The Horse That Won't Go Away

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Product Overview

Can a horse really do arithmetic? For a time a great many people thought so, enthralled by the exploits of Clever Hans, a horse that could seemingly answer any question about mathematics, language, and music with stomps of his hoof. Even as celebrated scientists endeavored to discover Hans’s secret, people were perfectly comfortable believing something no rational mind should have accepted. How is that possible?

In The Horse That Won’t Go Away, Tom Heinzen, Scott Lilienfeld, and Susan Nolan explore the confounding story of Clever Hans and how we continue to be deceived by beliefs for which there is no supporting logic or evidence. From Clever Hans, to the unsupported claims that facilitated communication could allow persons with autism to communicate, to the exaggerated fear of many parents that their child may be kidnapped (the odds of such an event are astronomical), the authors show just how important it is to rely on the scientific method as we navigate our way through everyday life.

The Horse That Won’t Go Away is available as a separate volume or packaged with any Worth psychology textbook.

"What would you do if you encountered evidence that contradicted one of your deeply held beliefs? You'd change your mind, of course, right? Wrong. What psychological science has revealed-lucidly and poignantly demonstrated in this marvelous book on how thinking goes wrong-is that we are all deeply flawed and biased reasoners, bending evidence to fit our beliefs and preconceptions. By retelling the famous story of Clever Hans, and connecting it to major myths of our time, The Horse That Wont Go Away is destined to become a classic in scientific literature and should be assigned to every course in critical thinking, along with every politician in Washington."
-Michael Shermer, author of Why People Believe Weird Things

"A terrific illustration (and, to a degree, an examination) of some of the most common causes of faulty judgment, anchored in two very compelling case studies."
-Thomas D. Gilovich, Irene Blecker Rosenfeld Professor of Psychology, Cornell University, and author of How We Know What Isnt So

"This is a marvelous book. Its like a great performance of a Beethoven symphony. The authors hit every note perfectly."
-Terence Hines, Professor of Psychology, Pace University, and author of Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

Content Material

Authors

Thomas Heinzen

Tom Heinzen was a 29-year-old college freshman and a magna cum laude graduate of Rockford College. He earned his PhD in social psychology at the State University of New York at Albany in just 3 years. He published his first book on frustration and creativity in government 2 years later; was a research associate in public policy until he was fired for arguing over the shape of a graph; and then began a teaching career at William Paterson University of New Jersey. He founded the psychology club, established an undergraduate research conference, and has been awarded various teaching honors while continuing to write journal articles, books, plays, and two novels that support the teaching of general psychology and statistics. He is also the editor of Many Things to Tell You, a volume of poetry by elderly writers. Tom is a member of numerous professional societies, and is a Fellow of the APA, the EPA, the APS, and the New York Academy of Science. His wife, Donna, is a physician assistant who has volunteered her time in relief work following hurricanes Mitch and Katrina; and their daughters work in public health, teaching, and medicine.

Scott Lilienfeld

Scott O. Lilienfeld is Professor of Psychology at Emory University in Georgia. He received his bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in psychology (clinical) from the University of Minnesota. Lilienfeld is Associate Editor of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Psychopathy, and past President of the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology. He has published over 300 articles, chapters, and books on personality and dissociative disorders, psychiatric classification, pseudoscience in psychology, and evidence-based practices in clinical psychology. A Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a columnist for Scientific American Mind, Lilienfeld was a recipient of the David Shakow Award for Outstanding Early Career Contributions to Clinical Psychology and the James McKeen Cattell Award for Distinguished Career Contributions to Applied Psychological Science.

Susan Nolan

Susan A. Nolan is Professor of Psychology at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, where she has been a 2020 College of Arts and Sciences Teacher of the Year. Susan has researched curricula and assessment in psychology education, the interpersonal consequences of mental illness, and the role of gender in science careers. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation. Susan was the 2021 president of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology. She also is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Association for Psychological Science. She holds an A.B. from the College of the Holy Cross and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University. Susan is fascinated by the applications of psychology to the “real world,” both locally and globally. She served as a representative from the APA to the United Nations for 5 years, and was a recipient of the Fukuhara Award for Advanced International Research and Service from the International Council of Psychologists. She was a 2015–2016 U.S. Fulbright Scholar in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she and her husband have a home, as well as a 2023 U.S. Fulbright Scholar in Australia. An avid traveler, Susan uses the examples she encounters through these experiences in the classroom, in this textbook, and in the statistics textbooks that she co-authors.