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Wie wird man glücklich? Indem man ein Happy Mindset entwickelt? Und wie sieht ein solches Mindset genau aus? Welche Formen wurden bisher von unterschiedliche Forscher:innen aus dem Gebiet der Positiven Psychologie beschrieben? Das Buch „Glück und Happy Mindsets“ besticht durch eine gelungene Mischung aus theoretischen Grundlagen und praktischen Übungen, die verdeutlichen, dass das Glück ein menschliches Wachstumsprogramm ist. So kann dieses Buch zu Happy Mindsets dazu dienen, verschiedene Lebenswelten besser zu verstehen, z.B.: · Wie wichtig ist etwa Geld für ein gutes Leben? · Welche Arbeit macht uns besonders zufrieden? · Wie bedeutsam sind menschliche Beziehungen? · Wie kann die virtuelle Welt eine Quelle von (Un-)Glück sein?· Wie könnte eine nachhaltige und gleichzeitig glückliche Lebensweise aussehen? Zielgruppen: alle an Glück und der Positiven Psychologie Interessierten, insbesondere junge Erwachsene und Studierende. Im Grunde kann das Buch jedoch von jedem und jeder mit Gewinn gelesen werden. Zum Autor: Thomas Mündle ist Lehrer und Chief Happiness Officer an der formatio Privatschule und Dozent im Rahmen des CAS Lehrgangs „Positive Psychologie“ der Universität Zürich. Dieses Buch ist das Ergebnis eines Glückskurses, den er über mehrere Jahre hinweg im Gymnasium und als universitäres Wahlfach gelehrt hat.

This book provides an answer to the readers about scientific perspective on learning. It presents a culminating point of four different kinds of studies designed to measure and understand the nuances of brain functioning. The objective of this book is to find answers to four questions: (1) can there be a neuroscientific understanding of the concept of individual differences? (2) does rhythmic sound or noise have an impact on decision making? (3) how does transfer of learning between the hemispheres facilitate the learning process? and lastly (4) beyond the accepted ways of communicating verbally and non-verbally is silent communication possible? This book makes an attempt to address these issues through various aspects of inner-conscious engineering.

This successful textbook on the psychology of communication explains - here in English for the first time - how human communication works in a very understandable way. It begins with the explanation of central terms and the explanation of known communication models (e.g. the models according to Schulz von Thun, Watzlawick, Hargie and colleagues), then describes means of non-verbal and verbal communication and ends with a clear and structured summary of communication forms. Concrete fields of application, stumbling blocks (e.g. intercultural differences in communication), practical examples and digressions in the book round off what has been read and consolidate what has been learned. In addition, free learning materials are available on the Internet with which readers can test their knowledge acquisition.

In diesem fesselnden Buch untersucht der Psychologe Brian Hughes, was die wissenschaftliche Psychologie über die Dynamik des Brexit enthüllt, was der Brexit uns über uns selbst lehrt und was wir tun können, um mit seinen kurzfristigen Auswirkungen und langfristigen Folgen umzugehen. Anders als die meisten kulturellen Umwälzungen ist der Brexit nicht das Ergebnis einer zufälligen Tragödie oder eines spontanen wirtschaftlichen Aufruhrs. Vielmehr existiert er, weil die Menschen beschlossen haben, ihn zu vollziehen. Er ist ein Produkt der menschlichen Psychologie - in entscheidender Weise geprägt von den Wahrnehmungen, Vorlieben, Ideen, Selbstbildern, Gruppenzugehörigkeiten und mehr oder minder begründeten Schlussfolgerungen der Menschen. Im Buch wird erörtert, wie Denkfehler und Kontrollillusionen die Sichtweisen sowohl der Leaver als auch der Remainer verzerren. Es zeigt wie ansonsten unbegründete Überzeugungen in der Alltagskultur gedeihen. Außerdem erforscht der Autor die psychologischen Auswirkungen des Brexit - auf soziale Einstellungen, Zukunftsdenken und die kollektive und individuelle psychische Gesundheit.

