decisions. By understanding the two systems that drive human thinking—the automatic system (quick and instinctual) and the reflective system (slow and deliberate)—the authors explain how human behavior is influenced by both conscious and unconscious factors.

Thaler and Sunstein introduce the concept of libertarian paternalism, which suggests that it is possible to influence people's behavior in a way that improves their overall well-being without limiting their freedom of choice. They believe policymakers have a responsibility to design choice architectures that nudge individuals toward better decisions.

Throughout the book, the authors present various examples and case studies to illustrate how nudges can be applied in different contexts. They discuss topics such as encouraging saving through the Save More Tomorrow program, improving school choices for parents, personalising social security investments, and even privatising marriage contracts.

The key premise of the book is that by carefully designing the choice architecture and considering the automatic and reflective systems at play, policymakers can help people make better decisions in areas such as finance, health, education, and more. The book advocates for the use of nudges to create an environment that leads to improved outcomes and individual well-being.

We often make bad decisions based on either too little or overly complex information.

Why do we so often make decisions that aren’t really the best choices for us? In many cases, we simply have too little or too much information, or we can’t foresee the consequences of our actions. It’s only when we have, and can process, the right amount of information that we are in a place to make rational decisions.

For example, when we have to choose an ice cream flavor at an ice cream shop, we usually make that decision rather quickly. We see which flavors there are and we know from experience that strawberry ice cream tastes better than mango, i.e., we have all the necessary information and can process it rapidly.

However, we feel differently in more serious situations, like when deciding whether to take out a loan. After all, there are all different kinds of loans: purchases on account, deferrals, consumer loans, securities, preliminary financing, interim financing, and many more. Some of them have a fixed interest rate, others a variable; all of them have different additional costs. And this information isn’t exactly laid out in plain writing. Usually, it’s hidden in the small print on the bright and colorful advertisement.

In other words, even when we are privy to all the relevant information, it can still be difficult to sort it all out and compare the services objectively. Situations like this can make us feel completely overwhelmed.

Human beings act mainly on gut feelings.

When we see a laughing baby, we can’t help but smile. That “decision” to smile is made unconsciously; our response occurs entirely on its own. But when we want to figure out the answer to 347 x 12, we confront this task in a conscious way, because finding the answer requires an effort and takes some time. These examples illustrate two different systems of thought: In the case of the baby, we are using our Automatic System, i.e., our gut instinct. In the case of the math problem, we are using the rational or Reflective System. We don’t have the time or energy to reflect upon every little action we take on an average day, which is why we often let our Automatic System govern our actions. It works well a lot of the time – but not all the time.

Grounded in simplifications, the Automatic System is often supported by a weak scaffolding of spontaneous emotions and subjective experiences. For instance, when we estimate our own likelihood of suffering from a stroke, the first thing we think about is the amount of people we know who’ve already had one. If we don’t know anybody who’s had a stroke, we automatically assume that there’s only a low risk that we’ll have one. And so, even if our own risk is actually extremely high, we don’t take any precautions. In other words, our gut feeling has led us first to a misjudgment and then to an unwise decision.

Sometimes we make faulty decisions because we succumb to temptation or act without thinking.

If you offer a long-time smoker a cigarette while she’s in the process of quitting, it’ll be difficult for her to resist the temptation. Although she’d like to quit and knows how bad it is for her, she’ll probably end up bumming a smoke. The reason for this unwise response is a lack of will: despite her intentions, the temptation is simply too great. A certain degree of thoughtlessness also takes hold of us in such situations.

For example, experiments have shown that bigger portions cause us to eat more. If we have a big portion in front of us, we eat more of it than we should – even if it doesn’t taste good. In one experiment, researchers sent their test subjects to the movies. Before they entered the theater, the subjects received a bag of stale popcorn – half got a small bag, the other half a medium-sized bag. Although most of the participants later stated that the stale popcorn didn’t taste good, they ate a lot of it anyway – and the people with the big bags ate even more of theirs.

Some companies exploit the human tendency to make the wrong decisions.

If companies want to be successful, they have to sell products and earn profits. And to do that, they have to fulfill their customers’ needs. Whether that has positive or negative consequences on customers doesn’t matter to some companies – their main concern is whether customers are buying. Sometimes companies don’t just satisfy the needs that customers already have – they can create new needs in their customers too.

