Social Behavior Psychology

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.

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.

In this endlessly fascinating book, New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea that has profound implications: large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant. Groups are better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.

Understand personality traits, character, emotions, and values through pure observation or simple questions. Analyzing people in a flash - it’s not easy, and it’s not simple. But that’s because you don’t know the tools in this audiobook. Think Like a Psychologist is about working backward from the person in front of you. You will learn to draw conclusions about people’s emotions, behavior, past experiences, and overall personality and temperament based on small yet important pieces of information.

Leonard Mlodinow, the best-selling author of The Drunkard’s Walk and coauthor of The Grand Design (with Stephen Hawking), gives us a startling and eye-opening examination of how the unconscious mind shapes our experience of the world and how, for instance, we often misperceive our relationships with family, friends, and business associates, misunderstand the reasons for our investment decisions, and misremember important events.

Carol Dweck’s multi-million-copy bestseller Mindset transformed our view of individual potential, coining the terms “fixed” and “growth” mindset: in a “fixed” mindset, talent and intelligence are viewed as predetermined traits, while in a “growth” mindset, talent and intelligence can be nurtured. In Cultures of Growth, Dweck’s protégé, Mary Murphy, a social psychologist at both Stanford and Indiana University, shows that mindset transcends individuals.

This audiobook is a vital tool for anyone who wants to become more aware of their body language as well as learn how to read and analyze verbal and nonverbal clues of others.

Do you wish to know the secrets to influence people’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior? Do you wish that you could easily win over friends and leverage your relationships to get what you want? The solution to these problems is to learn the insidious persuasion techniques that are used by some of the most successful people in the world. Psychology of Persuasion is full of tricks and techniques that will have an immediate and tangible impact on your ability to influence people.

We live in an age of addiction, from compulsive gaming and shopping to binge eating and opioid abuse. Sugar can be as habit-forming as cocaine, researchers tell us, and social media apps are hooking our kids. But what can we do to resist temptations that insidiously and deliberately rewire our brains? Nothing, David Courtwright says, unless we understand the history and character of the global enterprises that create and cater to our bad habits.

There is so much we get wrong about power: who has it, what it looks like, and the role it plays in our lives. Grounded in over two decades’ worth of scientific research and inspired by the popular class of the same name at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, Acting with Power offers a new and eye-opening paradigm that overturns everything we thought we knew about the nature of power.

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.

Manipulation is a powerful tool, and it's not always easy to spot a manipulator. Manipulators can be very convincing, and they often get away with their behavior because people don't know how to spot them. But with the right tools and knowledge, we can learn how to protect ourselves. That’s where this audiobook comes in—it will help you learn how to analyze people and master human behavior, so you can spot a manipulator from a mile away! With this information, you can help protect yourself and those around you from being taken advantage of.

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?

An informative and entertaining account of how actions send signals that shape behaviors and how to design better incentives for better results in our life, our work, and our world.

The most powerful psychological tactics are being used against you—right now. Are you ready to take back control?

Weaving together cutting-edge social science with riveting stories that take us from the front lines of the Volkswagen scandal to backstage at the Oscars, and from deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico to the top of Mount Everest, Chris Clearfield and András Tilcsik explain how the increasing complexity of our systems creates conditions ripe for failure and why our brains and teams can't keep up. They highlight the paradox of progress: Though modern systems have given us new capabilities, they've become vulnerable to surprising meltdowns - and even to corruption and misconduct.

I know my own mind. I am able to assess others in a fair and accurate way. These self-perceptions are challenged by leading psychologists Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald as they explore the hidden biases we all carry from a lifetime of exposure to cultural attitudes about age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, sexuality, disability status, and nationality. Blindspot is the authors’ metaphor for the portion of the mind that houses hidden biases.

To succeed in a fast-changing world, individuals and companies know they must create a culture of growth, where experimentation and feedback are encouraged, and learning is integrated into the everyday. Yet we often get stuck in a well-worn pattern of habits that don’t move us forward. Why? Because many of us get trapped in the Performance Paradox: the counterintuitive phenomenon that if we focus only on performing, our performance suffers. How can we give ourselves the space to experiment and grow while also delivering high-level results?

Using proven psychological communication strategies like priming and spreading activation, you can then put your subject into a more susceptible mindset that helps open them to your ideas, allowing you to ethically persuade and influence people by controlling their thoughts, feelings, emotions, and even their behavior.

The art of reading people is much more of a science! You too can learn this skill, which will allow you to know what people are thinking without them saying a word, and even predict their behavioral patterns. Not a generic book on looking at facial expressions or trying to see if someone is lying. HOW TO SPEED READ PEOPLE isn’t about surface things. It’s about all the habits, tics, and ways of thinking that can show you someone’s intentions, personality, background, and goals. People are giving out signs all the time, you just have to know what to look for!