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Books > Social sciences > Psychology > Philosophy & theory of psychology > Behavioural theory (Behaviourism)
Personality is now understood to be a function of both biological and environmental influences. This revised and updated edition of Psychobiology of Personality describes what is currently known about the biological basis of the primary personality traits, including genetic, neurological, biochemical, physiological, and behavioral influences. Emphasis is placed on understanding the connections between phenomena at these levels. The research discussed makes use of animal models, based on experimental brain research, as well as human clinical and normal personality research. Chapters are devoted to temperament and personality trait structure, psychobiological methods, and each of four major personality traits: extraversion, impulsive, sensation seeking, and aggression. Recent advances in psychobiological methods, such as molecular genetics and brain imaging have enabled us to begin to unravel the genetic and neurological sources of behavior and personality. These advances are discussed in this new edition, making it essential reading for advanced students of psychology and psychiatry.
Most animal communication has evolved and now takes place in the context of a communication network, i.e. several signallers and receivers within communication range of each other. This idea follows naturally from the observation that many signals travel further than the average spacing between animals. This is self evidently true for long-range signals, but at a high density the same is true for short-range signals (e.g. begging calls of nestling birds). This book provides a current summary of research on communication networks and appraises future prospects. It combines information from studies of several taxonomic groups (insects to people via fiddler crabs, fish, frogs, birds and mammals) and several signalling modalities (visual, acoustic and chemical signals). It also specifically addresses the many areas of interface between communication networks and other disciplines (from the evolution of human charitable behaviour to the psychophysics of signal perception, via social behaviour, physiology and mathematical models).
Why do birds often live in pairs and rear chicks together, whereas female mammals usually live in groups and rear their young without male help? Why do males sometimes live with a single mate when they are capable of fertilizing more than one female's eggs? Is male helping behavior important for monogamous partnerships? This book provides answers concerning the biological roots of social monogamy in animal groups as diverse as ungulates, carnivores, rodents, birds and primates (including humans) for students and researchers in behavioral ecology, evolutionary anthropology and zoology.
At present, doctors and psychiatrists are professing their inability to develop theoretical approaches that lead to effective clinical methods to help women suffering from eating disorders. Michelle Lelwica puts forward a hypothesis that has both theoretical and clinical implications. She identifies eating disorders as a specifically religious problem and contends that it can be addressed with religious resources. She argues that the remnants of religious legacies that have historically effaced the diversity and complexity of women's spiritual yearnings and struggles are alive and well under the guise of a host of "secular" practices, pictures and promises. Until these legacies are recognized, contested and changed, she predicts, many girls and women will continue to turn to the symbolic and ritual resources most readily available to them - food and their bodies - in a passionate but precarious quest for freedom and fulfillment.
From the O.J. Simpson verdict to peace-making in the Balkans, the critical role of human judgment--complete with its failures, flaws, and successes--has never been more hotly debated and analyzed than it is today. This landmark work examines the dynamics of judgment and its impact on events that take place in human society, which require the direction and control of social policy. Research on social policy typically focuses on content. This book concentrates instead on the decision-making process itself. Drawing on 50 years of empirical research in decision theory, Hammond examines the possibilities for wisdom and cognitive competence in the formation of social policies, and applies these lessons to specific examples, such as the space shuttle Challenger disaster and the health care debate. Uncertainly, he tells us, can seldom be fully eliminated; thus error is inevitable, and injustice for some unavoidable. But the capacity for make wise judgments increases to the extent that we understand the potential pitfalls and their origin. The judgment process for example involves an ongoing rivalry between intuition and analysis, accuracy and rationality. The source of this tension requires an examination of the evolutionary roots of human judgment and how these fundamental features may be changing as our civilization increasingly becomes an information and knowledge-based society. With numerous examples from law, medicine, engineering, and economics, the author dramatizes the importance of judgment and its role in the formation of social policies which affect us all, and issues the first comprehensive examination of its underlying dynamics.
