Human Psychology

The best-selling author of The Bomber Mafia focuses on "minor geniuses" and idiosyncratic behavior to illuminate the ways all of us organize experience in this "delightful" (Bloomberg News) collection of writings from The New Yorker. What is the difference between choking and panicking? Why are there dozens of varieties of mustard-but only one variety of ketchup? What do football players teach us about how to hire teachers? What does hair dye tell us about the history of the 20th century?

What if those we lead found great purpose in what they do and worked at their jobs with all their heart? Ultimately, don't we hope to foster intrinsic motivation so that the individuals we lead become better employees, better students, or better athletes? Recent discoveries of brain science and the wisdom of top CEOs that Dr. Tim Irwin interviewed for this audiobook give us the answers we've long sought. Science in recent years discovered that affirmation sets in motion huge positive changes in the brain. It releases neurochemicals associated with well-being and higher performance.

Love - in both the abstract and the up-close-and-personal - has always provided limitless inspiration for artists, writers, and musicians, but scientists are just as fascinated by these affairs of the heart, though they seldom sing about it. In Love, Sex, and Science, our editors take a step back, analyzing romance using tools like fMRI studies instead of a paint brush or guitar. The writers examine a variety of topics, starting with the perceived sex differences between men and women discussed in Section 1 - are we really as different as Mars and Venus?

In Sex in the Brain, Amee Baird explores memorable cases of brain injuries and disease that have effected significant changes in sexual behavior and reveals what these exceptional stories have to say about human sexuality. Each chapter includes striking personal accounts, many from individuals Baird has met in her clinical practice, of unexpected changes in sexuality. Until now these fascinating, frightening, and funny stories have been hidden in medical journals or untold outside of the clinical setting. This book offers unique insight into how the brain controls sex life.

The Man's Guide to Women offers the science-based answers to the question: What do women really want in men? The book explains the hallmarks of manhood that most women find attractive and helps men hone those skills to be the men women desire.

An affair: It can rob a couple of their relationship, their happiness, their very identity. And yet this extremely common human experience is so poorly understood. Adultery has existed since marriage was invented, and so, too, the prohibition against it - in fact it has a tenacity that marriage can only envy. Iconic couples' therapist and best-selling author of Mating in Captivity Esther Perel returns with a groundbreaking and provocative look at infidelity, arguing for a more nuanced and less judgmental conversation about our transgressions.

The ultimate guide to changing human behavior. Do you want to increase your EQ and learn how to shape the behavior of those around you? One of the most important keys to leading a healthy, happy, and successful life is to develop your emotional intelligence. The more you understand about why people act the way they do and how to control your own thoughts and emotions, the easier it is to get what you want out of life. For the first time, you can now get three of the best books on the psychology of human behavior in one collection.

How did human minds become so different from those of other animals? What accounts for our capacity to understand the way the physical world works, to think ourselves into the minds of others, to gossip, read, tell stories about the past, and imagine the future? These questions are not new: they have been debated by philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, evolutionists, and neurobiologists over the course of centuries. One explanation widely accepted today is that humans have special cognitive instincts.

The science of emotion is in the midst of a revolution on par with the discovery of relativity in physics and natural selection in biology. Leading the charge is psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, whose research overturns the long-standing belief that emotions are automatic, universal, and hardwired in different brain regions. Instead, Barrett shows, we construct each instance of emotion through a unique interplay of brain, body, and culture.

As women everywhere will attest, when it comes to understanding female sexuality, most guys know more about what's under the hood of a car than under the hood of a clitoris. And while it seems that men have struggled valiantly since the dawn of time to find ways to reliably elicit the female orgasm, rare is the guy who has the modesty to ask: "What do I do?" Ironically, the answer has always been right there on the tip of his tongue.

We've all seen the happiness on the face of a child while playing in the school yard. Or the blissful abandon of a golden retriever racing across a lawn. This is the joy of play. By definition, play is purposeless, all-consuming, and fun. But as Dr. Stuart Brown illustrates, play is anything but trivial. It is a biological drive as integral to our health as sleep or nutrition. We are designed by nature to flourish through play.

Since Darwin's day, we've been told that sexual monogamy comes naturally to our species. Mainstream science - as well as religious and cultural institutions - has maintained that men and women evolved in families in which a man's possessions and protection were exchanged for a woman's fertility and fidelity. But this narrative is collapsing....

In suburban Indiana we meet Lina, the homemaker and mother of two whose marriage, after a decade, has lost its passion. Starved for affection, Lina battles daily panic attacks and, after reconnecting with an old flame through social media, embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming. In North Dakota we meet Maggie, the 17-year-old high school student who allegedly has a clandestine physical relationship with her handsome, married English teacher; the ensuing criminal trial will turn their quiet community upside down.

By the end of on average day in the early 21st century, human beings searching the Internet will amass eight trillion gigabytes of data. This staggering amount of information - unprecedented in history - can tell us a great deal about who we are - the fears, desires, and behaviors that drive us, and the conscious and unconscious decisions we make. From the profound to the mundane, we can gain astonishing knowledge about the human psyche that less than 20 years ago seemed unfathomable.

Writing from both the cutting edge of scientific discovery and the front-lines of elite athletic performance, National Magazine Award-winning science journalist Alex Hutchinson presents a revolutionary account of the dynamic and controversial new science of endurance.

“There is no good reason why human societies should not be described and explained with the same precision and success as the rest of nature.” Thus argues evolutionary psychologist Pascal Boyer in this uniquely innovative book. Integrating recent insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and other fields, Boyer offers precise models of why humans engage in social behaviors such as forming families, tribes, and nations, or creating gender roles.

Statistics show that 50 percent of what determines divorce is genetic temperament. And, if you are one of the 20 percent of people who are born highly sensitive, the risk of an unhappy relationship is especially high. Your finely tuned nervous system, which picks up on subtleties and reflects deeply, would be a romantic asset if both you and your partner understood you better. But without that understanding, your sensitivity is likely to be making your close relationships painful and complicated.

For thousands of years, people have argued about whether humanity is selfish or generous, cruel or kind. But recently, our answers have changed. In 1972, half of Americans agreed that most people can be trusted; by 2018, only a third did. Different generations, genders, religions, and political parties can’t seem to agree on anything, except that they all think human virtue is evaporating.

Human psychology itself is a vast topic that requires many years of research and attention to truly learn the entire subject. However, you likely don't have many years of time to invest in research if you want to start using human psychology to direct human actions and behaviors now. For that reason, in this book you'll find 21 of the most important human psychological traits that you should know if you want to use someone's psychology to influence and direct them to act and behave in certain ways.

If you have ever asked, “Who am I?”, this book has the answers you have been looking for. Psychologists have unlocked the secrets behind the mysteries of human behavior, and this easy-to-listen-to book explains those secrets in simple language. Finally, you don’t have to be an expert in psychology or neurobiology to understand the reasons you do the things you do.