This book offers a novel theory of the roles narrative plays in cognition by arguing that we can develop rich interdisciplinary research by thinking of narrative as a form of processing. Narrative processing describes a mode of anticipating, organizing, and simulating experience that is provisional, ongoing, and deeply integrated into how we make sense of what happens and how we figure ourselves into it. Accounts of narrative differ widely between cognitive psychology, contemporary philosophy, and literary studies. As a result, it is difficult to reconcile research about narrative from these disciplines. Yet the questions at stake in this research are often profound. For example, how are experiences organized into meaningful sequences? How do the rich and complex features of a ‘life narrative'emerge from the ways experience is processed in perception, working memory, and other components of present cognition? The model of narrative processing proposed in this book complements several influential, emerging theories of cognition, including predictive processing, emotion as a component to cognition, and ecological theories of cognition. The book argues that the role of narrative in higher-order cognition is reciprocally related to the emergent narrative features of lower-order cognition. In doing so, it provides a coherent concept of narrative with the potential to inform research in various disciplines.

Was ist eigentlich Wissenschaft? Diese Frage wird angesichts globaler Herausforderungen wie COVID-19, dem Klimawandel u.a. zunehmend neu diskutiert – und wir erleben eine beängstigende Zunahme des Widerstandes gegen die wissenschaftlichen Methoden aufseiten sogenannter Querdenker, Verschwörungstheoretiker und Faktenleugner. Doch viele kritisieren die Wissenschaft, ohne den Kern wissenschaftlichen Denkens und Arbeitens verstanden zu haben! Prof. Dr. Tilmann Betsch tritt diesem Trend mit seinem Buch entschlossen entgegen und hält ein leidenschaftliches Plädoyer, warum Wissenschaft unverzichtbar ist: Anhand anschaulicher Beispiele und Anekdoten beschreibt er die Bestandteile des wissenschaftlichen Werkzeugkastens – jedes Kapitel klärt dabei ein gängiges Vorurteil gegenüber der Wissenschaft auf und zeigt, mit welchen Methoden Erkenntnisse in der Forschung wirklich gewonnen werden.Dieses Buch gibt Ihnen Hilfestellung, Ihr kritisches Denken zu schärfen und Unfug schlagfertig entgegenzutreten. Es richtet sich damit nicht nur an Studierende der Wissenschaften, sondern an alle Interessierten, die „alternative Fakten“ nicht mehr hören können und für Diskussionen um die Bedeutung der Wissenschaft gewappnet sein wollen.

This edited volume seeks to integrate research and scholarship on the topic of embodiment, with the idea being that thinking and feeling are often grounded in more concrete representations related to perception and action. The book centers on psychological approaches to embodiment and includes chapters speaking to development as well as clinical issues, though a larger number focus on topics related to cognition and neuroscience as well as social and personality psychology. These topical chapters are linked to theory-based chapters centered on interoception, grounded cognition, conceptual metaphor, and the extended mind thesis. Further, a concluding section speaks to critical issues such as replication concerns, alternative interpretations, and future directions. The final result is a carefully conceived product that is a comprehensive and well-integrated volume on the psychology of embodiment. The primary audience for this book is academic psychologists from many different areas of psychology (e.g., social, developmental, cognitive, clinical). The secondary audience consists of disciplines in which ideas related to embodied cognition figure prominently, such as counseling, education, biology, and philosophy.

This book provides an overview of the key theoretical and empirical issues relating to autobiographical memory: the extraordinarily complex psychological activity that enables us to retrieve, relive and reappraise our pasts. The first part of the book retraces the genesis and historical development of the psychology of autobiographical memory, from the pioneering contributions of Francis Galton, Victor Henri and Sigmund Freud, to the most recent research in the fields of cognitivism, cognitive science and neuroscience. The author then moves on to two key topics in the contemporary panorama: the content and organisation of autobiographical memory (what we remember from our lives and how we link together specific segments of our personal pasts) and the functions of autobiographical memory (why we remember our pasts). This book will provide a valuable scholarly overview for cognitive psychologists and an authoritative critical introduction to the field for students and scholars fromacross psychology, philosophy, literary criticism, sociology and law.

