Showing results by author "Stuart Vyse" in All Categories

This wide-ranging course reveals the method to our madness in everything from finances to Friday the 13th. An expert on irrational behavior, Prof. Stuart Vyse discusses what it means to be rational before delving into the many reasoning errors and psychological challenges that lead us astray. In 15 lectures, you will learn to identify the logical fallacies and quirks of our psychology that tempt us to make unwise decisions. While the course is based in theory, it’s also teeming with practical advice.

Superstition: A Very Short Introduction explores the nature and history of superstition from antiquity to the present. For two millennia, superstition was a label derisively applied to foreign religions and unacceptable religious practices, and its primary purpose was used to separate groups and assert religious and social authority. After the Enlightenment, the superstition label was still used to define groups, but the new dividing line was between reason and unreason. Today, superstitious belief and behavior remain widespread, and highly educated people are not immune.

The Uses of Delusion is about aspects of human nature that are not altogether rational but, nonetheless, help us achieve our social and personal goals. Psychologist Stuart Vyse presents a lively, accessible exploration of the psychological concepts behind "useful delusions," fleshing out how delusional thinking may play a role in love and relationships, illness and loss, and personality and behavior. Along the way Vyse draws on the work of William James, Daniel Kahneman, and Joan Didion—who wrote about her compelling belief that her deceased husband would soon return to her.

Over the last four decades, debt, bankruptcy, and home foreclosures have risen to epidemic levels, and the personal savings rate has sunk dangerously low. Why, in the richest nation on Earth, can't Americans hold on to their money? First published in 2008, Stuart Vyse's Going Broke described the epidemic of personal debt that existed in the years leading up to the Great Recession and anticipated the home mortgage crisis that started it. Ten years later, this fully updated new edition tackles the post-recession era of economic recovery.