Few diseases have exercised the Western imagination as chronically as hysteria--from the wandering womb of ancient Greek medicine, to the demonically possessed witch of the Renaissance; from the "vaporous" salong women of Enlightenment Paris, through to the celebrated patients of Sigmund Freud, with their extravagant, erotically charged symptoms. In this fascnating and authoritative book, Mark Micale surveys the range of past and present readings of hysteria by intellectual historians; historians of science and medicine; scholars in gender studies, art history, and literature; and psychoanalysts, psychiatriasts, clinical psychologists, and neurologists. In so doing, he explores numerous questions raised by this evergrowing body of literature: Why, in recent years, has the history of hysterical disorders carried such resonance for commentators in the sciences and humanities? What can we learn form the textual traditions of hysteria about writing the history of disease in general? What is the broader cultural meaning of the new hysteria studies? In the second half of the book, Micale discusses the many historical "cultures of hysteria." He reconstructs in detail the past usages of the hysteria concept as a powerful, descriptive trope in various nonmedical domains, including poetry, fiction, theater, social thought, political criticism, and the arts His book is a pioneering attempt to write the historical phenomenology of disease in an age preoccupied with health, and a prescriptive remedy for writing histories of disease in the future. Mark S. Micale is Assistant Professor of History at Yale. He is the editor of Beyond the Unconscious: Essays of Henri F. Ellenberger (Princeton). Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Research on the mental abilities of chimpanzees and bonobos has been widely celebrated and used in reconstructions of human evolution. In contrast, scant attention has been paid to the abilities of gorillas and orangutans. This volume aims to complete the picture of hominoid cognition by bringing together the work on gorillas and orangutans and setting it in comparative perspective. This book's introductory chapters set the evolutionary context for comparing cognition in gorillas and orangutans to that of chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans. The remaining chapters focus primarily on the kinds and levels of intelligence displayed by orangutans and gorillas compared to other great apes, including performances in the classic domains of tool use and tool making, imitation, self awareness, social communication, and symbol use.
Jon Elster has written a comprehensive, wide-ranging book on the emotions in which he considers the full range of theoretical approaches. Drawing on history, literature, philosophy and psychology, Elster presents a complete account of the role of the emotions in human behaviour. While acknowledging the importance of neurophysiology and laboratory experiment for the study of emotions, Elster argues that the serious student of the emotions can learn more from the great thinkers and writers of the past, from Aristotle to Jane Austen. He attaches particular importance to the work of the French moralists, notably La Rochefoucauld, who demonstrated the way esteem and self-esteem shape human motivation. The book also maintains a running dialogue with economists and rational-choice theorists. Combining methodological and theoretical arguments with empirical case-studies and written with Elster's customary verve and economy, this book has great cross-disciplinary appeal.
How do creative people think? Do great works of the imagination
originate in words or in images? Is there a rational explanation
for the sudden appearance of geniuses like Mozart or Einstein? Such
questions have fascinated people for centuries; only in recent
years, however, has cognitive psychology been able to provide some
clues to the mysterious process of creativity. In this revised
edition of Notebooks of the Mind, Vera John-Steiner combines
imaginative insight with scientific precision to produce a
startling account of the human mind working at its highest
potential.
This book explains the principles of effective communication and demonstrates how techniques adopted from theoretical models like operant learning, classical learning, social learning, and cognitive therapy can be used to enhance the interactive and problem-solving skills of patients. These skills can help patients develop better coping mechanisms and form healthier relationships.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder is currently the subject of considerable research, because recent epidemiological studies have suggested that the condition is more prevalent than was originally believed. This book offers a critical discussion of the most important theories that have been put forward to explain this disorder. The book includes behavioral/learning accounts (and cognitive-behavioral supplements of these), accounts based on Pavlovian personality theories (such as those by Eysenck, Gray, and Claridge), Pierre Janet's account, cybernetic approaches, psychodynamic approaches, Reed's cognitive-structural account, and biological approaches. Therapeutic approaches to the disorder are also considered insofar as they are relevant to these theories. An analysis of the concept of OCD is also presented, together with a critique of the existing definitions of the disorder. This book is unique in both the comprehensiveness and the depth of its coverage of theories of OCD. It also offers an entirely new approach to the definition of the disorder.
