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Review
"[An] absorbing new book about why we choose to avert our gaze from wrongdoings or flaws or sad certainties we can't bring ourselves to confront. Willful Blindness cuts a broad swath across the fabric of our culture."
—The Gazette
"Writing in clear, flowing prose . . . [Willful Blindness] made me think long and hard about how the pace and priorities of our daily lives can hinder our ability to live as decently and as truthfully as we can."
—The New York Times
“[A] riveting, important book. . . . [Heffernan] is an engaging writer able to marshal fascinating multi-disciplinary research into a narrative that traverses the quest for conformity, groupthink [and] how an overloaded mind leads to moral blindness. . . . Eye-opening.”
—Macleans
“A call to arms to any whistle-blowers who see what lies ahead and have the courage to speak up. . . . A sharp-eyed perspective on the ever-gathering storm.”
—Kirkus
“A thoughtful and entertaining treatise on the seductiveness—and consequences—of ignoring what’s right in front of our eyes … Heffernan’s cogent, riveting look at how we behave at our worst encourages us to strive for our best.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Willful Blindness is an engaging read, packed with cautionary tales ripped from today’s headlines as well as a trove of research on why we often stick our head in the sand. With deft prose and page after page of keen insights, Heffernan shows why we close our eyes to facts that threaten our families, our livelihood, and our self-image—and, even better, she points the way out of the darkness.”
—Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and A Whole New Mind
“An intelligent and eye-opening look at the pervasiveness of willful blindness across society. Margaret Heffernan presents overwhelming evidence of the need for mindfulness as part of the cure.”
—Ellen J. Langer, author of Mindfulness and Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility
“Willful Blindness combines compelling anecdotes, insightful interviews, and convincing scientific evidence to confront the mental distortions that conspire to blind us. Heffernan skillfully shows that by questioning the reasons for our actions and beliefs, we can take positive steps to avoid deluding ourselves.”
—Daniel Simons, coauthor of The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
Margaret Heffernan is an unblinking observer of what makes us tick in work and life. This is a book that everyone should read with eyes—and minds—wide open!”
—Alan M. Webber, author of Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths for Winning at Business Without Losing Your Self
“Heffernan speaks with a relentlessly constructive voice, brave curiosity, a passion for truth, and the practical mindset of someone who has built and led successful organizations herself. She motivates us to resist our own tendency to ignore the truths around us, and provides the insights and tools for us to empower others to do the same.”
—Mary C. Gentile, Ph.D., author of Giving Voice to Values: How to Speak Your Mind When You Know What’s Right
Product Description
A book that will open eyes to the most serious problem of our times.
In the case of the US Government versus Enron, the presiding judge chose to employ the legal concept of willful blindness: you are responsible if you could have known, and should have known, something which instead you strove not to see. The guilty verdict sent shivers down the spine of the corporate world. In this book, Margaret Heffernan draws on psychological studies, social statistics, interviews with relevant protagonists, and her own experience to throw light on willful blindness and why whistleblowers and Cassandras are so rare. Ranging freely through history and from business to science, government to the family, this engaging and anecdotal book will explain why willful blindness is so dangerous in a globalized, interconnected world, before suggesting ways in which institutions and individuals can start to combat it. Margaret Heffernan's thought-provoking book will force us to open our eyes.