Humans have a unique ability to understand the beliefs, emotions, and intentions of others—a capacity often referred to as mentalizing. Much research in psychology and neuroscience has focused on delineating the mechanisms of mentalizing, and examining the role of mentalizing processes in other domains of cognitive and affective functioning. The purpose of the book is to provide a comprehensive overview of the current research on the mechanisms of mentalizing at the neural, algorithmic, and computational levels of analysis.The book includes contributions from prominent researchers in the field of social-cognitive and affective neuroscience, as well as from related disciplines (e.g., cognitive, social, developmental and clinical psychology, psychiatry, philosophy, primatology). The contributors review their latest research in order to compile an authoritative source of knowledge on the psychological and brain bases of the unique human capacity to think about the mental states of others. The intended audience is researchers and students in the fields of social-cognitive and affective neuroscience and related disciplines such as neuroeconomics, cognitive neuroscience, developmental neuroscience, social cognition, social psychology, developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, and affective science. Secondary audiences include researchers in decision science (economics, judgment and decision-making), philosophy of mind, and psychiatry.

This book illustrates the link that unites memory, thought, and narration, and explores how the act of telling helps people to understand themselves and others. The structure of the book is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on the aspect of narrative comprehension—the person as narrator. It identifies two different origins of narrative comprehension (memory and play) and argues that the narratives we produce starting from autobiographical memory are intended to give order and meaning to events that happened in the past, in order to be able to interpret the present. Conversely, the narratives we produce starting from play are aesthetically constructed, not forced to respect reality, and because of this create potential new worlds of understanding. The second part of this book is devoted to the study of narrative understanding as an understanding of the other. Chapters examine the different points of view a listener can adopt in order to interpret the text produced by a narrator and how these points of view can interact with each other. The book concludes with a consideration of narrative comprehension in the digital world, and examines the principal effects of stories and narrative on the notion of self in the realm of the “Internet galaxy.” Telling to Understand will be of interest to researchers and students in cognitive science, psychology, literary studies, philosophy, education, and educational technology, as well as any reader interested in enlarging their concept of narrative and how narrating modifies the self.

Tanja Catrin Blut untersucht das Selbstbild, die nicht-kognitiven Fähigkeiten und die Persönlichkeitsstruktur von hochbegabten Erwachsenen und gibt Aufschluss über deren psychische Stabilität. Hochbegabung fasziniert und begeistert, ist aber auch gleichzeitig stigmatisiert und macht vielen Mitmenschen Angst – Klischees wie „Genie und Wahnsinn“ kommen in einem Atemzug über die Lippen, als würde hohe Begabung auch immer eine negative Seite mit sich bringen. Andererseits haben schon die Studien von Terman über Hochbegabte gezeigt, dass die Mehrzahl der Hochbegabten sich einer besonderen psychischen Stabilität erfreut.

Rom Harré's career spans more than 40 years of original contributions to the development of both psychology and other human and social sciences. Recognized as a founder of modern social psychology, he developed the microsociological approach ‘ethogenics'and facilitated the discursive turn within psychology, as well as developed the concept of positioning theory. Used within both philosophy and social scientific approaches aimed at conflict analysis, analyses of power relations, and narrative structures, the development and impact of positioning theory can be understood as part of a second cognitive revolution. Whereas the first cognitive revolution involved incorporating cognition as both thoughts and feelings as an ineliminable part of psychology and social sciences, this second revolution released this cognition from a focus on individuals, and towards a focus of understanding individuals as participating in public practices using public discourses as part of their cognition. This edited volume adds to the scholarly conversation around positioning theory, evaluates Rom Harré's significance for the history and development of psychology, and highlights his numerous theoretical contributions and their lasting effects on the psychological and social sciences.Included among the chapters:What is it to be a human being? Rom Harré on self and identityThe social philosophy of Harré as a philosophy of cultureThe discursive ontology of the social worldEthics in socio-cultural psychologiesDiscursive cognition and neural networksThe Second Cognitive Revolution: A Tribute to Rom Harré is an indispensable reader for anyone interested in his cognitive-historical turn, and finds an audience with academics and researchers in the social and human science fields of cognitive psychology, social psychology, discursive psychology, philosophy, sociology, and ethnomethodology.