For example, many people can’t help themselves in the face of temptation and don’t think twice about the consequences when making spur-of-the-moment decisions. Companies use this knowledge to tempt their customers into buying more than they originally intended. This is the core approach of companies that promote XXL-sized portions instead of normal ones, and the availability of these over-sized portions is one of the reasons why so many people eat far too much.

Trial subscriptions to periodicals are another case where companies exploit human weakness. You can sign up and receive the periodical for free for a certain amount of time, but, if you don’t terminate your subscription within the cancellation period, it is automatically renewed, and you continue receiving the periodical – and paying for it.

Nudges are subtle changes in context that help us avoid making bad decisions.

How can we keep ourselves from making the wrong decisions? With nudges, or little pushes in the right direction. Nudges are not “no-nos” or clever advertising messages. Rather, they are subtle actions that make it easier for us to act in the way that is best for us without dictating a specific behavior. Simply put, nudges leave us free rein while making it easier for us to choose the right thing. Displaying fruit in clearly visible spots and putting junk food in less prominent ones in a cafeteria is a nudge: we have the choice between buying an apple and a candy bar, but the arrangement of the products prompts us to go for the healthier apple.

Of course, nudges can also be used for less righteous purposes, e.g., by companies who want to suggest certain purchasing decisions. Companies have been using nudges for a long time – in supermarkets, for example, the shelves at eye level usually contain the most expensive goods. But the example of the fruit being prominently displayed in the cafeteria shows that nudges can also help people choose healthier and better alternatives.

Defaults are highly effective nudges that cause people to automatically do what’s best for them.

Considering that we don’t rack our brains every time we make a decision, decision-making situations should be designed so that automatic responses produce a positive outcome. The e-mail service Gmail does just that with its attachment reminder. If words like “please find attached” are written in e-mail text but no file has been attached, the e-mail program automatically recognises it and asks the user, “Did you want to send an attachment?” This little nudge can save people a lot of time and trouble.

Companies could choose a similar system to assist their employees to make wise decisions about, e.g., enrolling in company pension-scheme programs. Since most people are naturally inclined to laziness and don’t really want to change their status quo, enrolling in a company pension-scheme program should not be optional. It would be much better to set up the program so that all employees are automatically enrolled in the scheme – and have to explicitly object if they do not want to be. Companies should choose defaults guaranteeing that employees do the right thing even when the employees do nothing at all.

Nudges are most useful when we have too many choices or when the future is at stake.

The most opportune time to use nudges is in situations where it’s particularly difficult for us to make the right decisions. Making the wrong decision is easy when we have an immediate pay-off and don’t feel the negative consequences until later. We take that second piece of cake and drink that cocktail after work because they give us pleasure in the moment and we only feel the negative effects later – when we step on a scale at the end of the month, or wake up the next morning with a headache.

Another cause of bad decision-making is when we don’t have previous experiences to refer to. At some point or another, we have to decide on which insurance company we want to use. Since we only make this decision once or twice in our lives, we can’t refer to earlier experiences to assess which insurance company would be best for us. And even after choosing a health insurance company, there is yet another decision to be made: which policy? For example, if an insurance company offers many different policies, but some customers who just want general coverage are having difficulty choosing which policy would be best for them, the company could offer a recommended “default policy” – say, one that covers more than 80% of a person’s entire medical costs. This helps the less insurance-savvy customers choose a policy that covers a wide range of treatments for the most common medical problems.

Many people use nudges to achieve their goals.

At the end of each year, many of us come to the conclusion that, yet again, we didn’t manage to stick to our New Year’s resolutions: the number on the scale is higher than last year and the ashtray is still full. And yet some people are successful. How did they do it? Generally, the people who are able to stick to their resolutions do so by using nudges to keep them from making the wrong decisions throughout the year: they place bets with their friends, take advantage of public weigh-ins, or use Internet programs tailored to help them monitor their progress and stay on target.

On the website Stickk.com, more than 100,000 people have signed so called commitment contracts with themselves to achieve their goals. After signing up on the website, you state your goal, set milestones with specific deadlines, and have the option to put money on your success. If you achieve your goal, you get your money back. If not, your money goes to whatever institution or person you initially selected (one particularly motivating recipient, for example, might be the rival team of your favorite football team). This successful website is an example of how nudges can be harnessed to help you modify your behavior and fulfill your ambitions.

States and other institutions should use nudges to encourage wise decisions.

Nudges encourage individuals to make better decisions – and this often benefits more than just the individual alone. An entire society benefits when the majority of its members make wise decisions. If fewer people smoke or are overweight, healthcare costs decrease – and everybody wins.

Even though a nudge may cost us something at first, the longer term benefits are generally not long in coming. In the area of environmental protection, the mere act of instating a public obligation to report carbon emissions has the power to change peoples’ behavior. This obligation doesn’t explicitly forbid companies to exceed a certain limit of pollutant emissions. Instead, it acts as a nudge by creating incentives to voluntarily cut down on emissions (especially because environmentalists frequently use such information to publicly denounce polluters). The reporting obligation thus creates a sort of emission-cutting competition – without using any legal coercion.

As the dollar-a-day program shows, nudges can also reduce the amount of unwanted teenage pregnancies. Many young mothers who’ve already had a child as a teenager often get pregnant again shortly thereafter. In order to tackle this issue, several US cities pay teenage mothers one dollar for every day they don’t get pregnant. This program is actually cheaper for taxpayers than the costs of supporting the children of the young mothers.

Companies also use nudges to keep their customers from making mistakes. If we forget to put on our seat belt in a car, the car beeps at us until we buckle up. If our gas tank is almost empty, a warning light blinks to remind us to stop and fill it up. These little things don’t force us to fasten our seat belts or fill our gas tanks: they do, however, prevent us from accidentally forgetting.People often make unwise decisions, but the slightest of changes – so-called nudges – can give people incentives to make better decisions. That’s why countries and private institutions should also use nudges.

The questions this book answered:

How and why do we make the wrong decisions?

 

'Influence' explains in detail the fundamental principles of persuasion. How do you get people to say yes? How do other people get you to say yes? How are you manipulated by sleek salesmen, clever marketing folks and sneaky confidence tricksters? This book will help you understand the psychology behind their techniques, enabling you to unleash your own persuasive powers, while also defending against their tactics of manipulation.

Influence has been authored by Robert B. Cialdini, PhD a Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University. He also acted as a visiting professor at Stanford University and the University of California at Santa Cruz. Influence is based on 35 years of evidence-based research into the phenomena of influence, manipulation and persuasion. Dr. Cialdini also runs a consultancy based on teaching and implementing the ethical business applications of his research.

The book called 'Stolen Focus' by the British journalist Johann Hari, takes a close look at what’s happening, and what’s happened to our collective attention. Hari argues that we’re all becoming lost in our own lives, which feel more and more like a parade of diversions. And it seems to be getting worse and worse every year.

In Stolen Focus, Hari sets out on a global investigative journey into our shortening attention spans. Drawing on more than two hundred interviews with the world's leading experts on attention problems Stolen Focus moves beyond individual solutions towards a collective understanding of a problem facing us all. Only by first solving the attention crisis Hari argues can we turn to fixing the issues we care about most and sustain the attention to build a better society.

Johann Hari is a writer and journalist. He has written for the New York Times, Le Monde, the Guardian, and other newspapers. He was a columnist for The Independent and the Huffington Post, and has won awards for his war reporting.

Key learnings

It’s not just you – everyone is struggling to focus

Unless you’re living off the grid, you’ve probably noticed that it’s getting increasingly difficult to focus. You’re busy all the time, yet you struggle to actually get anything done.

In 2016, Sune Lehmann was having these exact problems. His capacity for deep focus was dwindling, and he was more susceptible to distractions than ever before. Lehmann is a professor at Denmark’s Technical University – so he didn’t simply dismiss the nagging feeling that his concentration was waning. Instead, he spearheaded a study to find out if there was actually evidence to back up his suspicion.

By analyzing various metrics across online platforms, Lehmann and his team discovered something interesting: In 2013, conversation topics trended on Twitter for an average of 17.5 hours before people lost interest and moved on to a new topic. By 2016, that number had dwindled to 11.6 hours. That’s a six-hour decrease in only three years. The study records similar results across platforms like Google and Reddit as well. In short, the more time we’ve spent in online spaces, the shorter our attention spans have become.

