THE QUICK FIX

An investigative journalist exposes the many holes in today's bestselling behavioral science, and argues that the trendy, TED-Talk-friendly psychological interventions that are so in vogue at the moment will never be enough to truly address social injustice and inequality.

With their TED talks, bestselling books, and counter-intuitive remedies for complicated problems, psychologists and other social scientists have become the reigning thinkers of our time. Grit and "power posing" promised to help overcome entrenched inequalities in schools and the workplace. Institutions spent millions of dollars on a positive psychology intervention in the hope that it can reveal unconscious biases and reduce racism in police departments and human resources departments. But much of the science underlying these blockbuster ideas is dubious or fallacious. Americans' preference for simplistic self-help methods has a bad influence on the way behavioral science is communicated and even funded. In The Quick Fix, Jesse Singal shows how today's popular behavioral science emphasizes repairing, improving, and optimizing individuals rather than truly understanding and confronting the larger structural forces that drive social ills. The Quick Fix is a fresh and powerful indictment of the thought leaders and influencers who cut corners as they sell the public half-baked solutions to problems that deserve more serious treatment. Jesse Singal is a contributing writer at New York and the former editor of the magazine's Science of Us online vertical, as well as the cohost of the podcast Blocked and Reported. His work has ap- peared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, The Boston Globe, The Daily Beast, and other publications. He was a Robert Bosch Foundation fellow in Berlin and holds a master's degree in public affairs from Princeton University's School of Public and Interna- tional Affairs.