Social Health

Social connection is as essential for our health and happiness as a balanced diet and regular exercise. It reduces our risk of stroke, heart disease, and Alzheimer's. It enhances our creativity and adds years to our life span. Yet many of us struggle to form strong and meaningful bonds—and the problem lies not with our personalities but with a series of cognitive biases that stop us from fulfilling our social potential. In The Laws of Connection, David Robson describes the psychological barriers that lead us to keep others at a distance and offers evidence-based strategies to overcome them.

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.

Pushing back against a consumerist, pleasure-centric somatics industry that privileges product over process, Abigail Rose Clarke reminds us that truly meaningful embodiment practice nurtures our relationships among self, nature, and community.

Reason, we are told, is what makes us human, the source of our knowledge and wisdom. If reason is so useful, why didn't it also evolve in other animals? If reason is that reliable, why do we produce so much thoroughly reasoned nonsense? In their groundbreaking account of the evolution and workings of reason, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber set out to solve this double enigma.

When you are criticized or rejected, do you have a tendency to lash out or withdraw entirely? Both types of kneejerk reactions can have lasting and unintended consequences, affecting our friendships, careers, families, and romantic relationships. The truth is, overreacting hurts us as much as it hurts the people around us. You may see overreacting as an unchangeable part of your personality, but in reality, this tendency, like any other, can be unlearned.

Interweaving her vast knowledge of neurology, sociology, psychology, and philosophy with fascinating down-to-earth examples and lively personal anecdotes, developmental psychologist, neuroscientist, and dyslexia expert Wolf probes the question, "How do we learn to read and write?" This ambitious and provocative new book offers an impassioned look at reading, its effect on our lives, and explains why it matters so greatly in a digital era.

" Je ne pensais pas que recevoir le diagnostic du TDAH me serait à ce point salvateur. " Plus de 3 millions de personnes en France ont un trouble de l’attention. À 35 ans, Catherine Testa a découvert qu’elle était atteinte d’un trouble de l’attention, le fameux TDAH. Les particularités ? Une incapacité à se concentrer sur certaines tâches plus de quelques minutes, une hypersensibilité aux interférences, une impulsivité, des difficultés d’organisation, une tendance à la procrastination.

Robin Dunbar is the world-renowned psychologist and author who famously discovered Dunbar's number: how our capacity for friendship is limited to around 150 people. In Friends, he looks at friendship in the round, at the way different types of friendship and family relationships intersect, or at the complex of psychological and behavioural mechanisms that underpin friendships and make them possible - and just how complicated the business of making and keeping friends actually is.

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.

Designers and managers hope their products become essential for users-integrated into their lives like Instagram, Lyft, and others have become. Such deep integration isn't accidental: it's a process of careful design and iterative learning, especially for technology companies. This guide shows you how to apply behavioral science—research that supports many products—to help your users achieve their goals using your product.

Opt out of expectations and live a more intentional life with this refreshing guide from the national bestselling author of The Year of Less. We all follow our own path in life. At least, that's what we're told. In reality, many of us either do what is expected of us, or follow the invisible but...

"Je suis philosophe, je m’intéresse aux rapports entre les femmes et les hommes : après un premier livre sur la soumission des femmes aux hommes, j’ai écrit un ouvrage sur le consentement et les injustices de genre dans la sexualité hétérosexuelle. Je suis aussi une femme de bientôt quarante ans, qui voudrait pouvoir exister dans le monde sans s’inquiéter sans cesse des violences sexistes et sexuelles dont mes amies, mes filles ou moi pourrions être victimes.

From an early age, it is drilled into our heads: Restlessness, distraction, and ignorance are the enemies of success. We’re told that learning is all self-discipline, that we must confine ourselves to designated study areas, turn off the music, and maintain a strict ritual if we want to ace that test, memorize that presentation, or nail that piano recital. But what if almost everything we were told about learning is wrong?

Stop social anxiety in its tracks! It's time to create total social confidence now. Affirmations are a fast, powerful way to help you feel confident and comfortable around other people and create empowering self-beliefs - all during your REM cycle.

Sexual abuse knows no religious or social boundaries. The Wounded Heart is an intensely personal and specific look at this form of abuse. Dr. Allender explores the secret lament of the soul damaged by sexual abuse and lays hold of the hope buried there by the one whose unstained image we all bear. Includes information about false memory issues.

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.

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.

On July 20, 2012 in Aurora, Colorado, a man in dark body armor and a gas mask entered a midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises with a tactical shotgun, a high-capacity assault rifle, and a sidearm. Soon twelve were dead and fifty-eight were wounded. A Dark Night in Aurora uses the twenty-three hours of unredacted interview transcripts never seen by the public and Reid’s research to bring the listener inside the mind of a mass murderer. The result is chilling, gripping study of abnormal psychology and how a lovely boy named Jimmy became a killer.

An inspiring personal story of redemption, second chances, and the transformative power within us all, from the founder and CEO of the nonprofit charity: water. In the tradition of such best-selling books as Shoe Dog and Mountains Beyond Mountains, Thirst is a riveting account of how to build a better charity, a better business, a better life - and a gritty tale that proves it’s never too late to make a change.

A leading cognitive scientist argues that a deep sense of good and evil is bred in the bone. From John Locke to Sigmund Freud, philosophers and psychologists have long believed that we begin life as blank moral slates.