In the case of the US Government versus Enron, the presiding judge chose to employ the legal concept of willful blindness: you are responsible if you could have known, and should have known, something which instead you strove not to see. The guilty verdict sent shivers down the spine of the corporate world. In this book, Margaret Heffernan draws on psychological studies, social statistics, interviews with relevant protagonists, and her own experience to throw light on willful blindness and why whistleblowers and Cassandras are so rare. Ranging freely through history and from business to science, government to the family, this engaging and anecdotal book will explain why willful blindness is so dangerous in a globalized, interconnected world, before suggesting ways in which institutions and individuals can start to combat it. Margaret Heffernan's thought-provoking book will force us to open our eyes.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
How and why all of us should develop "fierce determination to see" whatever we need to understand,
By
This review is from: Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril (Hardcover)
Margaret Heffernan's background in business is wide as well as deep. In this, her latest book, she rigorously and eloquently examines a common problem: denying truths that are "too painful, too frightening to confront." Many people revert to denial because they are convinced that it is the only way to remain hopeful. "The problem arises when we use the same mechanism to deny uncomfortable truths that cry out for acknowledgement, debate, action, and change." This is among the phenomena that Dante had in mind when reserving the last -- and worst -- ring in hell for those who, in a moral crisis, preserve their neutrality.Many of those whom Heffernan discusses in this book have what she characterizes as "a fierce determination to see." Their courage in daring to do so "reveals a central truth about willful blindness: We may think that being blind makes us safer, when in fact it leaves us crippled, vulnerable, and powerless. But when confront facts and fears, we achieve real power and unleash our capacity for change." As I worked my way through the narrative, I was reminded of Sophocles' Oedipus who gains understanding (i.e. "sees" what is true and what is not) only after gouging out his eyes with broaches ripped from the gown of his dead wife. Similarly, only after Shakespeare's Lear loses his mind does he begin to "see" what he failed to understand previously. Heffernan asserts, and I wholly agree, that almost anyone can learned to "see better, not just because our brain changes but because we do. As all wisdom does, seeing starts with simple questions: What could I know, should I know, that I don't know? Just what am I missing here?" My own experience suggests that people tend to see what they expect to see and fail to see what they do not expect to see. The brief film of Daniel Simons' experiment involving Harvard students in a basketball passing drill (discussed by Heffernan on Pages 74-76) is well worth checking out (http://www.simonslab.com/videos.html). In her book, Heffernan examines several phenomena that help to explain both willful and involuntary "blindness" as well as their causes; also, she suggests lessons to be learned that can help us to develop a "fierce determination to see" whatever we need to understand. She also provides some especially valuable information about the importance of aerobic exercise and cites an article also well worth checking out, "Be Smart, Exercise Your Heart: Exercise Effects on Brain and Cognition," co-authored by C.H. Hillman, K.I, Erickson et al. Business executives who share my high regard for this brilliant book are urged to check out Charles Jacobs' Management Rewired: Why Feedback Doesn't Work and Other Surprising Lessons from the Latest Brain Research, Edward Hallowell's Shine: Using Brain Science to Get the Best from Your People, and Carol Dweck's Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.9 out of 5 stars (21 customer reviews) 17 of 19 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Really good...with one flaw,
By Neo - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Willful Blindness (Hardcover)
I liked the central thesis of this book. Seeing examples of areas where individuals had blatantly disregarded the truth that was right in front of them cause be to become more self-aware, which says a lot to me about the quality of a book.I am constantly fascinated by psychological experiments which demonstrate just how irrational our behavior can be. The author cites many of these, and it is easy to see myself in several of the situations. I give high marks for the self-analysis this book brought out for me. My only complaint is her lack of acknowledgement that hindsight really is 20/20. Of course after the fact it's easy to find some facts which pointed to the disaster, but does the author really think that we should or could always see what is going to happen in advance? Yes, occasionally people predict what will happen before it does. The author places these individuals as heroes and claims we should listen to them more carefully. But what about the millions of prognostications which are wrong? Are we supposed to give every individual with a prediction a voice? That point aside, I do recommend the book. It's though provoking in a way that most current writing is not. 19 of 24 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
"How Could I Have Been So Blind?",
By AdamSmythe - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Willful Blindness (Hardcover)
