Biological Psychology

The dead talk - to the right listener. They can tell us all about themselves: where they came from, how they lived, how they died, and, of course, who killed them. Forensic scientists can unlock the mysteries of the past and help serve justice using the messages left by a corpse, a crime scene, or the faintest of human traces.

Tribalism is one of the most complex and ancient evolutionary forces; it gave us the capacity for cooperation and competition, and allowed us to navigate increasingly complex social landscapes. It is so powerful that it can predict our behavior even better than race, class, gender, or religion. But in our vast modern world, has this blessing become a curse? Our Tribal Future explores a central paradox of our species: how altruism, community, kindness, and genocide are all driven by the same core adaptation.

In Fast Asleep, Dr. Michael Mosley brings together the latest, groundbreaking science to explain exactly why it is so important that we regularly get enough sleep. Prone to insomnia, he has taken part in numerous sleep experiments and tested every sleep remedy. Combining personal insight and in-depth research, he explains why so many of us struggle with sleep, what works and what doesn’t, and shares his own myth-busting program to help you achieve a good night’s rest.

In his eye-opening new book, Perv, the award-winning columnist and psychologist Jesse Bering argues that we are all sexual deviants on one level or another. As Bering takes us into the lives of a woman who falls madly in love with the Eiffel Tower, a young man addicted to seductive sneezes, and a pair of deeply affectionate identical twins, among others, he challenges us to move beyond our judgments and attitudes toward "deviant" sex and consider the alternative: What would happen if we rise above our fears and revulsions and accepted our true natures?

There is no one better qualified than Jared Diamond - renowned expert in the fields of physiology and evolutionary biology and award-winning author - to explain the evolutionary forces that operated on our ancestors to make us sexually different. With wit and a wealth of fascinating examples, he explains how our sexuality has been as crucial as our large brains and upright posture in our rise to human status.

Riding Home:The Power of Horses to Heal, is the first and only audiobook to scientifically and experientially explain why horses have the extraordinary ability to emotionally transform the lives of thousands of men, women and children, whether they are horse lovers, or suffering from deep psychological wounds. It is an audiobook for anyone who wants to experience the joy, wonder, self-awareness and peace of mind that comes from creating a horse/human relationship, and it puts forth and clarifies the principles of today's Natural Horsemanship....

This book uses evolutionary psychology as a lens to explain religious violence and oppression. The author, a clinical psychologist, examines religious scriptures, rituals, and canon law, highlighting the many ways in which our evolutionary legacy has shaped the development of religion and continues to profoundly influence its expression.

Depuis l'apparition d'homo sapiens et la révolution cognitive il y a 50 000 ans, les capacités de notre espèce à comprendre et modifier son environnement paraissent sans limites. Un seul mystère reste inviolé : celui de la nature humaine et de sa civilisation. Ce que nous sommes vraiment, pourquoi notre espèce fait ce qu'elle fait, défie toute explication rationnelle.

A powerful new theory of human nature suggests that our secret to success as a species is our unique friendliness. For most of the approximately 300,000 years that Homo sapiens have existed, we have shared the planet with at least four other types of humans. All of these were smart, strong, and inventive. But around 50,000 years ago, Homo sapiens made a cognitive leap that gave us an edge over other species. What happened?

Throughout history, even as daily life has exhibited calm and tolerance, war has never been far away, and even within societies, violence can be a threat. The Goodness Paradox gives a new and powerful argument for how and why this uncanny combination of peacefulness and violence crystallized after our ancestors acquired language in Africa a quarter of a million years ago.

Here is a guide to understanding the profound connection in animal/human relationships and its potential for mutual healing. Providing tools to identify our animals’ messages more quickly, the author shows how our pets’ higher purpose is to help people understand themselves.

De Waal reviews the rise and fall of the mechanistic view of animals and opens our minds to the idea that animal minds are far more intricate and complex than we have assumed. De Waal's landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal - and human - intelligence.

A revelatory investigation of human and animal adolescence and young adulthood from the New York Times best-selling authors of Zoobiquity.

Un son, une note, une mélodie et voilà...le cerveau en effervescence. Mais pourquoi certains airs arrivent-ils à nous tirer des larmes, à nous donner la chair de poule, à nous enthousiasmer ou à nous faire danser? Journaliste scientifique aguerri, Michel Rochon nous entraîne dans une exploration fascinante du cerveau musical. Il nous révèle les plus récentes découvertes en intelligence artificielle, en neuropsychologie, en linguistique et même en mathématiques qui nous font comprendre autrement les harmonies sonores.

First coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, a meme is any idea, behavior, or skill that can be transferred from one person to another by imitation. Susan Blackmore shows that once our distant ancestors acquired the crucial ability to imitate, a second kind of natural selection began, a survival of the fittest amongst competing ideas and behaviors. Ideas and behaviors that proved most adaptive-making tools, for example, or using language - survived and flourished, replicating themselves in as many minds as possible.

Does your dog get sad when you leave for the day? Does your cat purr because she loves you? Do bears attack when they’re angry? You can’t very well ask them. In fact, scientists haven’t been able to reach a consensus on whether animals even have emotions like humans do, let alone how to study them. Yet studies of animal emotion are critical for understanding human emotion and mental illness. In The Nature of the Beast, pioneering neuroscientist David J. Anderson describes a new approach to solving this problem.

Perpetually bored, anxious, fatigued, and overweight, modern society has failed to deliver the happiness it promised. The remedy, Jevan Pradas argues, is in a unique synthesis of a Paleolithic lifestyle and Buddhist meditation. A sprawling journey, featuring Jevan's adventures with naked Amazonian tribes and retreats with enlightened monks to learn the secrets of optimal well-being, The Awakened Ape will teach you how to achieve deep states of bliss. All while shaping your body into the fit and healthy animal millions of years of evolution programmed you to be.

John Brockman, editor of This Will Make You Smarter, presents his latest thought-provoking audiobook, featuring insights from leading thinkers such as Steven Pinker, Lisa Randall, Matt Ridley, and Daniel C. Dennett. Drawing from the horizons of science, today's leading thinkers reveal the hidden threats nobody is talking about - and expose the false fears everyone else is distracted by. Encompassing neuroscience, economics, philosophy, physics, psychology, biology, and more - here are 150 ideas that will revolutionize your understanding of the world.

"Creativity is the unique and defining trait of our species, and its ultimate goal, self-understanding", begins Edward O. Wilson's sweeping examination of the humanities and its relationship to the sciences. By studying fields as diverse as paleontology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience, Wilson demonstrates that human creativity began not 10,000 years ago, as we have long assumed, but over 100,000 years ago in the Paleolithic Age.

When it comes to sex, common wisdom holds that men roam while women crave closeness and commitment. But in this provocative, headline-making book, Daniel Bergner turns everything we thought we knew about women's arousal and desire inside out. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with renowned behavioral scientists, sexologists, psychologists, and everyday women, he forces us to reconsider long-held notions about female sexuality.