This book focusses on the theory and application of ‘time perspective theory'. Time perspective can be an important factor in determining psychological well-being and the way we see our world and others around us. The unique contemporary nature of this theory's evolution has spurred great interest over the last 20 years. The editors responded to this interest by bringing together contributors across a multitude of subjects and perspectives to facilitate an unprecedented discussion on the topic; covering areas such as financial health, psychotherapy across adulthood and old age, prenatal past, metacognition, community and change, fear of crime and intrinsic motivations. The interdisciplinary nature of this project makes it of interest to a wide cross-section of academics and practitioners including psychologist, social workers, criminologists and anyone who has or wishes to adopted time perspective theorization to assist them in their understanding.

In his highly praised book The Nostalgia Factory, renowned memory scholar Douwe Draaisma explored the puzzling logic of memory in later life with humor and deep insight. In this compelling new book he turns to the “miracle” of forgetting. Far from being a defect that may indicate Alzheimer's or another form of dementia, Draaisma claims, forgetting is one of memory's crucial capacities. In fact, forgetting is essential.  Weaving together an engaging array of literary, historical, and scientific sources, the author considers forgetting from every angle. He pierces false clichés and asks important questions: Is a forgotten memory lost forever? What makes a colleague remember an idea but forget that it was yours? Draaisma explores “first memories” of young children, how experiences are translated into memory, the controversies over repression and “recovered” memories, and weird examples of memory dysfunction. He movingly examines the impact on personal memories when a hidden truth comes to light. In a persuasive conclusion the author advocates the undervalued practice of “the art of forgetting”—a set of techniques that assist in erasing memories, thereby preserving valuable relationships and encouraging personal contentment.

How do we understand and explain phenomena in psychology? What does the concept of “causality” mean when we discuss higher psychological functions and behavior? Is it possible to generate “laws” in a psychological and behavioral science—laws that go beyond statistical regularities, frequencies, and probabilities? An international group of authors compare and contrast the use of a causal model in psychology with a newer model—the catalytic model. The Catalyzing Mind: Beyond Models of Causality proposes an approach to the qualitative nature of psychological phenomena that focuses on the psychological significance and meaning of conditions, contexts, and situations as well as their sign-mediating processes. Contributors develop, apply, and criticize the notion of a catalyzing mind in hopes of achieving conceptual clarity and rigor. Disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, semiotics and biosemiotics are used for an interdisciplinary approach to the book. Research topics such as history and national identity, immigration, and transitions to adulthood are all brought into a dialogue with the concept of the catalyzing mind. With a variety of disciplines, theoretical concepts, and research topics this book is a collective effort at an approach to move beyond models of causality for explaining and understanding psychological phenomena.

This volume provides the first authoritative explication of metatheoretical principles in the construction and evaluation of social-psychological theories. Leading international authorities review the conceptual foundations of the field's most influential approaches, scrutinizing the range and limits of theories in various areas of inquiry. The chapters describe basic principles of logical inference, illustrate common fallacies in theoretical interpretations of empirical findings, and outline the unique contributions of different levels of analysis. An in-depth look at the philosophical foundations of theorizing in social psychology, the book will be of interest to any scholar or student interested in scientific explanations of social behavior.

