The mind is flat: the shocking shallowness of human psychology

What are the forces shaping human behaviour? How do we think and decide? What are the origins of human rationality and irrationality?

Our everyday conception of how our minds work is profoundly misleading. We are victims of an ‘illusion of mental depth’- we imagine that our thoughts and behaviours arise from hidden motives and beliefs and that we can understand ourselves by somehow uncovering these hidden forces, whether through therapy, lab experiments or brain scanning.

This course will show you that the very idea of these ‘mental depths’ is an illusion. When this is stripped away, our understanding not only of minds, but also morality, markets and society is transformed.