So, is it really just the internet that’s eroding our focus? Well, yes. But also no. See, Lehmann also analyzed every book that’s been uploaded to Google Books between the 1880s and today. And he found that this phenomenon actually predates the internet. With every passing decade, trending topics appear and fade with increasing speed. Lehmann’s study is indicative rather than comprehensive, of course. And measuring these metrics isn’t a definitive way to map our evolving attention spans. But, if we accept the premise that our concentration is suffering, the next question is: Why?

It’s difficult to pinpoint precisely, but a good jumping-off point is what think-tank director Robert Colvile calls “The Great Acceleration.” Essentially, the way we receive information is speeding up. In the nineteenth century, for example, news could take days to travel from place to place. Then, technologies like the telegraph, radio, and television sped up the spread of information. On top of this, our information inputs – the different modes through which we receive information – have multiplied. In 1986, the average Westerner ingested the equivalent of 40 newspapers a day through the various available information inputs. By 2004, that figure had risen to an astonishing 174 newspapers worth of information. Today, that figure is almost certainly much higher. The internet has undeniably supercharged this acceleration. Now, information is not only available to us all the time; it actually intrudes on our lives through the ceaseless pings and notifications coming from our laptops and smartphones.

And our brains just haven’t caught up with this acceleration. Research suggests they never will. Our capacity for focus is an emergent field of study. But research in the area of speed-reading suggests that there’s a finite limit to how quickly we can process information. And, as neuroscientists point out, the cognitive capacity of the human brain has not significantly changed in the last 40,000 years. The amount of information we put into our brains has, however, stratospherically increased. It’s really no wonder we sometimes find it difficult to focus.

Apps and online platforms are addictive by design, not by accident

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter – the fact that these apps and other online platforms suck so much of your time isn’t a design flaw. They’re supposed to be addictive. After all, there’s a reason Silicon Valley calls its customers “users.” And where did this design originate? It originated at the Persuasive Technologies Lab at Stanford University. In the early 2000s, the lab asked whether the theories of influential behavioral psychologists could be incorporated into computer code – in other words, it asked whether tech can change human behavior. And the answer to that question was yes tech can change human behavior.

One of the psychologists studied in the lab was B. F. Skinner. Skinner was famous for the experiments he conducted on rats. He’d present a rat with a meaningless task, like pushing a button. But the rat showed no interest in doing this. So Skinner modified the task. Now, every time the rat pressed the button, it would be rewarded with a pellet of food. Rewards would motivate animals, Skinner found, to carry out tasks that had no intrinsic meaning to them. Skinner inspired the creation of other buttons you might recognize: like buttons, share buttons, and comment buttons. Those little hearts and emojis and retweet buttons aren’t design quirks; they’re programming us to use social media in addictive ways by rewarding us for the time we spend on the platforms.

These buttons keep us engaging longer. But they’re only one of the many design elements geared at keeping us online. Here’s another one: the infinite scroll. Back in the early days of the internet, web pages were just that: pages. Sites often comprised multiple pages; when you got to the bottom of one, you clicked through to the next. The bottom of each page offered a built-in pause. If you wanted to keep browsing, you had to actively decide to click ahead.

That is, until Aza Raskin stepped in. Raskin invented the infinite scroll – the endlessly refreshing feed of content that now features on the interface of nearly every social media platform, giving the impression that there is a never-ending supply of content. If likes and shares encourage users to stay online longer, the infinite scroll encourages users to stay online in perpetuity.

Raskin, however, has come to regret his invention. At first, he thought the infinite scroll was elegant and efficient. But he became troubled when he noticed how it was changing online habits – including his own. Noticing that he was spending longer and longer on social media, Raskin started to do the math. He estimates that the infinite scroll induces the average user to spend 50 percent more time on platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

The business model of most of these platforms is predicated on time – or, as they call it, engagement. This refers to how much time a user spends interacting with a product. That’s the metric tech companies use to measure their success – not money, but minutes. But money does play a part, too. Because the longer you spend “engaging,” the more chances the companies have to sell advertisements. The more you engage, the more companies track your behavior and build a profile uniquely designed to target you with specific ads. We don’t pay for platforms like Facebook and Instagram with our money. But we do pay with another precious, finite commodity: our attention.

