“Habituation. It may be as fundamental a characteristic of life as DNA.” (Vincent Gaston Dethier)

In Look Again, Tali Sharot and Cass Sunstein write about how we are often complacent and fixed in our opinions and how we can challenge ourselves to see things differently.  Habituation is a fact of life – as stimuli repeat we respond less and less to them.

In recent research, users who deactivated their Facebook accounts were happier and more satisfied with their lives (my personal experience is consistent with this finding). This research also concluded that the increase in happiness was equivalent to a $30,000 increase in income.

The authors write about the “illusory truth effect”, that repetition increases believability, quoting Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, “Slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea”. 

Look Again is a great read to make everyone think again about questioning and challenging long-held views and the comfort of ideas that have become ‘comfortable’. Well worth a read by anyone who wants to question their thinking.