Some Implications of the Perceptgenetic Studies We should be most grateful to Professor Gudmund Smith for this compilation of studies on perceptgenesis (PG). Smith and his colleagues at Lund University are part of a small insurgency in psychology that has worked gamely and in relative obscurity to document the presence of subjective phases in the process leading to a perceptual object and the infrastructure of this process in the person­ ality. Smith describes ingenious methods to probe this hidden undersurface, and of a perceptual object is, in the ordinary demonstrate that the experiential content an object sense, pre-perceptual. That is, the feeling, meaning and recognition of are not attached to things out there in the world after they are perceived, but are phases ingredient in the process through which the perception occurs. To most psychologists, this statement would appear so radical as to be hardly worth refuting. A subjective approach to perception undermines the realism, consensual validation, and objectivity of a descriptive science of the mind. It is much simpler to interpret the'psychic contribution'to object perception as an addition to physical nature. However, the idea that objects are assemblies of sensory bits linked to feeling and meaning, associated to memories for recognition and interpretation and then projected back into the world where we see them, though at first blush appealing to common sense, is so implausible that one is mystified by its universal acceptance.

I first met Ernest Furchtgott twenty-five years ago after joining the faculty of the College of Social Work at the University of South Carolina. At that time, Ernie chaired the Department of Psychology. In the following three years we collaborated with an Academic Committee on Gerontology in conceptualizing and shaping the University's Certificate of Graduate Study in Gerontology Program, guiding it to final approval by the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education. For twenty years we team­ taught our graduate-level course,'Psychosocial Approaches to Geron­ tology,'involving colleagues from related disciplines. Over the years, we examined and jointly graded hundreds of research posters prepared by our graduate students in gerontology as their final course requirement. Several years ago, Ernie formally retired from the university. He in­ stantly agreed to my request that he continue teaching the psychology of aging portion of our interdisciplinary course. On campus nearly every day since retirement, Ernie frequently telephoned to discuss are­ cent article in The Gerontologist or a paper presentation that had ex­ cited him at the Gerontological Society's annual scientific meeting. He maintained a clear presence in the academic community.

Descartes made a sharp distinction between matter and mind. But he also thought that the two interact with one another. Is such interaction possible, however, without either a materialist reduction of mind to matter or an idealist (phenomenalist) reduction of matter to mind? These questions overshadow the Western tradition in metaphysics from the time of Descartes to present times. The book makes an effort to stay clear of reductivist views of the two Cartesian substances. It defends a dualistic psycho-physical parallel theory which reconciles freedom of action with determinism in nature. Basic problems in perception theory are also discussed, with special emphasis on hearing and sound. Because of the intrinsic interest of the subject and the author's non-technical presentation of it, the book should appeal to all readers with a serious interest in philosophy and psychology.

Decision making is a complex phenomenon which normally is deeply integrated into social life. At the same time the decision making process often gives the decision maker an opportunity for conscious planning and for taking a reflective stance with respect to the action considered. This suggests that decision making allows creative solutions with a potential to change the course of events both on an individual and a collective level. Given these considerations, we argue that in order to more fully understand decision making the perspectives of different disciplines are needed. In this volume we have attempted to draw together contributions that would provide a broad view of decision making. Much work has been carried out in the writing and editing of this volume. First of all we would like to thank the contributors for their efforts in producing interesting and important texts and for their patience in the editorial process. Each chapter was edited by two or three reviewers. These reviewers are listed on a separate page in this book. Our heartfelt thanks go to them for their time and for their incisive and constructive reviews! We are also grateful to the publishing editors at Kluwer Academic Publishers, Christiane Roll and Dorien Francissen, who have been generous with their encouragement and patience throughout the editorial process.

