Redirect

Wilson's argument is that people run their lives on stories they tell about themselves, and that small, well-aimed changes to those stories change behaviour more reliably than large interventions aimed at behaviour directly. The technique he describes involves reframing an interpretation rather than arguing with it, so that the same events support a different account, and he reports effects on academic performance, health and wellbeing from interventions that take very little time. The second half of the book is what makes it useful to this vault, because it is about the difference between interventions that work and ones that merely sound convincing. He examines popular approaches that were adopted widely and later found to be ineffective or harmful when tested properly, including a well-known deterrence programme, and argues for the discipline of measuring outcomes rather than trusting plausibility. He is also sceptical about self-help reading, and says so. It is a working researcher's account of his own field.

Written from the publisher description, Open Library.

What this vault takes from it

Reliability

Not audited here. 1 note in this vault draws on it.

People

• Timothy Wilson