Stop Being Reasonable: How We Really Change Our Minds - Hardcover

A thought-provoking exploration of how people really change their minds, and how persuasion is possible.

In Stop Being Reasonable, Eleanor Gordon-Smith weaves a narrative that illustrates the limits of human reason.
She chronicles the lives of people who radically altered their beliefs about the things that matter most--from the woman who realized her husband harbored a terrible secret; to the man who left the cult he had been raised in since birth; to the reality TV contestant who, having impersonated someone else for a month, discovered he could no longer return to his former identity.

What made them change course? How should their reversals affect how we think about our own beliefs? And in an increasingly divided world, what do they teach us about how we might change the minds of others?

Inspiring, perceptive, and moving, Stop Being Reasonable will completely change the way you look at the power of persuasion.

Eleanor Gordon-Smith is a writer and radio broadcaster working at the intersection of academic ethics and the chaos of human life. Currently at Princeton University, she has produced The Philosopher's Zone on Australia's Radio National, appeared as the 'Clinical Ethicist' on 702 Sydney radio, and lectured on ethics, from political contract theory to the philosophy of sex, at the University of Sydney. Her work has appeared on NPR's This American Life, and in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, and Meanjin.