If a person is thinking about their own cognitive processes, they are practicing what psychologists call meta-cognition. If they are feeling confident about their own cognitive abilities, psychology researcher Dan Simons says there is a good chance they are wrong.
Simons reached that conclusion after doing years of experimental studies that demonstrated how flawed we humans are when it comes to accurately assessing our own cognitive abilities involving attention, visual perception, and memory.
It was the insight gained from his work that motivated this Professor of Psychology and Beckman Institute faculty member to take a stab at becoming a writer of popular non-fiction. And about a year ago, Simons’ foray into the world of trade publishing paid off when he signed a book writing deal with Crown Publishing of New York.
Simons has co-authored the book on the topic of meta-cognition with his research collaborator at Union College, Chris Chabris. The book is scheduled for release in May 2010 and will use anecdotal evidence as well as scientific data as the two academics present their case to a general audience.
“We’re trying to make it completely accessible,” Simons said. “We have a lot of research in there, so we’re trying to back up the anecdotes with the science. But it’s going to rest on the anecdotes because that is what people find persuasive.”
Simons said the use of anecdotes as a key element of the storytelling was a very deliberate decision by the authors. The book, titled The Invisible Gorilla, will be challenging some strongly-held notions involving topics that have been featured prominently in the media recently. The authors wanted to use the anecdotes – backed up by the science – to change people’s thinking about some of these topics.
“It’s part of our nature; narratives are powerful,” Simons said. “Unlike a lot of general audience books that make their arguments entirely using anecdotes and compelling narratives, we are trying to use narratives that lead directly to conclusions that are consistent with the science.”
While he can’t talk in detail yet about the book’s contents, Simons is able to describe its principal theme.
“It’s a look at meta-cognition and how we understand how our minds work and whether our intuitions are accurate or not,” he said. “One way to think about it is that we lack access to a lot of the mechanisms that govern what we do a lot of the time, but we think we do have access to them. People will say ‘oh I always notice mistakes in movies.’ No, they don’t. You notice the ones that you notice, but you don’t know about all the ones you didn’t notice. So we have this mistaken intuition that we notice everything.”
Crown Publishing, which features best-selling writers like Alice Hoffman and Martha Stewart in its stable of authors, is a division of industry giant Random House. Simons said it wasn’t an easy task to enter the world of big-time publishing. He said he first started working on a book proposal a couple of years ago when he was on sabbatical, but it took awhile for them to get it polished enough to submit to publishers.
The process included a story pitch to publishers and writing some sample chapters. Simons said the pitch, ala Hollywood, involved describing the book as a cross between two non-fiction science-oriented best-sellers.