Factfulness by Hans Rosling Book Analysis Essay

The book Factfulness gives the reader a better view on our world today. It shows people how they should be thinking in their life. Hans Rosling talks about ten instincts that make people think wrongly of the world as we know it. The three instincts that have affected my thinking the most in life are negativity, straight-line, and the fear instinct. Therefore, this essay will explain these three instincts and give examples of how they have affected my thinking. 

The negativity instinct has affected my thinking in life. The negativity instinct is the instinct to notice more bad things than good. Rosling states that a premature baby in an incubator is good and bad. Rosling says, “Does it make sense to say that the infant’s situation is improving? Yes, absolutely. Does it make sense to say it is bad? Yes, absolutely” (71). This has affected my thinking in life. For example, when I was young, I had an immune deficiency. I had a port put in my chest to help me. My condition was not looking good, but I was getting better over time. After a few years I got the port taken out. Another example of how this instinct affected my life is the news. Whenever I watch the news, I am swarmed with all the dreadful things that are happening, and I would think the world is getting worse. In the book he writes, “Remember that the media and activists rely on drama to grab your attention” (71). Rosling is showing us that good news does not grab the human eye as much. When I was younger, I was not informed well about our world's past. I was just always told that the world was always good. Rosling states, “When we hang on to a rose-tinted version of history we deprive ourselves and our children of the truth” (72). What he is saying is that the past is a scary but if we knew it, it would help as be thankful for what we have today. The negativity instinct has affected my thinking in life. 

The straight-line instinct disarrays peoples thinking. It makes the human brain think that when an unpleasant thing has an expected growth, that it will never slow down. The world has always had a constant worry about overpopulation. In all reality though experts believe it will curve out to about 11 billion humans. Rosling writes, “They think the curve will flatten out at somewhere between 10 and 12 billion people by the end of the century” (82). This shows how people’s prediction are not usually correct. Rosling also gives a splendid example in the book. He writes about his grandson Mino who had a huge growth spurt after being newly born. He writes, “My youngest grandchild, Mino, was 19.5 inches long when he was born. In his first six months he grew to 26.5 inches. An impressive growth of seven inches” (81). The point he was trying to prove was that if people looked at his growth chart and imagined it would keep going as it was, it would be unrealistic. Stocks are an excellent example as well of this instinct. If a stock is doing very well and keeps getting better, you must expect that stock to even out at some point. Rosling writes, “Straight lines are much less common than we tend to think” (93). Therefore, this instinct has affected my thinking by giving me a better ability to predict line trends. 

The fear instinct affects everybody. I believe the fear instinct is the biggest instinct of them all. The fear instinct makes you do irrational things when you fear something. In the book Rosling tells the reader a story about when he worked at a hospital. In the story a plane had crashed, and they were bringing the wounded people to the hospital in a helicopter. When a patient got in his room Rosling believed he was having an epileptic seizure. As he was taking his clothes off, he noticed blood on the floor. Therefore, Rosling thought his plane got shot down and World War three had started. In all reality the patient was just having hypothermia from the water and the blood was not actually blood. He writes, “When we are afraid, we do not see clearly” (103). Our brains also have an attention filter. By this Rosling means our brains only like to take in information that is fearful. Therefore, news reporters want to make titles on articles that sound scary. In the book Rosling states, “So we end up paying attention to information that fits our dramatic instincts, and ignoring information that does not” (104). Throughout my entire life I have always feared planes. I never want to get on them because I do not want to crash. When in all reality this is not the right thing to fear, because plane crashes only happen 0.001 percent of the time. Rosling writes, “It makes us give our attention to the unlikely dangers that we are most afraid of, and neglect what is actually most risky” (122). The fear instinct affects people by making us afraid of things we should not be afraid of. 

In conclusions, our instincts affect our thinking more then we know. These three instincts are what I think are the biggest ones. The negativity instinct is thinking everything is bad. When something can be good and bad. The straight-line instinct affects us by us thinking line trends will stay the same forever when they will top out eventually. The fear instinct controls our mind. It makes us scared of things we should not fear. This book has changed my whole outlook on life. It has made me question my thinking and change my thinking. This book will help me make better decisions, and make me think better about the world we live in.