This is an important book. Here's why: Although sometimes dangers come out of nowhere to wreak havoc in our lives, community, country, etc., many times these dangers only seem to present themselves suddenly. Typically, recognizable dangers exist for a while, but few people give them much thought. Think of the Madoff ponzi scheme, for example. How could so many people believe that steady, high investment returns were possible, when the world is filled with evidence of meaningful economic and investment fluctuations? How could Alan Greenspan and other economists fail to see growing evidence of poor bank lending standards and a rapidly inflating housing bubble? How could Jane Doe overlook so many problems and inconsistencies with her husband, John, before she married him?As the book makes clear, there are frequently a number of signs of impending trouble, but for one reason or another people don't necessarily pay attention to these signs. One reason we can't seem to see impending problems is that we sometimes suffer from a "willful blindness" (a concept dating back to the 19th century) to facts that we tend to overlook in our professional, social or even love lives. In a nutshell, such blindness is the subject of this book. It's also one reason why, when we're faced with what seem to be sudden problems, we sometimes ask ourselves, "How could I have been so blind?" Back to the questions I posed in the first paragraph, the book illustrates how Bernie Madoff made effective use of people's tendency to overlook potential problems in someone that they feel connected to. Regarding Alan Greenspan, as he later realized, he may have over-relied on convictions that had seemed to serve him well for many years. And Jane Doe? Love is often (willfully) blind. Of course, almost nobody starts with a conscious decision to become willfully blind, but as the book explains, typically a gradual series of decisions begin to restrict our views. The book's author, Margaret Heffernan, has carefully woven together a series of interesting examples of willful blindness, and she uses these examples to develop her analysis of the topic. Gradually, the reader starts to understand that people engage in willful blindness for a variety of reasons, such as in order to feel safe, avoid conflict, reduce anxiety or protect prestige. Finally, in the last chapter of the book, she also addresses what we can do to improve our insight and assessment of reality. In short, this is a very readable, interesting book that illuminates a persistent human weakness that can contribute to costly problems, both for individuals and for society as a whole. The better we understand the potential trap of willful blindness, the better we can develop and maintain a clearer understanding of the world. 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
How and why all of us should develop "fierce determination to see" whatever we need to understand,
By Robert Morris - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Willful Blindness (Hardcover)
Margaret Heffernan's background in business is wide as well as deep. In this, her latest book, she rigorously and eloquently examines a common problem: denying truths that are "too painful, too frightening to confront." Many people revert to denial because they are convinced that it is the only way to remain hopeful. "The problem arises when we use the same mechanism to deny uncomfortable truths that cry out for acknowledgement, debate, action, and change." This is among the phenomena that Dante had in mind when reserving the last -- and worst -- ring in hell for those who, in a moral crisis, preserve their neutrality.Many of those whom Heffernan discusses in this book have what she characterizes as "a fierce determination to see." Their courage in daring to do so "reveals a central truth about willful blindness: We may think that being blind makes us safer, when in fact it leaves us crippled, vulnerable, and powerless. But when confront facts and fears, we achieve real power and unleash our capacity for change." As I worked my way through the narrative, I was reminded of Sophocles' Oedipus who gains understanding (i.e. "sees" what is true and what is not) only after gouging out his eyes with broaches ripped from the gown of his dead wife. Similarly, only after Shakespeare's Lear loses his mind does he begin to "see" what he failed to understand previously. Heffernan asserts, and I wholly agree, that almost anyone can learned to "see better, not just because our brain changes but because we do. As all wisdom does, seeing starts with simple questions: What could I know, should I know, that I don't know? Just what am I missing here?" My own experience suggests that people tend to see what they expect to see and fail to see what they do not expect to see. The brief film of Daniel Simons' experiment involving Harvard students in a basketball passing drill (discussed by Heffernan on Pages 74-76) is well worth checking out at Daniels' home page. In her book, Heffernan examines several phenomena that help to explain both willful and involuntary "blindness" as well as their causes; also, she suggests lessons to be learned that can help us to develop a "fierce determination to see" whatever we need to understand. She also provides some especially valuable information about the importance of aerobic exercise and cites an article also well worth checking out, "Be Smart, Exercise Your Heart: Exercise Effects on Brain and Cognition," co-authored by C.H. Hillman, K.I, Erickson et al. Business executives who share my high regard for this brilliant book are urged to check out Charles Jacobs' Management Rewired: Why Feedback Doesn't Work and Other Surprising Lessons from the Latest Brain Research, Edward Hallowell's Shine: Using Brain Science to Get the Best from Your People, and Carol Dweck's Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. |
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