Bestselling author Michael Shermer explains how evolution shaped the modern economy-and why people are so irrational about money How did we make the leap from ancient hunter-gatherers to modern consumers and traders? Why do people get so emotional and irrational about bottom-line financial and business decisions? Is the capitalist marketplace a sort of Darwinian organism, evolved through natural selection as the fittest way to satisfy our needs? In this eye-opening exploration, author and psychologist Michael Shermer uncovers the evolutionary roots of our economic behavior. Drawing on the new field of neuroeconomics, Shermer investigates what brain scans reveal about bargaining, snap purchases, and establishing trust in business. He scrutinizes experiments in behavioral economics to understand why people hang on to losing stocks, why negotiations disintegrate into tit-for-tat disputes, and why money does not make us happy. He brings together astonishing findings from psychology, biology, and other sciences to describe how our tribal ancestry makes us suckers for brands, why researchers believe cooperation unleashes biochemicals similar to those released during sex, why free trade promises to build alliances between nations, and how even capuchin monkeys get indignant if they don't get a fair reward for their work.

邁剋爾·捨默

佩珀代因大學心理學學士，加州大學富爾頓分校實驗心理學碩士，剋萊濛特研究大學科學史博士。

曾在加州大學洛杉磯分校教授心理學、進化論和科學史。

他著作頗豐，齣版過9本書，包括暢銷書《為什麼人們會相信怪事》、《我們何以信》和《善與惡的科學》。

他目前擔任剋萊濛特研究大學客座教授，同時是《科學人》雜誌的專欄作傢，以及《懷疑論者》雜誌的發行人。

已故當代最著名的進化生物學傢斯蒂芬·古爾德稱捨默為“美國公眾生活中的重要人物”。