Showing titles in Social Psychology & Interactions

In Possessed, Rebecca R. Falkoff asks how hoarding - once a paradigm of economic rationality - came to be defined as a mental illness. Hoarding is unique among the disorders included in the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5 because its diagnosis requires the existence of a material entity: the hoard. Possessed therefore considers the hoard as an aesthetic object produced by clashing perspectives about the meaning or value of objects.

A depressive illness or a passing feeling? Mental detachment or a precursor to genius? Melancholy is a critical part of what it is to be human, yet everything from Prozac to self-help psychology books seems intent on removing all signs of sadness from contemporary existence. Complex and contradictory, melancholy’s presence weaves through the histories of both science and art.

After thirty years of research, Sigmund Freud still felt the great unanswered question was: 'What does a woman want?' Fifteen years into her own journey as a psychotherapist, Maxine Chung believes she holds the answer. Through the profound and moving stories of seven very different women, Maxine sheds light on our most fundamental needs and desires. What Women Want is an electrifying and deeply intimate examination into the inner lives of women.

All of us constantly broadcast information to others, even when we don't say a word. Sales professionals broadcast to potential clients in a way that wins new business. Managers broadcast to their teams about projects. Colleagues broadcast to one another about available resources. The messages we choose to broadcast shape others' beliefs in the potential for success and their ability to create positive change.

So much human behavior can be explained by two motives: we want to be right, and we want to feel good about ourselves. But the tension between these two motives makes us especially vulnerable to bias—and bias distorts our view of the world and of ourselves and can keep us from doing even what we know is right. In The Unbiased Self, social psychologist Erin Devers lays out what psychology has discovered about bias and selfishness.

You’ve been manipulated before by advertising tricks. You’ve overlooked important details and made mistakes in your thinking. You haven’t been fast enough to detect opportunities and others snatched them from you. We’ve all been in these scenarios. But we don’t have to stay there. Transform your thinking to solve complex problems, overcome obstacles, discover opportunities, and think more clearly and accurately.

Have you ever wondered how you can decode people's facial expressions? Are you interested in learning what different gestures and postures mean? Do you want to know how to detect lies and deceit? While you can’t read people’s minds, you can learn to read people like a book by observing and accurately interpreting their non-verbal cues. These skills are crucial if you wish to become a more effective communicator and gain insight into other people’s thoughts and feelings.

Armed with the information contained here, you will be one step closer to decluttering your life and living the way you were meant to. You will learn to accept yourself and the world for what it is and focus on the important things as you go steadily toward your life purpose.

The Psychology of Conflict is a timely new contribution on the unique benefits of applying philosophy and psychology to mediating between people in conflict. Following his previous book with Dr. Freddie Strasser - Mediation: A Psychological Insight into Conflict Resolution - Paul Randolph here examines the application of existential philosophy to the psychology of conflict, particularly as seen in mediation.

Do you ever wish you better understood why people do what they do? What governs our thoughts and actions? How can we influence others? This course introduces you to the science of human social psychology and offers surprising answers to these questions. Our social situations can lead us to act in unexpected ways. Depending on the context, we can soar with dramatic joy or get lost in frustration and aggression. Sometimes we demonstrate deep compassion toward others, sometimes prejudice.

Americans have traditionally placed great value on self-reliance and fortitude. Recent decades, however, have seen the rise of a therapeutic ethic that views Americans as emotionally underdeveloped, requiring the ministrations of mental-health professionals to cope with life's vicissitudes. Today, having a book for every ailment, a counselor for every crisis, a lawsuit for every grievance, and a TV show for every problem degrades one's native ability to cope with life's challenges.

Robert Greene versteht es auf meisterhafte Weise, Weisheit und Philosophie der alten Denker für Millionen von Lesern auf der Suche nach Wissen, Macht und Selbstvervollkommnung zugänglich zu machen. In seinem neuen Buch ist er dem wichtigsten Thema überhaupt auf der Spur: Der Entschlüsselung menschlicher Antriebe und Motivationen, auch derer, die uns selbst nicht bewusst sind. Der Mensch ist ein Gesellschaftstier. Sein Leben hängt von der Beziehung zu Seinesgleichen ab.

We've decided by consensus that consensus is good. In In Defense of Troublemakers, psychologist Charlan Nemeth argues that this principle is completely wrong: left unchallenged, the majority opinion is often biased, unoriginal, or false. It leads planes and markets to crash, causes juries to convict innocent people, and can quite literally make people think blue is green. In the name of comity, we embrace stupidity. We can make better decisions by embracing dissent. Dissent forces us to question the status quo, consider more information, and engage in creative decision-making.

Este audiolibro proporciona una investigación informativa sobre la formación de la cultura extrovertida de la sociedad moderna, donde la timidez, la sensibilidad y la seriedad se perciben a menudo como algo negativo. Utilizando los ejemplos de muchas personalidades famosas, la autora demuestra de manera convincente que, la naturaleza introvertida de aproximadamente la mitad de la humanidad hace posible alcanzar el éxito donde los extrovertidos no pueden.

Over thirty years, San Francisco's underground art scene developed techniques to create magical, impossible, life-changing experiences. Today big corporations are trying to figure out how to spend millions of dollars to do what these artists and anti-artists did using nothing but time, space, and imagination. It was "a movement without a manifesto," with people discovering how it worked through trial and error. Very little was written down—until now. Caveat Magister has written this book to explain what these experiences were, why they worked, and how you can create your own.

“There is no good reason why human societies should not be described and explained with the same precision and success as the rest of nature.” Thus argues evolutionary psychologist Pascal Boyer in this uniquely innovative book. Integrating recent insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and other fields, Boyer offers precise models of why humans engage in social behaviors such as forming families, tribes, and nations, or creating gender roles.

Are you overwhelmed with information and paralyzed by pressure? Constantly missing opportunities because your intuition is wrong? You can't just rely on your gut instinct or "hunch" when you make decisions. There's a science to improving your critical thinking, weighing pros and cons, and avoiding the traps that take you down the wrong path. We can systematically make decisions that will improve our lives if we just know what to focus on. Learn why most of our instincts about decisions are flat-out wrong.

Random House presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Solitude by Michael Harris, read by Kerry Shale. Solitude is a rapidly vanishing experience. Our society now embraces sharing like never before: time alone is being forced out of our lives by the constant pings of smartphones and prods of social media. But what if being alone still has something to offer us - something we have forgotten, but that we still desperately need?

How often do you walk away from a conversation feeling really heard? That it moved the people in it forward in some important way? You’re not alone. In his practice as a designer, Fred Dust began to approach conversations differently. After years of trying to broker communication between colleagues and clients, he came to believe there had to a way to design the art of conversation itself with intention and purpose, but still artful and playful.

You know the feeling: You thought you said exactly what you wanted to, but somehow a different message comes across. You end up feeling misunderstood...and the relationship that you're building -- at home, on the job, on a date, or in an interview -- slips a little further out of your control.