McRaney reveals that every decision we make, every thought we contemplate, and every emotion we feel comes with a story we tell ourselves to explain them. But sometimes those stories aren't true.

Introduction: You -- Priming -- Confabulation -- Confirmation Bias -- Hindsight Bias -- The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy -- Procrastination -- Normalcy Bias -- Introspection -- The Availability Heuristic -- The Bystander Effect -- The Dunning-Kruger Effect -- Apophenia -- Brand Loyalty -- The Argument from Authority -- The Argument from Ignorance -- The Straw Man Fallacy -- The Ad Hominem Fallacy -- The Just-World Fallacy -- The Public Goods Game -- The Ultimatum Game -- Subjective Validation -- Cult Indoctrination -- Groupthink -- Supernormal Releasers -- The Affect Heuristic -- Dunbar's Number -- Selling Out -- Self-Serving Bias -- The Spotlight Effect -- The Third Person Effect -- Catharsis -- The Misinformation Effect -- Conformity -- Extinction Burst -- Social Loafing -- The Illusion of Transparency -- Learned Helplessness -- Embodied Cognition -- The Anchoring Effect -- Attention -- Self-Handicapping -- Self-Fulfilling Prophecies -- The Moment -- Consistency Bias -- The Representativeness Heuristic -- Expectation -- The Illusion of Control -- The Fundamental Attribution Error.