Book Review: Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models

Abstract

Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models. By Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann. 2019. Penguin Random House LLC, 978–0525533580, 352 pages

I wasn't sure what to expect when I started this book. I was thinking it would be a book on cognitive psychology and how learning works according to various theories. That was certainly not the topic of this book! Instead, the book is a whirlwind tour through the mental models, or basically cognitive shortcuts, that people use (sometimes without realizing it) in everyday life.

Weinberg and McCann organize the models into nine different chapters, with an additional introduction chapter explaining the themes and organization of the book and a concluding chapter wrapping up the key points of the book. The model chapters cover a variety of topics, including making decisions, resolving conflicts, being wrong, statistics (and how bad people are at understanding them), time management, and organizational behavior. Each chapter had a key takeaway section at the end that summarizes the most important mental models discussed in that chapter. This takeaway section is a great quick reference when you half-remember what was discussed in the chapter but can't recall the name of the model or need a short description of what one of the models is about.

This book is great for anyone who would like an overview of mental models, or who wants to organize their knowledge of mental models. However, there is not a lot of detail about the models. This is quite understandable, as there are hundreds presented in the book! For readers wanting more detail on the models, the authors mention multiple noteworthy model developers, as well as some studies using some of the models. At the very least, if I want to find out more about any model, I now have the appropriate term to plug into a scientific search engine.

The book is written more for someone in the business world rather than the academic world. Still, most, if not all, of the models are highly applicable in the classroom and/or the academic research lab. It just takes a bit of creative thinking to see the applications. For example, the vast majority of students (and faculty) would benefit from the chapter on time management, which covers mental models such as multitasking, opportunity cost, diminishing returns, loss aversion, reframing the problem, and the Pareto principle. Imagine discussing these models with students in terms of assignments. They can use the Pareto principle to figure out what part of an assignment is most important and get them closest to finishing the assignment with the least amount of time commitment. They should not try to multitask when doing the assignment, because they won't be able to focus well and therefore won't do as good a job as if they had focused only on the assignment. Reframing the problem, or looking at the assignment from different perspectives, may help them see new ways to complete it. And understanding diminishing returns will help students recognize at what point their final product is of acceptable quality and additional time spent won't really have a significant impact on that quality.

Overall, this book is a fairly quick read and is great for anyone who likes to think about how people think. Once you learn the names of the various mental models, you'll start seeing them pop up everywhere. In addition, knowing how the various mental models work provides a better understanding of human behavior under various conditions, allowing people to name and correct their behaviors towards more effective and productive habits.