A Volume in the Jossey-Bass Library of Current Clinical Technique This book is thorough and comprehensive and brings together a wealth of up-to-date and practical treatment information of tremAndous value to the clinician. Offers an illuminating picture of the psychological problems related to anxiety. It outlines effective interventions for problems such as panic attacks, agoraphobia, and social phobias. Also described are specific techniques, including exposure therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, relaxation, psychodynamic, and psychotherapy.
Over the last fifteen years, psychological research regarding sexual orientation has seen explosive growth. In this book, Anthony R. D'Augelli and Charlotte J. Patterson bring together top experts to offer a comprehensive overview of what we have discovered - and what we still need to learn - about lesbian, gay, and bisexual identities. Writing in clear, nontechnical language, the contributors cover a range of topics, including conceptions of sexual identity, development over the lifespan, family and other personal relationships, parenting, and bigotry and discrimination. Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Identities Over the Lifespan is essential reading for researchers, students, social scientists, mental health practitioners, and general readers who seek the most up-to-date and authoritative treatment of the subject available.
"Colin Camerer's "Behavioral Game Theory" fills an important niche in the literature. It brings together and synthesizes a large body of experimental and theoretical work on multi-person interactions, in psychology as well as economics. The result is a theory of games enriched by empirical knowledge and significantly closer to what is needed for applications. Camerer's book will make an outstanding principal or supplementary text for graduate or advanced undergraduate courses in game theory and experimental economics."--Vincent Crawford, University of California, San Diego "Behavioral economics has become very popular and of growing interest both within economics and in social science more generally. It integrates the rational maximizing behavior characteristic of economic models with objectives and beliefs characteristic of sociology and psychology in new and useful ways. Thus, it is increasingly relevant in framing issues such as tax policy, income redistribution, auctions, crime, and drug addiction. In this excellent and welcome work, "Behavioral Game Theory," Colin Camerer brings his impressive breadth of knowledge to bear on the behavioral economics of strategic interaction, and thus on the field itself. This book will induce scholars, graduate students, and young social scientists alike to work in this burgeoning and exciting area of intellectual pursuit."--Herbert Gintis, University of Massachusetts and the Santa Fe Institute "Colin Camerer's "Behavioral Game Theory" is a major achievement. Nothing like it is available thus far, and the author is uniquely qualified to have written it. He has an impressive understanding of both psychology and economics. He has taken thetrouble to 'talk through' hundreds of tricky arguments that elsewhere just get stated mathematically. Rarer still is his positive attitude toward modeling, experimentation, econometrics, and other methodologies. If his book invests others with the same open-minded, synergistic outlook, that alone would make it worthwhile."--David G. Pearce, Yale University "This is a terrific book. I cannot recommend it highly enough. In addition to its substantive findings, it contains a wealth of wise methodological insights, generously sprinkled with relevant and stimulating anecdotes."--Jon Elster, Columbia University "Behavioral economics has won whatever intellectual war was fought. It has won in the sense that it has been shown to be superior to the conventional alternatives wherever there has been an evidentiary contest. In a deeper sense, however, there was no war-simply standard science, in which the current generation of scholars builds on and expands the work of previous generations. The work of implementing these advances has only begun. This book explains the nature of the advances to those in economics who were locked away in their workshops while the intellectual contest was being waged and may be unaware of what has happened."--Henry J. Aaron, The Brookings Institution "It is certainly time that a book such as this be published. This volume will be a 'one-stop shop' for learning about behavioral economics and is likely to be adopted in graduate course in behavioral economics (and may even encourage people to offer such a course). The introductory chapter does a good job of explaining the enterprise, behavioral economics, and providing some history and context."--Linda Babcock, Carnegie Mellon University, coauthor of "Women Don't Ask"
While it is often assumed that behavioural development must be based upon both physical law and the biological principles of morphogenesis and selection, forging a link between these disciplines has remained an elusive goal. This book addresses the question of how familiar human functional acts - eating, walking, manipulating objects, smiling, etc. - emerge during infancy due to both intrinsic dynamics and selective processes. The central thesis of the book is that during perceptually guided spontaneous activity, a variety of biodynamic devices for doing different kinds of work are assembled and adapted to specific tasks. Following the introductory chapters, which explore principles from the fields of dynamics and ecological psychology, the author introduces a theory of the development of action systems based upon both self-organisation in complex systems and perceptually guided selective processes. The theory is then examined in the context of development of each of several action systems. The book addresses many long-standing issues in behavioural development, including the apparent disappearance of so-called primitive behaviours, the emergence of new skills, and the role of the caregiver on skill acquisition. The prospects for extending the theory to atypical development and to other domains such as cognition and language are also considered.
