How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like
by Paul Bloom

In How Pleasure Works, the internationally acclaimed psychologist Paul Bloom explores one of the most fascinating and fundamental engines of human behaviour.We are natural-born essentialists — when it comes to pleasure, nothing is ever merely skin-deep. We are attracted, whether we know it or not, to the hidden aspects of things and people. Some teenagers enjoy cutting themselves with razors; some men pay good money to be spanked by prostitutes. The average Briton spends over a day a week watching television. The thought of sex with a virgin is intensely arousing to many men. Artwork can sell for millions of pounds. Food and alcohol are so compelling that they can come to dominate one's life. Young children enjoy playing with imaginary friends and can be comforted by security blankets. People slow their cars to look at gory accidents and go to sentimental movies that make them cry.In this revealing and witty account, Paul Bloom examines the science behind these curious desires, attractions and tastes, covering everything from the animal instincts of sex and food to the uniquely human taste for art, music and stories. Drawing on insights from child development, philosophy, neuroscience and behavioural economics, How Pleasure Works shows how certain universal habits of the human mind explain what we like and why we like it.

Reviews

In this eloquent and provocative book, Paul Bloom takes us inside the paradoxes of pleasure, exploring everything from cannibalism to Picasso to IKEA furniture. The quirks of delight, it turns out, are a delightful way to learn about the human mind

Jonah Lehrer, author of How We Decide 

Following the path of pleasure, Bloom leads us through a menagerie of human strangeness. By the end of the trip, the ‘magic inside us' begins to make sense. This book is a pearl, a work of great beauty and value, built up around a simple truth: that we are essentialists, tuned in to unseen order
Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis 

Paul Bloom is among the deepest thinkers and clearest writers in the science of mind today. He has a knack for coming up with genuinely new insights about mental life — ones that you haven't already read about or thought of — and making them seem second nature through vivid examples and lucid explanations
Steven Pinker 

How Pleasure Works has one of the best discussions I’ve read of why art is pleasurable, why it matters to us, and why it moves us so
Daniel Levitin, author of This Is Your Brain on Music 

This book is not just a pleasure, but a revelation, by one of psychology’s deepest thinkers and best writers. Lucid and fascinating, you’ll want to read it slowly and savor the experience.
Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness