Why Do People Think Differently?

This is an alphabetical version.  For a subjective ranked version see: Ranked: Why Do People Think Differently?

The below books explain why people view reality differently.  What causes them to think differently.  Understanding why people think a certain way can help engage with them.  

An Ethical Account

• Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It by Max H. Bazerman, Ann E. Tenbrunsel
• A Philosophy of Evil by Lars Svendsen
• Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Different Backgrounds

• A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell
• The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap by Gish Jen
• The Heroine With 1,001 Faces by Maria Tatar
• How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett
• How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan
• Inventing the Enemy by Umberto Eco
• Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez
• Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them by Joshua D. Greene
• Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much by Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir
• Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin To Munger by Peter Bevelin
• Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History by Michel-Rolph Trouillot
• The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson
• Transformative Experience by L. A. Paul
• The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer
• War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges
• The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World by Charles C. Mann

Different Wants

• 1789: The Threshold of the Modern Age by David Andress
• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff
• [Upcoming] An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence by Zeinab Badawi
• Bolivar: American Liberator by Marie Arana
• The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth by Jonathan Rauch
• Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World by Bruce Schneier
• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
• The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi
• Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds by Jim Sterba
• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss
• Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World by Tim Marshall
• A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russell
• The Second Stage by Betty Friedan
• Science Fictions: The Epidemic of Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science by Stuart Ritchie
• The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
• Social Justice Fallacies by Thomas Sowell
• The Sovereignty Wars: Reconciling America with the World by Stewart Patrick
• Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming by McKenzie Funk

Divergent Thinking

• Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us by Brian Klaas
• In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business by Charlan Jeanne Nemeth
• From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000 by Lee Kuan Yew
• A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine
• Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie
• Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization by Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science by Peter Godfrey-Smith
• Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam Grant
• Think Like a Freak by Steven D. Levitt, and Stephen J. Dubner
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
• Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin
• Why Societies Need Dissent by Cass R. Sunstein

Divergent Thinking / Fiction

• The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu (The Three-Body Problem Series)
• Elektra by Jennifer Saint
• The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (The Three-Body Problem Series)
• A Voracious Grief by Lindsey Lamh

The Influence of Culture

• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
• The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror by Bernard Lewis
• The Evolution of God by Robert Wright
• Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters by Brian Klaas
• Hybrid Warfare: The Russian Approach to Strategic Competition & Conventional Military Conflict by Curtis L. Fox
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
• Japanese Culture: The Religious and Philosophical Foundations by Roger J. Davies
• Japan Unbound: A Volatile Nation's Quest for Pride and Purpose by John Nathan
• Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason by Michel Foucault
• The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America by Verlan Lewis, Hyrum Lewis
• Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else by Chrystia Freeland
• The Republic Of Plato by Plato, and Allan Bloom
• Race And Culture: A World View by Thomas Sowell
• Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: Tight and Loose Cultures and the Secret Signals that Direct Our Lives by Michele Gelfand
• The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter by Joseph Henrich
• The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It: On Social Position and How We Use it by Will Storr
• Trans: Gender Identity and the New Battle for Women's Rights by Helen Joyce
• When Women Ruled The World by Maureen Quilligan
• Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America by John McWhorter
• World Cultures: Analyzing Pre-Industrial Societies In Africa, Asia, Europe, And the Americas by James T. Shea

The Influence of Culture / Fiction 

• Berlin by Jason Lutes

Learning Different Ways to Think

• Buddha by Karen Armstrong
• Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It by Ian Leslie
• [Upcoming] Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness by Steve Magness
• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth
• How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine ... for Now by Stanislas Dehaene
• Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
• The Possibility Principle: How Quantum Physics Can Improve the Way You Think, Live, and Love by Mel Schwartz
• Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
• Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker
• The Secret Formula of Strategic Thinkers: Winning Steps for Sustained Success by Cory Smith
• The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers by Eric Weiner

Learning Different Ways to Think / Fiction

• [Upcoming] The Schopenhauer Cure: A Novel by Irvin Yalom

How It Is Known That People Think Differently

• Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
• Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein
• Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip E. Tetlock, and Dan Gardner

Brains Infrastructure

• The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve by Steve Stewart-Williams
• The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker
• The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths about Sex and Identity in Our Society by Debra Soh
• Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman
• The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist
• The Neuroscience of You: How Every Brain Is Different by Chantel Prat
• Screwed Up Somehow But Not Stupid: Life With a Learning Disability by Peter Flom
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Fiction / Brains Infrastructure

• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes