I expected this to be more of a romp gleefully poking holes in the shortcomings of pop psych and it was, partly, but it was also more sober than I anticipated. Singal really tracks down the origins of some of the more common myths that have infected our political debates (though I would quibble that the wishful-thinking "power pose" stuff is a difference of kind, not just degree, than the errant forecasting of the "super predator" scare.) A thoughtful book, but someone has it in them to write a vicious takedown of some of these same topics, and it might have been more fun if he had.

Jesse Singal's <i>The Quick Fix</i> is booked as a sober dismantling of the "PrimeWorld" of behavioral science. "PrimeWorld" is "a worldview fixated on the idea that people's behavior is largely driven - and can be affected - by subtle forces," such as "unconscious influences" and other individual-based, low-cost interventions. Toward this end, Singal's project succeeds but does so in a wandering and sometimes ambivalent fashion. Thus, <i>The Quick Fix</i> makes for an interesting but periodically frustrating or befuddling read.

There is a clear need for popular criticisms of flashy yet low quality, non-replicable science that is laundered through various media and journalistic venues often for sociopolitical purposes. There are disturbing institutional investments in flimsy interventions like Martin Seligman's Penn Resilience Program or bunk instruments like the implicit association test (IAT). However, Singal's criticisms often fail to pack a punch and sometimes chase undeserving targets (e.g. Cass Sunstein, Richard Thaler, and Daniel Kahneman). The poor choice in targets, especially late in the book, is where Singal's writing grows a bit discursive because he has to dedicate significant portions of time to praising the concepts and researchers that he'll later critique in a marginal way.

Instead of squandering scarce scrutiny on well supported behavioral science concepts like nudging, it would have behooved Singal to focus more on what plausible and effective alternative solutions exist to the purported "quick fixes." Singal regularly gestures at institutional policy as solutions but provides few examples of what this looks like and fails to spend time identifying which sociopolitical problems need institutional solutions. What the reader is left to surmise is that Singal thinks negative behavioral outcomes associated with low socioeconomic status result from complex, multi-causal, system-level processes that correspondingly require institutional interventions. These problems are supposedly remedied by wealth redistribution and means-tested social programs (some of the tangible interventions Singal gestures to). Unfortunately, we already know such system-level interventions are often as ineffective yet more costly than "PrimeWorld" solutions. Moreover, this framing elides the sources of the inequality Singal appears to abhor. Ironically, some of the stronger empirical explanations for said inequality emanate from the behavioral sciences, specifically behavioral genetics - a topic Singal studiously avoids in <i>The Quick Fix</i> though makes some subtle nods at (Singal is definitely aware of this field and its major takeaways).

I still recommend <i>The Quick Fix</i>. It is just that because I know and respect Singal's work, I expected and wished for more out of this book.

The Quick Fix by Jesse Singal examines the impact pseudo-science masquerading as self-help has on society. It describes why fad-psychology gains popularity and how it sometimes destroys rather than help people.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THE BOOK
The Quick Fix uses historical examples to illuminate what happens when false ideas take hold in a society. From the ascendance "superpredator" meme in the 1980s (which falsely criminalises Black American youth) to the popularisation of the notion that our poses influence our behaviour, the author highlights the harm that half-baked behavioural science causes.

WHO IS IT FOR
Lovers of the self-help genre might find this helpful as it illustrates some of the dark sides of this category.

Many thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for review copy.

A book for every self-help lover, arm chair psychologist, and TED Talk superfan. One of the best books I’ve read in 2020 (and I’ve read most of the ones sited within), the author demystifies popular pop psychology concepts and investigates the believes we’ve formed from well-marketed but poorly constituted ideas. CSI meets Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday — it was love at first page.