Review "A fascinating analysis of what we find fascinating." --Kirkus Reviews"Moments that jolt or delight us punctuate our lives. But whereas shock might be salutary in an art gallery, it can trigger blind belief in other contexts, points out cognitive scientist Jim Davies. Expounding his theory of 'compellingness foundations', Davies synthesizes research on what makes us susceptible to gripping stimuli, such as our drives to discover patterns and to find incongruity, and our attraction to hope and fear. Scepticism, he argues, can help us to build resistance to riveting ideas that turn out to be duds." --Nature"Davies's book is not meant to be a "how-to" manual for artists. He's not sure it's even possible to engineer a work of art based on these principles of compellingness. What the book may do, he says, is help creatives "understand the basis of their intuitions." Riveted...presents a unified theory of compellingness." --Fast Company"In the battle to grab attention, you should heed the musings of Jim Davies in Riveted...Davies attempts a grand unified theory of compellingness...What [Riveted] show[s] is that while media culture can be overwhelming, it also provides a great platform from which to observe the endless mysteries and absurdities of human nature." --New Scientist"To describe Riveted as riveting sounds cliché, but I predict that Jim Davies could be the next Malcolm Gladwell. Integrating scientific findings with compelling stories across the wide spectrum of the human experience--art, music, literature, comedy, magic, quotes, sports, conspiracy theories, gossip, religion, and science itself--Davies weaves a central theme throughout to explain what makes them all so compelling. You can read Riveted for five minutes or five hours and be enriched at multiple levels, and the book itself explains why. How recursive." --Michael Shermer is the Publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and the author of The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, and The Science of Good and Evil"What makes a song, a piece of art, a tabloid or even a silly romantic comedy film trailer so enthralling? What is it about these things that draw us in, even when we may (or at least should) know better? In Riveted, Jim Davies tackles this complex question by proposing a thoughtful, interdisciplinary framework to illuminate the qualities of 'compellingness, ' the very attributes of riveting things that have the power to sway our beliefs and attention. By tying together psychological, anthropological, cognitive science, and evolutionary biological studies, he provides a thorough and persuasive context to help us understand how the compelling can fascinate (and sometimes manipulate) the human mind." --Kayt Sukel, author of Dirty Minds: How Our Brains Influence Love, Sex, and Relationships"My life's work as an experience designer has been to rivet audiences for Universal, Disney, Sanrio, Broadway as well as to train soldiers, surgeons, and other high-risk job holders for life and death situations. So I know how and what makes an audience 'riveted, ' but not until reading Jim Davies' book did I understand WHY audiences are RIVETED. This book is a delightful read through the many diverse and nuanced drivers of human experience, influences, and choices. It is a must read for anyone who is looking to influence these strange beasts we call humans and keep them captivated." --Christopher Stapleton, Experience Designer and Creative Venture Catalyst, Simiosys"Accessible and entertaining. Davies draws fascinating insights from a wealth of diverse material." --Jeanette Bicknell, Ph.D., author of Why Music Moves Us"Riveted lives up to its title as a compelling investigation into the properties of our lives, the origins of which can be traced to the kind of species we are: why we plan, imagine, invent imaginary worlds, weep and laugh in chorus, delight in puzzles and incongruities, respond to patterns, rhythms, and repetitions, cluster in groups and create outsiders, seek attractive partners, and crave status. To a better understanding of human nature, this book is a brilliant guide." --Donald Beecher, Chancellor's Professor, Carleton University, Ottawa About the Author Jim Davies is a professor at the Institute of Cognitive Science of Carleton University, and director of the Science of Imagination Laboratory. He has been featured in Skeptic and Nautilus magazines, and has presented at Pecha Kucha Ottawa and TEDx on his theories of imagination. He writes a Psychology Today blog called The Science of Imagination. He lives in Ottawa, Canada.
