Showing titles in Social Psychology & Interactions

In Britain alone, more than 20 per cent of the adult population take a psychiatric drug in any one year. This is an increase of over 500 per cent since 1980 and the numbers continue to grow. Yet, despite this prescription epidemic, levels of mental illness of all types have actually increased in number and severity. Using a wealth of studies, interviews with experts, and detailed analysis, Dr James Davies argues that this is because we have fundamentally mischaracterised the problem.

Does power corrupt, or are corrupt people drawn to power? Are entrepreneurs who embezzle and cops who kill the outgrowths of bad systems, or are they just bad people? Are tyrants made or born? If you were thrust into a position of power, would new temptations to line your pockets or torture your enemies gnaw away at you until you gave in? To answer these questions, Corruptible draws on more than 500 interviews with some of the world's noblest and dirtiest leaders, from presidents and philanthropists to rebels, cultists and dictators.

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?

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.

The founder of the international Transition Towns movement asks why true creative, positive thinking is in decline, asserts that it's more important now than ever, and suggests ways our communities can revive and reclaim it.

In Social, renowned psychologist Matthew Lieberman explores groundbreaking research in social neuroscience, revealing that our need to connect with other people is even more fundamental, more basic, than our need for food or shelter. Because of this, our brain uses its spare time to learn about the social world-other people and our relation to them.

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.

Alfred Adler was an Austrian physician, psychotherapist, and one of the founding fathers of modern psychology. In Understanding Human Nature, (1928), Adler sets out to acquaint the general public with the basics of Individual Psychology, which holds that the driving force of human behavior is the individual’s striving for power, partly to compensate for feelings of inferiority. The purpose of the book is to identify mistaken behaviors and show how they undermine healthy relationships, in order to gently guide the individual towards adjustment.

It's been said that, after 9/11, the 2008 financial crash and the COVID-19 pandemic, we're a more fearful society than ever before. Yet fear, and the panic it produces, have long been driving forces - perhaps the driving force - of world history: fear of God, of famine, war, disease, poverty, and other people. In Fear: An Alternative History of the World, Robert Peckham considers the impact of fear in history, as both a coercive tool of power and as a catalyst for social change.

If a gorilla walked out into the middle of a basketball pitch, you’d notice it. Wouldn’t you? If a serious violent crime took place just next to you, you’d remember it, right? The Invisible Gorilla is a fascinating look at the unbelievable, yet routine tricks that your brain plays on you.

In today's self-blame culture, it often feels impossible not to carry shame about the choices we make and the values by which we live. When the political is so personal, and the personal is so political, it's easy to feel overwhelmed by the sense that we're not doing enough - maybe, even, that we're not enough. In this bold and transformative manifesto, social psychologist and author of Unmasking Autism Dr Devon Price takes an in-depth look at shame and the role it plays in our lives. Systemic Shame traps us into fighting unwinnable battles and judging others for their failures.

The Eden Project is a timely and thought-provoking corrective to the generalized fantasies about relationships that permeate our culture. This is not a practical guide on how to fix a relationship, but rather a challenge to greater personal responsibility in relationships, a call for individual growth as opposed to seeking rescue through others.

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.

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.

With unequaled insight and brio, David Brooks, the New York Times columnist and bestselling author of Bobos in Paradise, has long explored and explained the way we live. Now, with the intellectual curiosity and emotional wisdom that make his columns among the most read in the nation, Brooks turns to the building blocks of human flourishing in a multilayered, profoundly illuminating work grounded in everyday life.

The psychology classic - a detailed study of scientific theories of human nature and the possible ways in which human behavior can be predicted and controlled - from one of the most influential behaviorists of the 20th century and the author of Walden Two.

In the 21st century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and, at the same time, appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that developed vaccines for COVID-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, quack cures and conspiracy theorising? Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are an irrational species. Instead, he explains that we think in ways that are sensible in the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives, but fail to take advantage of the powerful tools of reasoning we have built up over the millennia.

Gravity affects every aspect of our physical being, but there's a psychological force just as powerful - yet almost nobody has heard of it. It's responsible for binging groups of people together and pulling them apart, making certain goals attractive to some and not to others, and fuelling cycles of anxiety and guilt. According to French polymath René Girard, humans don't desire anything independently. Human desire is mimetic - we imitate what other people want.

This sequel to the bestselling The Anxious Hearts Guide dives deep into the complex dynamic between anxious and avoidant attachment styles. You'll learn why you crave closeness while your partner needs space, and how these opposing needs create a frustrating push-pull cycle.

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.