Are the risks of smoking exaggerated? Has there been an open and rational discussion about the risks of smoking? This book attempts to answer these and many other questions about the subject, providing a detailed empirical presentation on smoking behavior as a risky consumer decision. Using new empirical data based on several national and regional surveys, Viscusi addresses a number of important issues, including: the sources of information that people have about the risks of smoking, the accuracy of their perceptions of the risks associated with smoking, and the consistency of smoking decisions with other risky behavior - scrutinizing issues such as whether smokers value risk differently than those who wear safety belts. Viscusi also looks at the differences in age groups and how they assess these risks based on public information. He provides new insight into the degree to which individuals understand smoking risks and take these risks into account in their behavior. With its detailed empirical data and its examination of individual decision-making processes, this work will interest researchers in public health, public policy, psychology, and economics, as well as anyone concerned with this important issue.
A Times/Sunday Times Book of the Year DISCOVER HOW LIFE REALLY WORKS - ON EARTH AND IN SPACE 'A wonderfully insightful sidelong look at Earthly biology' Richard Dawkins 'Crawls with curious facts' Sunday Times _________________________ We are unprepared for the greatest discovery of modern science. Scientists are confident that there is alien life across the universe yet we have not moved beyond our perception of 'aliens' as Hollywood stereotypes. The time has come to abandon our fixation on alien monsters and place our expectations on solid scientific footing. Using his own expert understanding of life on Earth and Darwin's theory of evolution - which applies throughout the universe - Cambridge zoologist Dr Arik Kershenbaum explains what alien life must be like. This is the story of how life really works, on Earth and in space. _________________________ 'An entertaining, eye-opening and, above all, a hopeful view of what - or who - might be out there in the cosmos' Philip Ball, author of Nature's Patterns 'A fascinating insight into the deepest of questions: what might an alien actually look like' Lewis Dartnell, author of Origins 'If you don't want to be surprised by extraterrestrial life, look no further than this lively overview of the laws of evolution that have produced life on earth' Frans de Waal, author of Mama's Last Hug
Everyone, it seems, is talking and arguing about Evidence-Based Practice (EBP). Those therapies and assessments designated as EBP increasingly determine what is taught, researched, and reimbursed in health care. But exactly what is it, and how do you do it? The second edition of Clinician's Guide to Evidence-Based Practices is the concise, practitioner-friendly guide to applying EBPs in mental health. Step-by-step it explains how to conduct the entire EBP process-asking the right questions, accessing the best available research, appraising the research, translating that research into practice, integrating that research with clinician expertise and patient characteristics, evaluating the entire enterprise, attending to the ethical considerations, and when done, moving the EBP process forward by teaching and disseminating it. This book will help you: * Formulate useful questions that research can address * Search the research literature efficiently for best practices * Make sense out of the research morass, sifting wheat from chaff * Incorporate patient values and diversity into the selection of EBP * Blend clinician expertise with the research evidence * Translate empirical research into practice * Ensure that your clients receive effective, research-supported services * Infuse the EBP process into your organizational setting and training methods * Identify and integrate ethics in the context of EBP Coauthored by a distinguished quartet of clinicians, researchers, and a health care librarian, the Clinician's Guide has become the classic for graduate students and busy professionals mastering EBP.
