Why Do People Do Stupid Things?

Raise your hand if you've ever done something stupid, irrational and just incomprehensible to others although it might have made perfect sense to you at the time. Or it didn't make sense to you, but you did it anyway. We see it in the news, we watch people do it every day, we do it ourselves — people do stupid things. We often ask ourselves, "What were they thinking?"

By taking a closer look at the brain's limbic/instinctive system and the duality of our minds, Dave Weiner, who has made an avocation of studying the biology of human irrationality, helps to explain what drives so many apparently normal, intelligent people to act irrationally, at times harming themselves and others. Read on to gain a better understanding of why we do what we do, and how we might have more success at controlling our own stupidity when we're at the cusp.