In Silicon Valley, time equals money. The money is theirs. And the time – the attention – is yours.

Algorithms privilege outrage over community

Online platforms erode our focus and exploit one of our most precious resources – our attention – for their own financial gain. But these same platforms can be a force for good, strengthening community and driving collective action.

To better understand this potential, let’s travel to the Complexo do Alemão favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Brazilian government takes a militant approach to this crowded, low-income area, routinely sending in tanks to suppress unrest. And it’s an open secret that the police shoot to kill. When innocent kids get in the way of their bullets, the police plant drugs or weapons on them and claim self-defense.
Raull Santiago lives in Alemão. He also runs the Facebook page “Coletivo Papo Reto,” which collects and disseminates videos of the police shooting innocent people. The page has galvanized many favela-dwellers to rally against their treatment. And it has shifted the tide of public opinion in Brazil, where favelas like Alemão are often reviled. But the situation in Alemão has only gotten worse since the election of Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro. And here’s the thing: Bolsonaro’s victory, like Coletivo Papo Reto’s success, can also be partly attributed to Facebook. Bolsonaro’s campaign inundated social media with clickbaity, fear-mongering campaigns – and he ended up getting elected.

What connects us can also divide us. Lately, it feels like online platforms have been much more intent on dividing than connecting. And it all has to do with algorithms. The content you see on this infinitely refreshing page isn’t ordered chronologically. It’s arranged by an algorithm that is programmed to feed us content that keeps us scrolling longer. It’s easier to disengage from calm, positive content. But if something strikes us as outrageous or controversial, we tend to keep looking. It’s part of a psychological phenomenon called negativity bias – that is, negative experiences impact us more than positive ones. So it’s in social media’s interest to literally provoke its users.

The algorithm has no ethics. It doesn’t condone or condemn; it just codes. But the people watching it feel, believe, and judge. For some, the more they’re exposed to misinformation, the more normal – even credible – it seems. A 2018 study that analyzed extreme right-wing militants in the US found that the majority of them were initially radicalized on YouTube.

You may not engage with misinformation online. You might put down your phone or close your laptop when you feel outraged by what you see online. You may choose not to spend your attention on provocative content. But this still affects you. See, when online platforms privilege divisive, shocking content, they also corrode our power for collective attention – our ability, as a society, to focus on issues that affect us.

Back in the ’70s, scientists discovered that there was a hole in the Ozone layer. It had been created by a group of chemicals called CFCs, which are commonly used in hairsprays. The scientists issued a warning: if the hole in the ozone grew, we would lose a crucial layer of protection against the sun’s rays. Life on earth as we knew it was at risk. Activists campaigned against the use of CFCs. They persuaded their fellow citizens to join the cause. Eventually, they put enough pressure on governments that the use of CFCs was banned. This is an environmental success story. But the outcome might have been different if we hadn’t focused our collective attention – first on the science, then on the arguments of our fellow citizens, and finally on the group effort of lobbying the governments for a total ban on CFCs. Would we be able to collectively train our focus on a similar issue today? Climate change poses a real and present danger to life on earth. But as a species, we can’t seem to absorb the science – or even agree on whether we should be listening to scientists in the first place.

Social media can be a powerful force for good. But rather than harness this force, platforms like Facebook are intent on exploiting our attention – and, as a consequence, they’re sowing division and controversy.

Recently, Facebook conducted an internal investigation called “Common Ground.” Its aim was to uncover whether the company’s algorithms really did promote controversy and misinformation to keep users engaged. According to the report, the findings were very clear: “Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness.” Facebook hasn’t done very much about this disturbing finding, however. And neither have we. We’re too busy infinitely scrolling.

Ditch multitasking – recovering focus is about finding flow

It’s easy – and not inaccurate – to blame our shrinking attention spans on our devices and the easy access they offer to an attention-sucking online world. But, like an artfully cropped Instagram snap, that’s not the whole picture. See, there’s a fundamental flaw in the way we frame “focus.”

We live in an accelerating, consumerist society – one that values speed and output. And in this climate, we’re encouraged to “quantify” our attention in terms of what immediate results it yields. Our focus is a resource that allows us to produce, to earn, to tick items off our to-do lists. And that’s where multitasking comes in. The more we can simultaneously achieve, the better our focus is spent. So why not distribute our attention across several tasks at once? Well because, as it turns out, humans are really bad at multitasking. The word “multitask” was coined by computer scientists in the ’60s to describe the function of computers with multiple processors. It was never meant to be applied to humans. After all, we only have one processor: our brain.

