THE USES OF DELUSIONS

From a leading expert on irrational behavior and perhaps the foremost source on the psychology of superstition, comes a penetrating, surprising examination of the uses of delusion.

Author and professor Stuart Vyse has made a career out of understanding the contradictions and convolutions of human behavior; as an avowed atheist and a skeptic, he knows that rationality is a very good thing most of the time, but he writes "in a number of very important situations, it turns out that we benefit by not seeing the world clearly and not behaving like a logic-driven machine. This book is about these lapses from clarity - aspects of our nature that are not altogether rational but, nonetheless, help us succeed. Useful delusions. From love and relationships (where a clear-eyed picture of one's beloved is not necessarily better than the view through rose-colored glasses) to our sense of a unified, consistent self and the ability of that self to exercise free will, Vyse's tour of the minds' best tricks is illuminating, provocative and fascinating. Stuart Vyse is a behavioral scientist, teacher, and writer. He holds PhD and MA degrees in psychology and BA and MA degrees in English Literature. He taught at Providence College, the University of Rhode Island, and Connecticut College, where he was Joanne Toor Cummings '50 Professor. Vyse's book Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition (OUP, 1997 & 2013) won the 1999 William James Book Award of the American Psychological Association. His book Going Broke: Why Americans (Still) Can't Hold on to Their Money (OUP, 2018) is an analysis of the current epidemic of personal debt. He is the author of Superstition: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2020). He is a contributing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine where he writes the "Behavior & Belief" column, and he is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.