Book Review: "Surrounded by Idiots" by Thomas Erikson

So, there I was, wrapping parcels one morning, when I stumbled upon Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson on the Kindle Store for a ridiculously low price in comparison to where I had seen it on paperback shelves whilst on my travels.

Intrigued by the catchy title and the promise of understanding why communication often fails, I clicked the buy button. By the end of the day, I had torn through its pages, captivated by Erikson's engaging approach to explaining human behavior. The book is a fun, relative easy approach to social psychology. But whilst that might have been the case, I found myself worried about the over-simplification of ideas in what became known to me as 'pop-psychology'.

The author introduces us to a colour-coded system to understand different personality types: Reds, Blues, Greens, and Yellows. Reds are the dominant, decisive types who often come across as aggressive. Blues are the analytical, detail-oriented folks, sometimes seen as overly meticulous. Greens are the calm, supportive ones, often perceived as passive. Yellows are the enthusiastic, sociable types who might seem a bit disorganized. This whole system is based on the DISC model, aiming to simplify the complexity of human interactions.

Now, Erikson peppers the book with anecdotes and scenarios to show how these personality types clash or harmonise. For instance, there's this bit about a Red manager whose direct approach totally alienates a Green employee who just wants a bit of harmony and support. Erikson's point? If we can identify these personality types, we can tweak our communication styles to be more effective and avoid misunderstandings.

I found one key disadvantage to this book and it's one of those I'm going to have to thank Alex Edmans for again. (His book is called May Contain Lies). Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this book has a huge problem with data and actually proving anything at all. First of all, the vast majority of the data is anecdotal, so like in the book Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber, it perhaps should not be taken that seriously. It also has a problem with oversimplification. I think with many of the points it is making, it is simply not delving deep enough into the science that surrounds them. This is probably one the author wants to discuss with our friend, Robert Sapolsky.

Let's just leave this hanging in the air. There is actually a point in this book where the author themselves states that there is no proof for what he is writing. How do you think about writing something you claim to be social psychology without an inch of proof for anything?

Let's step away from this idea for a second and investigate the other problems with this book. Some of them are subjective as well, for example: I don't appreciate a quiz at the end of a book because I'm not reading a quiz book. This is psychology not pop trivia and I would appreciate it if the author treated it with a bit more seriousness. Another is more objective. The chapters are far too short for going into any real expansion whatsoever and I found that a lot of time was wasted on anecdotal evidence where scientific analysis might have been better.

On the other hand, this book made a relatively fun read and made me realise how many different personality types there might be out there that I am not aware of. Apart from diagnosing myself a relatively well-ratiod mixture of 'green' and 'blue' personalities (putting myself, as the book weirdly states, in the same ballpark as Jesus, who's personality is so well-known to history...can we stop this nonsense? How could you possibly know that? You cannot). I was also shocked to find that 'yellow' is a personality trait all on its own. I have never met a yellow in my life.

All in all, I found this book a funny, active read but honestly, I can't get past those data issues because it is passing itself of as a piece of academic literature. I don't mind you using How to Win Friends and Influence People as one of the books in your citations list, but I do mind when it's one of the only credible books there. This is a book you have to definitely take with a whole lot of pinches of salt. Just keep doing one after the other until you overdose on salt or worse, you run out of pinches.