Choose self-help books carefully

With self-improvement now a $10 billion annual industry and nearly half a million self-help books on the market, how do you select a book that will help, you can trust, and believe?

It’s not easy. Those books often sound too good to be true.

In a survey by researchers Norah Dunbar and Gordon Abra, precious few of today’s popular authors were found to be building their books on empirically-tested conclusions. Instead, the vast majority of them relied solely on anecdotal evidence and time-worn assumptions. As quoted in Brain Blogger, the researchers say “fewer than 20 percent (of the authors) had based their findings on a sustained program of research, and less than half had published even one article in peer-reviewed journals or books.”

Such reckless publishing brings its hazards too, warns Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Professor Emerita of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts. “With more than 50 top-selling books on anxiety and depression,” she writes in Psychology Today, “getting the wrong self-help book can actually set you back while searching for answers to what’s facing you, in your life now.”

When you’re examining self-help books, Whitbourne urges a Google search on any author before you buy. “Track down his or her training,” she writes. “Make sure it matches the expertise the author claims to have. Scan the book’s contents, check the date it was actually written, and be wary of any book written before the 1990s.”

According to Brian Thompson, a licensed psychologist in Portland, Ore., even a self-help book based on established principles doesn’t necessarily mean the average person can efficiently put its principles into practice and benefit.

Most agree that in an ideal setting, self-help books would be based on principles with scientific support, rigorously tested to see if their readers can understand and follow them.