Mental Health Science

An entertaining, fact-filled defense of the nearly universal tendency to procrastinate, drawing on the stories of history's greatest delayers, and on the work of psychologists, philosophers, and behavioral economists to explain why we put off what we're supposed to be doing and why we shouldn't feel so bad about it.

There has been much written about the impact of polarization on elections, political parties, and policy outcomes. But Keith Payne’s goal is more personal: to focus on what our divisions mean for us as individuals, as families, and as communities. This book is about how ordinary people think about politics, why talking about it is so hard, and how we can begin to mend the personal bonds that are fraying for so many of us.

The revised and updated edition of Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's modern classic about the psychology of combat, hailed by the Washington Post as "an illuminating account of how soldiers learn to kill and how they live with the experiences of having killed". In World War II, only 15 to 20 percent of combat infantry were willing to fire their rifles. In Korea, about 50 percent. In Vietnam, the figure rose to more than 90 percent. The good news is that most soldiers are loath to kill.

At the heart of this groundbreaking book are two urgent questions: What do our young children need in the earliest years of school, and how do we ensure that they all get it? Cutting-edge research has proven that early childhood education is crucial for all children to gain the academic and emotional skills they need to succeed later in life. Children who attend quality pre-K programs have a host of positive outcomes including better language, literacy, problem solving, and math skills down the line.

Tanya Talaga, the best-selling author of Seven Fallen Feathers and the 2017-2018 Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy, calls attention to an urgent global humanitarian crisis among Indigenous Peoples - youth suicide.

What does it mean to “be you” - that is, to have a specific, conscious experience of the world around you and yourself within it? There may be no more elusive or fascinating question. Historically, humanity has considered the nature of consciousness to be a primarily spiritual or philosophical inquiry, but scientific research is now mapping out compelling biological theories and explanations for consciousness and selfhood.

By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counterintuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on the important ones and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make.

In his groundbreaking book Predictably Irrational, social scientist Dan Ariely revealed the multiple biases that lead us into making unwise decisions. Now, in The Upside of Irrationality, he exposes the surprising negative and positive effects irrationality can have on our lives. Focusing on our behaviors at work and in relationships, he offers new insights and eye-opening truths about what really motivates us on the job.

In Your Brain Is a Time Machine, brain researcher and best-selling author Dean Buonomano draws on evolutionary biology, physics, and philosophy to present his influential theory of how we tell and perceive time. The human brain, he argues, is a complex system that not only tells time but creates it; it constructs our sense of chronological flow and enables "mental time travel" - simulations of future and past events.

Every aspect of your life, and that of your loved ones, can improve as you learn to accurately evaluate claims. This book provides practical tools so you can evaluate what is most probably true based on the totality of evidence. An invaluable net effect can occur as more people use the methods Dr. Schwartz provides and benefit from his extraordinary accomplishments.

Creativity defines the human experience. It sparks achievement and innovation in art, science, technology, business, sports, and virtually every activity. It has fueled human progress on a global level, but it equally is the source of profound personal satisfaction for individual creators. And yet the origins of creative inspiration and the methods by which great creators tap into it have long been a source of mystery, spoken of in esoteric terms, our rational understanding shrouded in complex jargon. Until now.

If you're like most people, you think that your choices and behaviors are driven by your individual personal tastes and opinions. You wear a certain jacket because you like the way it looks. You picked a particular career because you found it interesting. The notion that our choices are driven by our own personal thoughts and opinions is patently obvious. Right? Wrong. Without our realizing it, other people's behavior has a huge influence on everything we do at every moment of our lives, from the mundane to the momentous occasion.

In The Social Leap, William von Hippel lays out a revolutionary hypothesis, tracing human development through three critical evolutionary inflection points to explain how events in our distant past shape our lives today. From the mundane, such as why we exaggerate, to the surprising, such as why we believe our own lies and why fame and fortune are as likely to bring misery as happiness, the implications are far-reaching and extraordinary.

The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics changed the way we see the world, exposing the hidden side of just about everything. Then came SuperFreakonomics, a documentary film, an award-winning podcast, and more. Now, with Think Like a Freak, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have written their most revolutionary book yet. With their trademark blend of captivating storytelling and unconventional analysis, they take us inside their thought process and teach us all to think a bit more productively, more creatively, more rationally.

Fat Talk argues for a reclaiming of “fat,” which is not synonymous with “unhealthy,” “inactive,” or “lazy.” Talking to researchers and activists, as well as parents and kids across a broad swath of the country, Sole-Smith lays bare how America’s focus on solving the “childhood obesity epidemic” has perpetuated a second crisis of disordered eating and body hatred for kids of all sizes. She exposes our society’s internalized fatphobia and elucidates how and why we need to stop “preventing obesity” and start supporting kids in the bodies they have.

For the first time in history, the secrets of the living brain are being revealed by a battery of high-tech brain scans devised by physicists. Now what was once solely the province of science fiction has become a startling reality. Recording memories, telepathy, videotaping our dreams, mind control, avatars, and telekinesis are not only possible; they already exist.

Status signaling isn’t just the province of the immature or insecure but a fundamental human need to secure social standing. It drives our behavior, forms our tastes, determines what we buy, and ultimately shapes who we are. It’s what’s behind “cool” and what drives fashion, music, food, sports, slang, travel, hairstyles, and dog breeds—and even the outsize influence of unpopular things with the “right” audience.

Tribalism is our most misunderstood buzzword. We’ve all heard pundits bemoan its rise, and it’s been blamed for everything from political polarization to workplace discrimination. But as acclaimed cultural psychologist and Columbia professor Michael Morris argues, our tribal instincts are humanity’s secret weapon. Ours is the only species that lives in tribes: groups glued together by their distinctive cultures that can grow to a scale far beyond clans and bands. Morris argues that our psychology is wired by evolution in three distinctive ways.

In Plays Well With Others, Eric Barker dives into these questions, drawing on science to reveal the truth beyond the conventional wisdom about human relationships. Combining his compelling storytelling and humor, Barker explains what hostage negotiation techniques and marital arguments have in common, how an expert con-man lied his way into a twenty-year professional soccer career, and why those holding views diametrically opposed to our own actually have the potential to become our closest, most trusted friends.

Viktor Frankl is known to millions of listeners as a psychotherapist who has transcended his field in his search for answers to the ultimate questions of life, death, and suffering. Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning explores the sometimes unconscious basic human desire for inspiration or revelation and illustrates how life can offer profound meaning at every turn.