Early in 1986 I invited Professor Robinson to collaborate on a volume of the Annals devoted to the theme of the'person'in psychology. He accepted my invitation later that year suggesting, instead, that the volume be devoted to the theme of explanation in psychology. I gladly compromised for, as I knew from his exterisive writings on the history and philosophy of psychology, the concept of explanation is firmly rooted in philosophical anthropology. The contributions by Rom Harre, James Lamiell, Joseph Margolis, and George Miller were available in June, 1988, and the commentaries and replies to commentaries early in 1989. Fortunately, foundational papers wear well, as the content of the present volume so aptly testifies. Beginning with Volume 6, the Annals will be entirely edited and prepared using the computer facilities at our Center. Thanks to the dedicated effort of my colleague, Professor William Baker, this is the first volume produced from camera-ready copy. His personal support and technical expertise made the transition to desk-top publishing somewhat less than formidable. Mrs. Valerie Welch, our Center secretary, entered the text and managed my personal correspondence; Casey Boodt proofread the entire manuscript; and the University of Alberta continues to support my involvement with this series. Dan Robinson's commitment to scholarship also extends to the more mundane task of editing. Every volume with a co-editor is a challenge; he made this one a delight.

MAJOR-GENERAL M. K. JEFFERY Command, and mdeed the human in command, has always been key to milItary operations. The complexIty and tempo of modern operations make this statement even more true today than in the past. However, both the military and the research 2 communities have tended to treat command and control (C) from a limited per­ spective. For too long, command and control have been considered as if they were a single concept, with control often dominatmg our study. Indeed, in many 2 cases we have divorced operational C from the military institution itself, resulting in disconnects and inefficiencies. Then, in an attempt to overcome these self-inflicted deficiencies, we have pursued the Holy Grail of technology, hoping that it 2 would solve our C problems. Only now, as we start to realize technology's costs 2 and limitations, are we looking critically at C • This book attempts to take such a look. The contributions that make up this book are the product of a June 1998 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) workshop called The Human m Command. Far from being purely an academIc exercise, this gathenng brought together milI­ 2 tary leaders and civilian scientists to discuss C's central pragmatic and conceptual issues-its assumptions, its practices, and its organization. Indeed, in recent years there has been mounting evidence that both our society and Its military institutions are facing organizational crises.

An unusually understandable survey of the forces or perception and feeling that determine the purchases we make; the roles played by fashion, fads, and status; and the psychological needs that they fulfill. The book discusses how children become consumers and how they change as they age. Research based throughout, it shows how ads use classical conditioning, harnessing psychological motivation to create image and sell products.

'Seek simplicity and distrust it.'Alfred North Whitehead'It will become all too clear that an ability to see patterns in behavior, an ability that some might feel proud of, can lead more easily to a wrong description than a right one.'William T. Powers The goal of the theorist-the scholar-is to take a collection of observations of the world, and perceive order in them. This process necessarily imposes an artificial simplicity upon those observations. That is, specific observations are weighed differently from each other whenever a theoretical account is abstracted from raw experiences. Some observed events are misunderstood or distorted, others are seen as representing random fluctuations and are ignored, and yet others are viewed as centrally important. This abstraction and oversimplification of reality is inevitable in theory construction. Moreover, the abstracted vision builds upon itself. That is, as a structure begins to emerge from continued observation, the structure itself guides the search for new information. The result is a construction that is more elaborate than what existed before, but it still is usually simpler than reality. It is important for scholars to believe in the value of their task, and in the general correctness of the vision that guides their work. This commitment, and the hope of progress that follows from it, make it possible to continue even when the work is difficult and slow.

Person perception is of great importance in everyday life and human science. Judgment of other people's characteristics and intentions is important for suc­ cessfully planning actions within a social environment. Questions about the formation of impressions and causal attributions are central to social psychology and the study of diagnostic judgment formation. The field of per­ son perception deals with questions of how impression formation proceeds, what characteristics and intentions are attributed to other people, and how preformed schemata and stereotypes influence people's first impressions. Research on person perception developed rapidly after the Second World War. In the 1950s the precision and accuracy of person perception received special interest, but the problems concerning whether an individual's assessment of another personality is exact or not could not be solved. Another approach, which began in the 1940s and was derived from the Gestalt psychological tradi­ tion, dealt with impression formation based on selected social cues. This ap­ proach, which proved to be very useful, had considerable influence on both the research methods and the theoretical orientation of the research work. On the one hand, by using a combination of individual cues (like physical characteris­ tics) researchers tried to ascertain how an impression of a person was formed. On the other hand, the Gestalt psychological orientation led to an interest in the process of person perception, which in the last 10 years has concentrated on questions concerning information reception and processing.