When we multitask, we’re not simultaneously performing several tasks at once. We’re switching between them at hyperspeed. And every switch incurs what’s called a “switch-cost” effect. When you switch between tasks – or when you’re interrupted mid-task – your brain needs to recalibrate, which decreases your mental performance. A study commissioned by Hewlett Packard compared a group who worked on a task uninterrupted with a group that was distracted during the course of their task. The study found that members of the distracted group temporarily dropped an average of ten IQ points while they were completing their task.

In a work climate that values multitasking as a sign of peak productivity, distraction is practically encouraged. We’re constantly answering emails, participating in multiple conversations about multiple projects, and working across three or four different computer screens. In fact, in the US, the average white-collar worker spends 40 percent of their time engaging in so-called multitasking.

Luckily, there is an antidote to multitasking – a way of approaching tasks that cultivates deep focus. The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi first identified this state, which he called “flow.” You find your flow, Csikszentmihalyi theorized, when you become so absorbed by a task that you lose all sense of your surroundings and are able to access a deep well of internal focus. In flow, your focus becomes deeper and better, and you’re far less susceptible to distractions.

The good news, according to Cskiszentmihalyi, is that everyone can access flow – as long as they meet a few key conditions. 

'The Attention Merchants' is a book written by Tim Wu, author, activist and law professor at Columbia University. Wu is also known for coining the term 'net neutrality'– the idea that the oligopoly that owns our internet infrastructure shouldn’t charge differently for different kinds of data. In his book The Attention Merchants, he targets another kind of corporate domination, the industry that monopolises our attention.

This book is a revelatory look at the rise of the 'attention merchants', the advertising marketeers who influence and control our consumption in ways previously unimagined. An 'attention merchant' is an industrial-scale harvester of human attention, a firm whose business model is the mass capture of attention for resale to advertisers.

In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of advertising enticements, branding efforts, sponsored social media, commercials and other efforts to harvest our attention. Over the last century, few times or spaces have remained uncultivated by the 'attention merchants', contributing to the distracted, unfocused tenor of our times. Tim Wu argues that this is not simply the byproduct of recent inventions but the end result of more than a century's growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention.

Key learnings

Newspaper advertisements used to be strictly informational until one New York paper change the game forever

Advertising was used to make a fortune on useless medicine and reinforce the British Army during World War 1

It’s not exactly common knowledge, but early in the twentieth century, advertising for commercial over-the-counter medicine, or medicine as it was then known, was revolutionised. This shift was the work of Claude C. Hopkins, an innovative ad man and copywriter, then colloquially referred to as a “scheme man.” For several years, Hopkins wrote ads for Dr. Shoop’s Restorative, a company that sold patent medicine. While there, he came up with a plan for “direct mail” advertising, what we now lovingly call “spam mail.”

In the 1920s, advertising and branding became more methodical

Former FBI agent Robin Dreeke shares his simple toolkit for assessing who you can trust and who you can't. Dreeke has worked for two decades as a behaviour analyst in the FBI, through that experience he has developed a knack for reading people, their intentions, their capabilities, their desires and their fears. This book is a manual to be able to quickly and easily determine who you can trust and who you can't. It helps readers to determine who is likely to deliver on promises and who will disappoint, and when a person is vested in your success versus when they are actively plotting your demise. 

So much of your success, from your career to your family life depends on being able to differentiate between people you can trust and people you can't. This book teaches the subtle behavioural signs the people around you are giving off and how you can read those signs to make better decisions about whom to trust. It teaches you how to gather data that really matters about a person, from the language they use to their past behaviour to their personal appearance. You'll learn to look beyond the obvious to the hidden and reveal the true inner character. This is a how-to-guide to decide which people you should never let go and those you should keep at a distance.

Put your trust in those who believe that they win when you win

You can't trust someone who doesn't trust you

Most of the ways we assess people's reliability are unreliable

One of the best indications of future behaviour is past behaviour

Trustworthy people use simple language and aren't afraid to apologise

Emotionally unstable people have certain traits that you should look out for