A**N
Do you have the time to read? If so check this out
Very interesting book. Bought the hardback version so that I can read it any time and it would last a life time.Jim Davies talks about six foundations for compellingness.The first is social compellingness theory - we look for patterns.The second is we tend to believe the things we fear or hope are true.The third, "we love patterns and repetition." We love symmetry because we prefer patterns that are easy to understand. And "we are more likely to like and even believe things that we find easy to understand."The fourth, we are compelled by incongruity, the flip side of pattern-recognition.and so on...I'm actually enjoying all the points so much so that I use it for my podcast and talks with students now. here:http://www.beezenglish.com/riveted-by-jim-davies/ Read more
M**R
Good choice
Bought as a present for someone. They have said they love the book: "Can't put it down - I just keep going back to it"
F**A
Five Stars
GREAT INSIDE
A**R
Five Stars
thanks
N**T
Great read.
A really great read!
A**R
Consider with care
"Strange as it may seem," Jim Davies tells us, "compelling things share many similarities." In this book, Davies claims to do "something that has never been done before": to show that "the qualities that are common to all these things fit like a key in a lock with our psychological proclivities."He calls it the compellingness foundations theory. Davies - a professor at the Institute of Cognitive Science of Carleton University - posits six foundations for compellingness.I'll buy four of them.The first is social compellingness theory. We tend to think that all patterns have something to do with social meaning, intention and agency; and we tend to believe social explanations that we hear from other people. We look for reasons, not causes. Faced with a mysterious or random catastrophe, for example, we assume conscious intent. (Which explains conspiracy theories.)Secondly, we tend to believe the things we fear or hope are true. Believing in what we fear to be true has evolutionary advantages: it's safer to believe that the shape in the corner is a man-eater rather than a heap of old clothes. Hope is a little more curious: "one of the ultimate reasons we do anything is so that we will have beliefs that make us happy." Thus, we prefer landscapes to abstract art: we like to look at pictures of what's good for us, including food, or *sources* of food, like trees and animals. Constable beats Pollock.Third, "we love patterns and repetition." We love symmetry because we prefer patterns that are easy to understand. And "we are more likely to like and even believe things that we find easy to understand."And fourth, we are compelled by incongruity, the flip side of pattern-recognition. Incongruity triggers the desire to understand. In fact, "sometimes people like things because they are confusing and hard to understand. To explain this I created the concept of idea effort justification."Davies's method in these chapters is breathlessly excitable. It's like riffling through a brimming box file. Connectivity suffers. With no narrative arc or developing argument to hang on to, he must rush us from one instant wonder to another to keep us hooked; we begin to develop a curious kind of attention deficit disorder as we hurry to keep up. "Meditation sounds relaxing," pants Davies as we swerve into Buddhism, "but some, this author included, find it more like taking your brain to the gym. It's hard work." I can believe it.Nonetheless, those four chapters do provide interesting and useful material. But in the final chapters, his thinking gets worryingly untethered. Where previously he's tied his account more or less to specific loci of attention - social relationships, fear, hope, patterns and surprises - he now starts to drift around the human body, and to clock up the psychological biases without which no popular account of brain activity seems to be complete."What I have presented here," we read at the end of his book, "is not a knock-down set of experiments showing us that all things we love are compelling for the same reasons." Well: for most of the book, I'd say that's *exactly* what he's presented.In the final chapter, Davies lurches into a quite different register. From fevered explanation, he turns to argumentation, engaging in a lengthy quarrel with himself about why religions are so persistently compelling. It's a dangerous rhetorical move, and it threatens to destabilise the book completely."Beautiful ideas are not always true," Davies warns us, "and when we encounter a compelling idea, we must take extra care." He wants us to "use knowledge of what makes ideas compelling to help us make decisions about what to believe." It's a big ask. How do we start? I'd say we could start with the four really strong ideas that Davies offers us."Be wary of compelling ideas that are framed in terms of people and relationships, are easy to understand, present an intriguing puzzle, or play to our hope and fears."Ok. I'll try.A longer version of this review appears here:http://justwriteonline.typepad.com/distributed_intelligence/2014/10/the-roots-of-compulsion.html
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