The Truth-Seeker's Handbook: A Science-Based Guide
Book Description
How do you know whether something is true? How do you convince others to believe the facts? Research in cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics shows that we often make dangerous judgment errors, what scholars call cognitive biases.
These mental blindspots cause us to believe comfortable lies over inconvenient truths. Such errors leave us vulnerable to making the wrong decisions based on false beliefs. These poor choices lead to disastrous consequences for our business, personal lives, relationships, and civic engagement.
Fortunately, scientists have uncovered many useful strategies for overcoming our mental flaws. This book presents a variety of research-based tools for ensuring that our beliefs are aligned with reality.
With examples from daily life and an engaging style, the book will provide you with the skills to avoid cognitive biases and help others to do so. Using these strategies, you will prevent disasters and maximize success for yourself, those you care about, your organization, and our society.
Influential Media Featuring Dr. Gleb Tsipursky’s Cutting-Edge Expertise
Purchasing Options
For discounts on bulk purchases (10 or more copies) of digital or print books for your organization, email us.
Free Book Sample
You’ll also get:
A free copy of the author’s Assessment on Dangerous Judgment Errors in the Workplace. This strategic tool helps you and everyone on your team avoid the cognitive biases that lead to workplace disasters.
Free access to his “Wise Decision Maker Guide.” This resource provides you with vital ongoing tools on avoiding cognitive biases and making the best decisions to avoid professional and personal disasters in your email inbox every first and third Tuesday.
Get Your Free Book Sample and Bonus Digital Materials!
Book Video Trailer
Video of Sample Strategy From Book
Author Bio
Known as the Disaster Avoidance Expert, I have over 20 years of experience dramatically empowering leaders and organizations to avoid business disasters by addressing potential threats, maximizing unexpected opportunities, and resolving persistent personnel problems. The bestselling author of several books, I am best known for my national bestseller on avoiding disasters in business and other life areas, The Truth Seeker’s Handbook: A Science-Based Guide, and my next book, Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters is forthcoming with Career Press in November 2019. My cutting-edge thought leadership was featured in over 400 articles I published and over 350 interviews I gave to popular venues that include Fast Company, CBS News,Time, Scientific American, Psychology Today, The Conversation, Business Insider, Government Executive, Inc. Magazine, and many others.
My expertise comes from over 20 years of consulting, coaching, speaking, and training for mid-size and large businesses and nonprofits. I serve as the CEO of the boutique consulting, coaching, and training firm Disaster Avoidance Experts, which uses a proprietary methodology based on cutting-edge research to help clients maximize their bottom line. My clients include Aflac, Balance Employment Assistance Provider, Edison Welding Institute, Fifth Third Bank, Honda, IBM, International Coaches Federation, Ohio Hospitals Association, National Association of Women Business Owners, Sentinel Real Estate, The Society for Human Resource Management, RealManage, The Columbus Foundation, Vistage, and over a hundred others, who achieved outstanding client results.
I also have a strong research and teaching background in behavioral economics and neuroscience with over 15 years in academia, including 7 years as a professor at the Ohio State University and before that a Fellow at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. My dozens of peer-reviewed academic publications include journals such as Behavior and Social Issues, Journal of Social and Political Psychology, and International Journal of Existential Psychology and Psychotherapy.
My civic service includes over 4 years as the Chair of the Board of Directors of Intentional Insights, an educational nonprofit advocating for research-based decision-making and truth-seeking in all life areas. I also co-founded the Pro-Truth Pledge, a civic project to promote truthfulness and integrity for individual professionals and leaders in the same way that the Better Business Bureau serves as a commitment for businesses. I serve on the Advisory Board of Canonical Debate Lab and Planet Purpose and the Editorial Board of the peer-reviewed journal Behavior and Social Issues.
A highly in-demand international speaker, I have over two decades of professional speaking experience across North America, Europe, and Australia. I get top marks from audiences for my highly facilitative, interactive, and humor-filled speaking style and the way I thoroughly customize speeches for diverse audiences. Meeting planners describe me as “very relatable,” as “a snap to work with,” and as someone who “does everything that you would want a speaker to do.” Drawing on best practices in adult learning, my programs address the wide spectrum of diverse learning styles, as attested by enthusiastic client testimonials and references. You can also check out this brief speaker demo video, this short TED-style keynote video, this hour-long opening keynote video, and other speaking videos, learn more about frequently requested programs, get information targeted at meeting planners, and see my Speaker One Sheet for more information on his speaking.
I earned my PhD in the History of Behavioral Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011, my M.A. at Harvard University in 2004, and my B.A. at New York University in 2002. I live in and travel from Columbus, OH. In my free time, I enjoy tennis, hiking, and playing with my cats, and most importantly, I make sure to spend abundant quality time with my wife to avoid disasters in my personal life.
Contact me at Gleb[at]DisasterAvoidanceExperts[dot]com, follow me on Twitter @gleb_tsipursky, Instagram@dr_gleb_tsipursky, Facebook, YouTube, RSS, and LinkedIn. Most importantly, help yourself avoid disasters and maximize success, and get a free copy of the Assessment on Dangerous Judgment Errors in the Workplace, by signing up for my free Wise Decision Maker Course.
For Media
Sample Questions to Ask Author During Interview
- Why do human minds tend to flinch away from the truth?
- What are the costs to us as individuals, to our relationships, to our careers, and to our society of us preferring comfortable lies over inconvenient truths?
- How can we reshape our gut instincts to orient toward inconvenient truths instead of comfortable lies?
- How can we recognize thinking errors that prevent us from seeing reality clearly?
- What are good strategies to avoid these thinking errors?
- How can we recognize thinking errors in other people that cause them to deny the facts?
- How can we convince others to accept the facts, even when these facts go against their gut instincts?
- How can we change the organizations or groups in which we participate to avoid denying reality?
- How can we change our society as a whole to promote truth-seeking over falsehoods?
- What do you envisions as the kind of society we can have if the strategies described in this book become adopted widely?
Bestseller Status
The book hit the Amazon bestseller list as #1 book in its primary category of "education in decision-making and problem-solving" shortly after its release in November 2017.