Writing

For argument's sake: evidence that reason can change minds (2015)
For argument’s sake: evidence that reason can change minds (2015)
Control Your Dreams (2011)
Control Your Dreams (2011)
Explore Your Blind Spot (2011)
Explore Your Blind Spot (2011)
The Narrative Escape (2010)
The Narrative Escape (2010)
Mind Hacks: Tips & Tricks for Using Your Brain (2004)
Mind Hacks: Tips & Tricks for Using Your Brain (2004)


My latest is an ebook ‘For argument’s sake: evidence that reason can change minds‘.

Currently I am enjoying writing a regular column about the brain and everyday life for BBC Future. I also critically review neuroscience and psychology stories in the news for The Conversation.

I co-authored the best-selling Mind Hacks: Tips and Tricks for using your brain (2004), which led to the creation of an award-winning website mindhacks.com. I still post here irregularly, but 99.9% of the posts are due to Vaughan Bell (see below for links to some of these irregular posts).

I also wrote the essays which intersperse the Rough Guide Book of Brain Training (2010). You can read about this Rough Guide on mindhacks.com, and there is one of the cut chapters here

I have written an ebook on psychology, morality and the nature of stories: The Narrative Escape (2010). Recently I have published two free ebooks Explore Your Blind Spot and Control Your Dreams (both december 2011).

I have written magazine articles, including an article on confabulation and creativity for Prospect magazine: Tall Stories; this on creativity and games for Rattle; and one on small world theory and social networks for Now Then magazine (available here). I come top of a google search for “psychology + coffee” because of this article Psychology in the Coffee Shop, published in the Psychologist magazine.

I wrote a chapter for Christian Nold’s Emotional Cartography, and I gave a talk at the book launch which started ‘There is a saying that those who want to enjoy laws and sausages should not find out how they are made. I think the same is true about facts’.

I enjoy giving talks, usually they aren’t recorded, but this one is written out here: ‘The technology of our wiser, wider, selves’.

Sometimes I write longer blog posts. For mindhacks.com these include: Little men and their discontinuities, A surprising romantic reappearance, Hack #102 : Alter Input With Expectations, Hack 101: Make Eyes (or Anything) in Pictures Follow You Round The Room, Hack #103: See more with your eyes closed, Hack #104: Change the length of your arms!, Cultivated Perception, The Social Yawn, Why email is addictive (and what to do about it), Test Your Synaesthesia. I also wrote a lot of posts about psychology and advertising at one point.

For this blog these include Me in a dream, Rock Climbing Hacks, Cognitive Dissonance Reduction , How do psychologists think? and these three posts on learning: Learning makes itself invisible, Learning Should be Fun, The Straight Dope on Learning Styles