Intuitive Judgments of Change represents the first systematic attempt to understand how people perceive change. Historically, social psychological work has emphasized the importance of stability and continuity among cognitive elements in analyzing cognitive processes. The author develops an hypothesis together with supporting evidence which suggests that change judgments are unique, ubiquitious, and pose no particular problem for people's cognitive apparatus. Intuitive Judgments of Change offers an innovative direction for future research on a topic which has as yet received little thoughtful attention.

In recent years, a booming research interest has been observed in linking basic cognitive processes with a variety of social and clinical phenomena. Evidence comes from the increasing popularity of psychological paradigms such as social cognition, cognitive psychopathology or cognitive aging. What links those paradigms is their special focus on explaining cognitive phenomena by use of the concept of mental resources. Immediate reasons for such a focus are found in the growing emphasis on understanding everyday dynamics of thinking and acting within a complex world, as well as within personal constraints. Obviously, our current goals and choice of activities constrain and influence our reasoning as well as the processes of input to and retrieval from memory. Situational demands will act to the same effect, and the interplay between both, internal and external constraints, makes apparent a first and straightforward relevance of the resource notion in action-oriented cognitive research. For example, person perception is a dynamic process depending on what my goals in perception are, what the perceiving situation is that I find myself in, and how complex the target characteristics are. In fact, the amount of resources spent in this process may be reflected in its speed, the quality of the perceptual or mnemonic trace which is being created, or the kind of social or non-social behavior that can be supported.

In Honor of Professor Dr.Dr. h.c. Heinz Heinzhausen's 60th Birthday

How many of your Facebook friends do you think you know? Would you help a stranger in need? Do you know why you're so in love with your new smartphone? The truth is: you're probably wrong. You are not so smart. In this international bestseller, award-winning journalist David McRaney examines the assorted ways we mislead ourselves every single day. A psychology course with all the boring bits taken out, prepare for a whirlwind tour of the latest research in the subject, fused with a healthy dose of humour and wit. You'll discover just how irrational you really are, which delusions keep you sane, how to boost your productivity, and why you've never kept a New Year's resolution.

This book seeks to deepen our understanding of the cultural aspects of human psychology. These are aspects of psychology that originate in, are formed by, reflect, perpetuate, and modify social processes and factors outside the individual mind. My motivation in pursuing cultural psychol­ ogy is both scientific and political. I believe that construing psychology as a cultural phenomenon is the scientifically correct way to understand psychology; a cultural analysis of psychology can also provide crucial insights for political action to improve human life. The scientific and political aspects of cultural psychology are inter­ dependent and reciprocally reinforcing. The scientific identification and explanation of cultural aspects of psychology can identify societal changes that will enhance human psychology-to help people become more intel­ ligent, far-sighted, logical, harmonious, helpful, moral, and secure, and less stressful, disturbed, prejudiced, competitive, aggressive, lonely, insecure, depressed, mystified, and irrational. Conversely, the political orientation of cultural psychology to enhance psychological functioning through comprehending and improving the social fabric advances the scientific understanding of psychology as a cultural phenomenon. Social goals direct cultural psychology to devise special theories and methods that investigate cultural origins, formation, characteristics, and functions of psychology. Traditional theories and methods are not necessarily appli­ cable because they are informed by a vision of psychology as individual, biological, or universal. The scientific study of cultural psychology is a check on political analyses.

Early studies of political behavior examined the sociological, attitudinal, and rational determinants of political behavior. However, none of these approaches provided a descriptive model of how people process political information and make political decisions under naturalistic conditions that involve limited cognitive capacity and motivation. Fortunately, contemporary approaches within the field of political psychology have begun to address these concerns. Inspired by recent advances in the area of social psychology, researchers are rapidly developing more realistic and detailed models of the psychological process that determines political judgements and behavior. Early attempts to merely predict political behavior have been replaced by an attempt to describe the actual process whereby individuals gather, interpret, exchange, and combine information to arrive at a political judgement or decision. This volume provides comprehensive coverage of this pioneering era of research in political psychology.

