Misbelief by Dan Ariely (Irrationally Yours), an unexpectedly optimistic book, probes the confluence of factors that lead rational people to believe irrational things. Ariely, a social scientist and professor, takes his personal experience of being vilified by Covid-deniers as a starting point, and he approaches his subjects with empathy and generosity. He invites them to join him in considering the mechanisms that drive people into the camp of misbelievers (an alternative term for "conspiracy theorists," which misbelievers dislike). Ariely theorizes a "funnel of misbelief" and devotes sections to the emotional, cognitive, personality, and social components of this funnel, with explanations, anecdotes, diagrams, and exercises. He asks readers to think about their motivation for picking up the book, and suggests that they might be looking for answers as to why their friends and relatives became misbelievers during the Covid-19 pandemic. In a conversational and engaging tone, he frequently reminds readers that no one is immune to misbelief on some level, and he includes "Hopefully Helpful" sidebars with concrete tips, based on the concepts discussed in each section, for dealing with misbelieving family and friends.
The text focuses on American contexts, but its content is applicable to much more. Ariely's humanizing treatment of Covid-deniers, alien abductees, and other misbelievers enhances the sincerity of his suggestions that readers see the misbelievers in their own lives as complex human beings. His conclusion provides hope for corrective technologies to stem, and perhaps reverse, the 21st-century trend of misbelief. --Dainy Bernstein, postdoc in children's literature, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign