Scientific psychology from science fiction.

Question: Is there a book you find particularly inspiring?

Dan Gilbert: I wish I had more time to read fiction. I don’t have as much time to read it as I might, so I’m the wrong person to ask about the most exciting novel ever written. But I certainly know that the work that Phillip K. Dick inspired me 25, 30 years ago in ways that I still find myself reflecting on. Phillip K. Dick at that time was, of course, a genre science fiction writer now recognized as a great American writer. But in his novels, reality was constantly working and bending. And what we were constantly learning was the nature of reality is how your brain constructs it. And the slightest change in the way your brain works can make a great change in the reality around you. That was a lesson never lost on me, and one that I think is probably the underlying lesson of scientific psychology.

Recorded on: 6/12/2007