Showing titles in Social Psychology & Interactions

Ever notice that all watch ads show 10:10 as the time? Or that all fast-food restaurants use red or yellow in their logos? Or that certain stores are always having a sale? You may not be aware of these details, yet they’ve been influencing you all along. Every time you purchase, swipe, or click, marketers are able to more accurately predict your behavior. These days, brands know more about you than you know about yourself. Blindsight is here to change that.

Explore the history, theories, and concepts of psychology through more than 100 groundbreaking ideas presented in an approachable style that demystifies an often daunting subject matter. The Psychology Book looks at the biggest names in psychology, including William James, Sigmund Freud, and Ivan Pavlov, and unpacks each psychologist's contribution to our understanding of how the mind works. With straightforward information and a directory of scientists, this audio guide helps untangle the knot of theories behind the science of the mind.

In Hauntings, James Hollis considers how we are all governed by the presence of invisible forms - spirits, ghosts, ancestral and parental influences, inner voices, dreams, impulses, untold stories, complexes, synchronicities, and mysteries - that move through us through history. He offers a way to understand them psychologically, examining the persistence of the past in influencing our present, conscious lives and noting that engagement with mystery is what life asks of each of us. From such engagements, a deeper, more thoughtful, more considered life may come.

It’s harder than it seems – after all, it’s only human to thirst after the juicy updates, jaw-dropping stories, and idle chatter that we typically collect over drinks with friends. No one knows this better than journalist Kelsey McKinney, whose Normal Gossip podcast has accrued a listenership of millions. In YOU DIDN'T HEAR THIS FROM ME, McKinney explores the murkiness of everyday storytelling.

In its Native American meaning, wetiko is an evil cannibalistic spirit that can take over people’s minds, leading to selfishness, insatiable greed, and consumption as an end in itself, destructively turning our intrinsic creative genius against our own humanity. Revealing the presence of wetiko in our modern world behind every form of destruction our species is carrying out, both individual and collective, Paul Levy shows how this mind-virus is so embedded in our psyches that it is almost undetectable - and it is our blindness to it that gives wetiko its power.

In 1979, a secret unit was established by the most gifted minds within the US Army. Defying all known accepted military practice - and indeed, the laws of physics - they believed that a soldier could adopt the cloak of invisibility, pass cleanly through walls and, perhaps most chillingly, kill goats just by staring at them. Entrusted with defending America from all known adversaries, they were the First Earth Battalion. And they really weren't joking. What's more, they're back and fighting the War on Terror.

What you'll find here is practical magic: unique knowledge, drawn from a variety of sciences, revealing what charisma really is and how it works. You'll get both the insights and the techniques you need to apply this knowledge. The world will become your lab and every person you meet a chance to experiment. The Charisma Myth is a mix of fun stories, sound science and practical tools. Cabane takes a scientific approach to a heretofore mystical topic, covering what charisma actually is, how it is learned, what its side effects are and how to handle them.

Rich and Rox, the Sunday Times bestselling authors of DIRTY LAUNDRY, are back with more warm, empathetic and down-to-earth advice to help those with ADHD and autism live authentic, bold and happy lives. Writing as a team, Rich and Rox share funny and heartwarming stories about creating a safe and happy neurodivergent household for themselves and for Rich's autistic nonbinary child, living with ADHD, navigating step-parenthood and learning to be an ally for your loved ones.

Spread through the public in the form of popular stories, ideas can go viral and move markets - whether it's the belief that tech stocks can only go up or that housing prices never fall. Whether true or false, stories like these - transmitted by word of mouth, by the news media, and increasingly by social media - drive the economy by driving our decisions about how and where to invest, how much to spend and save, and more. But despite the obvious importance of such stories, most economists have paid little attention to them. Narrative Economics sets out to change that.

By the author of the modern classic The Black Swan, this collection of aphorisms and meditations expresses his major ideas in ways you least expect. The Bed of Procrustes takes its title from Greek mythology: the story of a man who made his visitors fit his bed to perfection by either stretching them or cutting their limbs. It represents Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s view of modern civilization’s hubristic side effects.

Con men are artists of persuasion and exploiters of trust. They hold a deep, enigmatic fascination for us. But how do they do it? Whether it's a suspicious-looking email or a multimillion-dollar global swindle, Maria Konnikova investigates the psychological principles that underlie each stage of the confidence game and the profile of both the con artist and his mark.

This affirming and thoughtful guide outlines how and why we need to fundamentally shift our thinking about neurodivergent people. We need to accept differences rather than framing them as a problem, abnormality or disorder. Welcome to the neurodiversity paradigm. At times challenging and radical, Sonny Jane Wise explores the intersections of neurodivergence with disability, gender, sexuality and race.

This is a story about madness. It all starts when journalist Jon Ronson is contacted by a leading neurologist. She and several colleagues have recently received a cryptically puzzling book in the mail, and Jon is challenged to solve the mystery behind it. As he searches for the answer, Jon soon finds himself, unexpectedly, on an utterly compelling and often unbelievable adventure into the world of madness.

What if our questions—the ones we ask about relationships, work, meaning, identity, and purpose—are not our tormentors, but our teachers? Inspired by 150-year-old advice from Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke and backed by contemporary science, Elizabeth Weingarten offers a fresh approach for dealing with these seemingly unsolvable questions. In her quest, Weingarten shares her own journey and the stories of many others, whose lives have transformed through a different, and better, relationship with uncertainty.

In The Road to Character, David Brooks, best-selling author of The Social Animal and New York Times columnist, explains why selflessness leads to greater success. We all possess two natures. One focuses on external success: wealth, fame, status and a great career. The other aims for internal goodness, driven by a spiritual urge not only to do good but to be good - honest, loving and steadfast. The inner self doesn't seek happiness superficially defined; it seeks emotional commitments without counting the cost and a deeper moral joy.

The Ellipsis Manual is the kind of book that used to be locked away deep in a vault underground, far away from the prying eyes of those who could misuse its power.

Whether you are in advertising, marketing, management, on sales, or just curious about how to be more influential in everyday life, Yes! shows how making small, scientifically proven changes to your approach can have a dramatic effect on your persuasive powers.

If you are going to care for someone, you must first understand them. If you're going to hire, marry, or befriend someone, you have to be able to see them. And yet we humans don't do this well. All around us are people who feel invisible, unseen, misunderstood. In How to Know a Person, Brooks sets out to help us to do better, posing questions that are essential for all of us. If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them? What kind of conversations should you have? What parts of a person's story should you pay attention to?

In Plays Well With Others, Eric Barker dives into these questions, drawing on science to reveal the truth beyond the conventional wisdom about human relationships. Combining his compelling storytelling and humor, Barker explains what hostage negotiation techniques and marital arguments have in common, how an expert con-man lied his way into a twenty-year professional soccer career, and why those holding views diametrically opposed to our own actually have the potential to become our closest, most trusted friends.

Distress has been commodified over many decades by pharmaceutical companies, the media and the psychiatric establishment. So how can we know when distress is normal and when it is something that needs to be treated? In Searching for Normal, Dr Sami Timimi explores the political and cultural context of these phenomena and presents, instead, a deeply humane approach that looks at the person as a whole – their family context, their culture, their personal resilience – and advocates for a reframing of how we think about and treat distress.