Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know Adam Grant (good books to read for beginners .TXT) 📖

accurately judge their knowledge, the least knowledgeable often struggle the most. After people take a logical reasoning test, when they’re offered a $100 bill if they can correctly (and, therefore, humbly) guess how many questions they got right, they still end up being overconfident. On a twenty-question test, they think they got an average of 1.42 more questions right than they actually did—and the worst performers are the most overconfident.

* That reaction can vary based on gender. In Basima’s study of investment professionals, impostor thoughts helped the task performance of both men and women, but were more likely to spur extra teamwork among men. Men were driven to compensate for their fear that they might fall short of expectations in their core tasks by doing extra collaborative work. Women were more dependent on confidence and more likely to feel debilitated by doubts.

* I was studying the factors that explain why some writers and editors performed better than others at a travel guide company where I was working. Performance wasn’t related to their sense of autonomy, control, confidence, challenge, connection, collaboration, conflict, support, self-worth, stress, feedback, role clarity, or enjoyment. The best performers were the ones who started their jobs believing that their work would have a positive impact on others. That led me to predict that givers would be more successful than takers, because they would be energized by the difference their actions made in others’ lives. I went on to test and support that hypothesis in a number of studies, but then I came across other studies in which generosity predicted lower productivity and higher burnout. Instead of trying to prove them wrong, I realized I was wrong—my understanding was incomplete. I set out to explore when givers succeed and when they fail, and that became my first book, Give and Take.

* It’s possible to change even your deep-seated beliefs while keeping your values intact. Psychologists recently compared people who walked away from their religions with those who were currently religious and never religious. Across Hong Kong, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United States, they found a religious residue effect: people who de-identified with religion were just as likely to keep volunteering, and gave more money to charity than those who were never religious.

* If you choose to make fun of yourself out loud, there’s evidence that how people react depends on your gender. When men make self-deprecating jokes, they’re seen as more capable leaders, but when women do it, they’re judged as less capable. Apparently, many people have missed the memo that if a woman pokes fun at herself, it’s not a reflection of incompetence or inadequacy. It’s a symbol of confident humility and wit.