The author proposes a theory of the development of consciousness in which ego is the central agent of socialization and culture and the driving force behind individual self-control and self-regulation. He reviews the literature on identity and narrative; outlines the fields of intellectual, self, moral, and consciousness development; and discusses the evidence indicating that the development of consciousness trancends the limitations of conventional ego development.

On an MTV special aired in 2000, young interviewees were asked to confess the worse thing they were ever told during a romantic breakup. One person tearfully responded'that I suck in bed.'More recently, an acquaintance of mine admitted to his new girlfriend that he'has a mean streak.'She decided not to date him after that. Another memorable and painful example of openness occurred years ago when I served as a member of a suicide intervention team. I was called to a very disturbing scene in an upscale neighborhood to console a woman who was threaten­ ing to take her life on the lawn in front of her children. Her husband had just confessed his long-term affair to her that morning and she felt that her world was coming apart. Fortunately, she did not take her life but was left with the humiliation of haVing her neighbors know about her private troubles. The question these examples bring to mind is,'Why do people so often reveal potentially stigmatizing personal information to others?'The reader probably has an intuitive answer to this question already. It can seem like such a burden-even torture-to keep secrets from other people. Hiding such things as feelings of discontent from a boyfriend or girlfriend, violations of the law from close friends, and indiscretions from employers can be alienating. People want others to know them; therefore they often end up disclosing self-incriminating information.

In this new millenium it may be fair to ask,'Why look at Wundt?'Over the years, many authors have taken fairly detailed looks at the work and accomplishments of Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920). This was especially true of the years around 1979, the centennial of the Leipzig Institute for Experimental Psychology, the birthplace of the'graduate program'in psychology. More than twenty years have passed since then, and in the intervening time those centennial studies have attracted the attention and have motivated the efforts of a variety of historians, philosophers, psychologists, and other social scientists. They have profited from the questions raised earlier about theoretical, methodological, sociological, and even political aspects affecting the organized study of mind and behavior; they have also proposed some new directions for research in the history of the behavioral and social sciences. With the advantage of the historiographic perspective that twenty years can bring, this volume will consider this much-heralded'founding father of psychology'once again. Some of the authors are veterans of the centennial who contributed to a very useful volume, edited by Robert W. Rieber, Wilhelm Wundt and the Making of a Scientific Psychology (New York: Plenum Press, 1980). Others are scholars who have joined Wundt studies since then, and have used that book, among others, as a guide to further work. The first chapter,'Wundt before Leipzig,'is essentially unchanged from the 1980 volume.

A pragmatic social cognitive psychology covers a lot of territory, mostly in personality and social psychology but also in clinical, counseling, and school psychologies. It spans a topic construed as an experimental study of mechanisms by its natural science wing and as a study of cultural interactions by its social science wing. To learn about it, one should visit laboratories, field study settings, and clinics, and one should read widely. If one adds the fourth dimen­ sion, time, one should visit the archives too. To survey such a diverse field, it is common to offer an edited book with a resulting loss in integration. This book is coauthored by a social personality psychologist with historical interests (DFB: Parts I, II, and IV) in collaboration with two social clinical psychologists (CRS and JEM: Parts III and V). We frequently cross-reference between chapters to aid integration without duplication. To achieve the kind of diversity our subject matter represents, we build each chapter anew to reflect the emphasis of its content area. Some chapters are more historical, some more theoretical, some more empirical, and some more applied. All the chapters reflect the following positions.

A collection of essays pioneering new concepts in cross-cultural psychology based on the work of Philip E.Vernon, a pioneer of rigorous theory building and careful methodology. It includes empirical studies on aboriginals in Canada and infants in Japan, India, Jamaica and Britain.