Human Behavior

Ritual is one of the oldest, and certainly most enigmatic, threads in the history of human culture. It presents a profound paradox: people ascribe the utmost importance to their rituals, but few can explain why they are so important. Apparently pointless ceremonies pervade every documented society, from handshakes to hexes, hazings to parades. Before we ever learned to farm, we were gathering in giant stone temples to perform elaborate rites and ceremonies. Dimitris Xygalatas leads us on an enlightening tour through this shadowy realm of human behavior.

Columbia Business School professor Sandra Matz reveals in fascinating detail how big data offers insights into the most intimate aspects of our psyches and how these insights empower an external influence over the choices we make. This can be creepy, manipulative, and downright harmful, with scandals like that of British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica being merely the tip of the iceberg. Yet big data also holds enormous potential to help us live healthier, happier lives.

A two-book box set containing The Shopping Addiction, 2nd Edition and Living with OCD, 2nd Edition!

This comprehensive guide combines the wisdom of two powerful audiobooks to equip you with a holistic understanding of human behavior, nonverbal communication, and the art of influence. Unleash the full potential of your interpersonal skills and gain an unparalleled advantage in decoding, analyzing, and positively influencing the people around you—there’ll be nothing you can’t do!

The Definitive Guide to Unraveling the World of Nonverbal Communication!

The corporate masks we wear hide many a secret. The most potent are not the secret financial numbers or confidential strategy documents hidden away in locked drawers or in safes but the simple ones—good filter coffee generosity and thirty minutes of me-time. This book offers a selection of fascinating and useful secrets that can help you be far more successful at your workplace. As a bonus they can make you happier as well. Harish Bhat wields his pen with his signature insight to delight inspire provoke and change the way you see offices forever.

Understanding people and their intentions towards us is a valuable skill to have and has been used for thousands of years, primarily as a means of protection against physical harm but increasingly today for other things like avoiding narcissists or improving our career and business opportunities. If you’ve ever wanted to learn this and believe that it could help you in a variety of social settings then now is the time to start.

Birds are highly intelligent animals, yet their intelligence is dramatically different from our own and has been little understood. As we learn more about the secrets of bird life, we are unlocking fascinating insights into memory, relationships, game theory, and the nature of intelligence itself. The Thing with Feathers explores the astonishing homing abilities of pigeons, the good deeds of fairy-wrens, the influential flocking abilities of starlings, the deft artistry of bowerbirds, the extraordinary memories of nutcrackers, and other mysteries.

Living with OCD: Obsessive compulsive disorder is quite a common thing that plagues a lot of people today. It is not an isolated case. You or your loved ones may have it as well. Knowing what you are up against can help you get better equipped for fighting this debilitating battle against your thoughts and actions.

What really drives our decisions? Where do language and memory come from? Why do our minds sometimes seem to work against us? Psychologists have long attempted to answer these questions, seeking to understand human behavior, feelings, and thoughts. But how to explore something so elusive?

Dive right in to learn the techniques you need to manipulate, deceive, and control situations or people around you.

For centuries, economics was dominated by the idea that we are rational individuals who optimize 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.

Have you ever wondered how to get into another person's mind? Is it possible to control the minds of others like in fantasy movies and comics? Would you like to be able to persuade the minds of others? It is possible that someone has asked this question at some point in their life and has given up on it. The truth is that it does not matter how impossible this is but if it is possible to get into the minds of other people. At any time, people allow us to see the actions they perform, and it is here that we can detect their behavior patterns and thus enter their minds.

What if leaders stripped away all preconceptions about how business operates, allowing the organization to go back to its core and build itself back up to become something new—something so responsive, so innovative and resilient, it becomes virtually non-displaceable in the market? The Regenerative Business sets the stage for what is now only dreamt of by most of today's forward-thinking leaders and paves the path to make it possible.

Find out what makes narcissists, psychopaths, and sociopaths tick and whether society's portrayal of these disorders is accurate. Learn how to let go of unworthy relationships and regain self-confidence, self-worth, and self-respect!

Sheena Iyengar asks the difficult questions about how and why we choose: Is the desire for choice innate or bound by culture? Why do we sometimes choose against our best interests? How much control do we really have over what we choose? Sheena Iyengar's award-winning research reveals that the answers are surprising and profound.

Professor Jim Davies's fascinating and highly accessible book, Riveted, reveals the evolutionary underpinnings of why we find things compelling. Drawing on work from philosophy, anthropology, religious studies, psychology, economics, computer science, and biology, Davies offers a comprehensive explanation to show that in spite of the differences between the many things that we find compelling, they have similar effects on our minds and brains.

Dark psychology has been used since the dawn of early man. Deception and persuasion play into survival of the fittest. In essence, as long as humans have had thoughts in their heads, they’ve been thinking about how to outsmart and outwit other humans. It is only in the last century and a half that dark psychology has been studied in a modern sense, with the rise of criminology and forensic psychology as recognized sciences. Many pieces of the dark psychology puzzle were put into place well before then.

A leading behavioral economist shows how businesses can improve consumer thinking and decision-making on screens. The typical American office worker now spends the majority of his or her waking hours staring at a screen. In the 21st century, every business is a digital business, which is why it's so critical to understand how we think and behave online. Acclaimed behavioral economist Shlomo Benartzi reveals a toolkit of interventions for the digital age. Using provocative case-studies and engaging exercises, Benartzi shows how businesses can update their nudges to help consumers make better decisions on screens.

"إن السلوك البشري، في معظمه، معقدٌ وغامض. في بعض الحالات، يكون الأشخاص من حولنا حمقى. إن فهم السلوك الإنساني مهمة لا تنتهي أبدًا، وهو مسعى لا نهاية له لمعرفة ما يقبع وراء خيارات الشخص من أسباب. من السهل ومن الخطير أيضًا أن تقوم بتصنيف شخص يتصرف بطريقة مختلفة عنك كجاهل أو مخطئ أو حتى غبي. لكن عالم اليوم يتطلب فهمًا أكثر تطورًا نقوم على أساسه بتقييم الشخص وفق نقاط قوته وضعفه."