Black Sheep: The Hidden Benefits of Being Bad Paperback – Import, June 18, 2015

Was an easy read, humorous, backed up with research

It's an academic peer review sort of book, which is not boring but the Benefits of Being Bad mention studies that make you question the evidence, because the evidence seems to be geared towards the specific theme of the book; finding evidence that being bad has positives. It's a quick read, but the hidden benefits of being bad do not overcome the benefits of being good.

Interesting book to read

“Black Sheep: The Hidden Benefits of Being Bad” is an eye catching title for Richard Stephens’ book. He comes from a psychological science perspective and discusses situations of behaving badly. The scientific research to validate his research is included with every chapter.Some of the topics I found personally interesting include: Floor it: what kind of driver are you? Motorcyclists and Taiwan and Damn Good: fined for not giving a damn.The book is a light read and the book would interest those who want to learn but prefer their research in bite size chunks.Thank you GoodReads for the book.

I feel Stephens could've done better providing evidence for his claims. Some things seemed completely irrelevant to his point of being "bad".Other than that the book wasn't bad.

An interesting book but it may have a small readership circle because it seems like a massive sociological study and so may appeal only to sociologists; yet its descriptions and discussions seem too basic for serious sociologists. General readers are not likely to be enthralled by Stephen's claims like the one he makes about pop music being a good barometer of human emotions; or that racing drivers do not see the world the way non-racing drivers do. He has an interesting story backing up each claim, but because he covers so many disparate issues it is difficult to focus on the key point of the book: There are benefits in bad habits or activities (we may not really need to read this book to appreciate the point ourselves). Nonetheless, the reader might just be so carried away that before he realises it, he might already have read the entire book.

Great Read - taking the interesting bits of human nature and giving plenty of background research (simple enough to understand) which tells of some surprising facts about the benefits of things such as swearing and drinking alcohol!

A pedestrian literature review of many cute results in experimental psychology. Unfortunately it falls between two stools: the writing is somewhat tedious (this is no zingy Malcolm Gladwell romp), while it isn't exactly a scholarly work and several of the highlighted findings seem unlikely to be reproducible. A few of the results I hadn't come across before, so the time spent reading it wasn't completely wasted.

Haven't quite finished reading this yet, but so far very entertaining whilst being informative at the same time

Nicely written, clear, informative and entertaining. Very useful summary sections. It's good to read an expert who can write for those who are not experts and want clarity without specialist jargon.

A funny & interesting read, I feel much better about drinking, driving too fast and being naughty sometimes!