Showing titles in Social Psychology & Interactions

Our secrets can weigh heavily upon us. Yet the burden of secrecy rarely stems from the work it takes to keep a secret hidden. Rather, the weight of our secrets comes from carrying them alone. Whether we are motivated to protect our reputation, a relationship, a loved one's feelings or some personal or professional goal, one thing is clear: holding back some part of our inner world is often lonely and isolating. But it doesn't have to be.

Henri Bergson (1859-1941) was the leading French philosopher of the first half of the 20th century. Near the end of his life when he was forced to register with the police in Nazi occupied France he wrote: ‘Academic. Philosopher. Nobel prize winner. Jew.’ Time and Free Will, his doctoral thesis, was published as a book in 1889 and attacks and rejects the mechanistic view of causality described in Kant’s version of space and time and proceeds to attempt to define free-will and consciousness by separating space and time.

We all keep secrets. 97 per cent of us are hiding a secret right now, and on average we each hold thirteen at any one time. They are the stuff of gossip, of novels and of classic dramas; secrets form a major part of our hidden inner lives. Podcaster Andrew Gold knows this better than anyone. A public persona, he found himself the (unwitting) recipient of hundreds of strangers' most private revelations. This set him on a journey to understand this critical part of our societies and lives. Why do we keep secrets? Why are we fascinated by those of others? What happens to our mind when we confess?

At the turn of the millennium, digital technologies seemed to have immense promise for transforming our society. With these powerful new tools, the thinking went, we would be free to live our best lives, connected to our communities in ways full of infinite potential. A quarter of a century on, this form of utopianism seems like a cruel mirage. So what happened? In Against Platforms, technologist and creator Mike Pepi lays out an explanation of what went wrong—and a manifesto for putting it right.

The controversial science that claims to have revolutionised economics. For centuries, economics was dominated by the idea that we are rational individuals who optimise our own ‘utility’. Then, in the 1970s, psychologists demonstrated that the reality is a lot messier. We don’t really know what our utility is, and we care about people other than ourselves. We are susceptible to external nudges. And far from being perfectly rational, we are prone to ‘cognitive biases’ with complex effects on decision-making, such as forgetting to prepare for retirement.

There can be few more important but also more contentious issues than attempting to understand the human propensity for conflict. Our history is inextricably tangled in wave after wave of inter-human fighting from as far back as we have records. Repeatedly humans have foresworn war, have understood its appalling risks and have wished to create more pacific, productive societies. And yet almost inevitably circumstances emerge under which war once more seems inevitable or even desirable.

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.

It’s comforting to think that we can be successful because we work hard, climb ladders, and get what we deserve, but each of us has been profoundly touched by randomness. Chance is shown to play a crucial role in shaping outcomes across history, throughout the natural world, and in our everyday lives. In The Random Factor, Mark Robert Rank draws from a wealth of evidence, including interviews and research, to explain how luck and chance play out and reveals how we can use these lessons to guide our personal lives and public policies.

After receiving a doctorate in medicine, Le Bon travelled in Europe, North Africa, and Asia and wrote several books on anthropology and archaeology. His interests later shifted to natural science and social psychology. Gustave Le Bon is best known for his seminal work Crowd Psychology where he describes the psychological effects in various group settings. In Psychology of Peoples written in 1894 he utilizes his anthropological knowledge and cross-references it with social psychology.

Stepping back from the world has always been part of human life. We're social animals but sometimes we want to be alone. That impulse is as old as civilisation but has never been more urgent. Today, mindfulness and meditation are everywhere, and wellness tourism is booming. Whether it's a yoga break, an app or something more like boot camp, retreat is a feature of our lives now.

Dividing the sum total of human musical achievement, from Beethoven to The Beatles, Busta Rhymes to Bach, into just six fundamental forms, Levitin illuminates, through songs of friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion and love, how music has been instrumental in the evolution of language, thought and culture. And how, far from being a bit of a song and dance, music is at the core of what it means to be human.

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind is a seminal work on crowd psychology by Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931), a French social psychologist. He observes that a crowd forms when an influential idea unites a number of individuals and prompts them to act towards a common goal. In a crowd, the conscious personality of the individual is submerged and dominated by the collective mind. Furthermore, every sentiment becomes contagious to a degree that individuals readily sacrifice their personal interest to the collective.

In a world where there is so much conflicting information about how we are supposed to live, what can we really know? Knowing the truth, what’s real from what’s fake, should be easy. In today’s world, that’s far from the case. In The Certainty Illusion, Timothy Caulfield lifts the curtain on the forces contributing to our information chaos and unpacks why it’s so difficult—sometimes even for experts—to escape the fake.

If you’re tired of seeking approval, doubting yourself, and watching everyone else live their best life while you stay stuck on the sidelines, this audiobook is for you. This isn’t just another audiobook telling you to “just be confident.” It’s a straight-talking, no-nonsense guide filled with real strategies and mindset shifts to help you trust yourself, take action, and create the life you actually want.

How did human societies scale up from small, tight-knit groups of hunter-gatherers to the large, anonymous, cooperative societies of today - even though anonymity is the enemy of cooperation? How did organized religions with "Big Gods" - the great monotheistic and polytheistic faiths - spread to colonize most minds in the world? In Big Gods, Ara Norenzayan makes the surprising and provocative argument that these fundamental puzzles about the origins of civilization are one and the same, and answer each other.

The heart of man's dilemma, according to Rollo May, is the failure to understand the real meaning of love and will, their source and interrelation. Bringing fresh insight to these concepts, May shows how we can attain a deeper consciousness.

When the ashes had settled after World War II and the Allies convened an international war crimes trial in Nuremberg, a psychiatrist, Douglas Kelley, and a psychologist, Gustave Gilbert, tried to fathom the psychology of the Nazi leaders using extensive psychiatric interviews, IQ tests, and Rorschach inkblot tests. Never before or since has there been such a detailed study of governmental leaders who orchestrated mass killings.

People don’t make decisions with their conscious mind, but on instinct. In The Power of Instinct, marketing consultant and behavioral science expert Leslie Zane shows that to grow a brand, business, or even a social movement, traditional persuasion tactics fall short. Instead, you must connect to the instinctive mind. And to do this, you need to understand the science of consumer choice and employ techniques that work with a person’s brain, not against it.

The world was in a loneliness crisis long before Covid-19. As human beings, our brains are wired for connection. The feelings of disconnectedness people are facing today—isolation within our families, digital addiction, emotional trauma—hold worrying consequences for our mental well-being. We’ve lost touch with the human tribe we were born into. In this compelling guide to navigating connection in our modern world, human connection phenom Simone Heng walks you through the meaning of human connection as it relates to every aspect of life.

The study of classic and contemporary films can provide a powerful avenue to understand the experience of mental illness. In Madness at the Movies, James Charney, MD, a practicing psychiatrist and long-time cinephile, examines films that delve deeply into characters’ inner worlds, and he analyzes moments that help define their particular mental illness.