This stimulating volume on vision extends well beyond the traditional areas of vision research and places the subject in a much broader philosophical context. The emphasis throughout is to integrate and illuminate the visual process. The first three parts of the volume provide authoritative overviews on computational vision and neural networks, on the neurophysiology of visual cortex processing, and on eye-movement research. Each of these parts illustrates how different research perspectives may jointly solve fundamental problems related to the efficiency of visual perception, to the relationship between vision and eye-movements and to the neurophysiological 'codes' underlying our visual perceptions. In the fourth part, leading vision scientists introduce the reader to some major philosophical problems in vision research such as the nature of 'ultimate' codes for perceptual events, the duality of psycho-physics, the bases of visual recognition and the paradigmatic foundations of computer-vision research.
A short, stimulating book on the relevance of biological evolution to the study of behaviour. Goldsmith argues that anyone studying the social behaviour of humans must take into consideration both proximate cause - the physiology, biochemistry, and social mechanisms of behaviour, and the ultimate cause - how the behaviour came to exist in evolutionary time. Many of the confusing and misunderstood elements of sociobiology are clearly explained for the general reader.
This book was first published in 1988. B. F. Skinner was arguably the most important and influential psychologist of the last century. Yet in his long and distinguished career he consistently declined to be engaged by his critics. In his ninth decade, he elected to confront them all: cognitivists, ethologists, brain scientists, biologists, linguists, and philosophers - close to one hundred and fifty scientists and scholars from the entire spectrum of behavior-related disciplines around the world. Skinner's views on consciousness, language, problem solving, evolution, biology, brain function, computers, theory and explanation, presented in six seminal papers, are analyzed, criticized and explained in the 'open peer commentary' format of the Behavioral and Brain Sciences journal. The result is a remarkably lucid and revealing historical record of Skinnerian thinking and its impact on psychology and its allied disciplines. General readers, students, professionals and historians will find this unique intellectual exchange an invaluable resource.
What is the relation between gestures and speech? In terms of symbolic forms, of course, the spontaneous and unwitting gestures we make while talking differ sharply from spoken language itself. Whereas spoken language is linear, segmented, standardized, and arbitrary, gestures are global, synthetic, idiosyncratic, and imagistic. In Hand and Mind, David McNeill presents a bold theory of the essential unity of speech and the gestures that accompany it. This long-awaited, provocative study argues that the unity of gestures and language far exceeds the surface level of speech noted by previous researchers and in fact also includes the semantic and pragmatic levels of language. In effect, the whole concept of language must be altered to take into account the nonsegmented, instantaneous, and holistic images conveyed by gestures. McNeill and his colleagues carefully devised a standard methodology for examining the speech and gesture behavior of individuals engaged in narrative discourse. A research subject is shown a cartoon like the 1950 Canary Row--a classic Sylvester and Tweedy Bird caper that features Sylvester climbing up a downspout, swallowing a bowling ball and slamming into a brick wall. After watching the cartoon, the subject is videotaped recounting the story from memory to a listener who has not seen the cartoon. Painstaking analysis of the videotapes revealed that although the research subjects--children as well as adults, some neurologically impaired--represented a wide variety of linguistic groupings, the gestures of people speaking English and a half dozen other languages manifest the same principles. Relying on data from more than ten years of research, McNeill shows thatgestures do not simply form a part of what is said and meant but have an impact on thought itself. He persuasively argues that because gestures directly transfer mental images to visible forms, conveying ideas that language cannot always express, we must examine language and gesture together to unveil the operations of the mind.
This is a comprehensive account of the behaviour and social organisation of humans and other animals. The development and evolution of all types of behaviour are reviewed using up-to-date examples. There is a full survey of all the classic behavioural research including the latest information available. The concepts of aggression and altruism are explained. there are detailed accounts of social organisation in insect and ape communities. Finally, the book discusses human behaviour and social organisation: the development of individuals within society and the biological and cultural bases of human social behaviour are examined.
This well-written and lively account of the principles of how motivational systems operate includes discussions of both theories and empirical results from individual systems. It reviews current experimental evidence on hunger, thirst, sex and other areas and argues that common factors must be emphasised as much as differences between the systems. The book summarises the theoretical principles that emerge: it shows where motivation theory and learning theory should come together, rather than diverge. Models with general predictive power are elaborated and related to the goal directed aspect of motivation. The book deals with motivation at all levels from the physiological to that of mathematical modelling and explains complex ideas lucidly. It complements other books in the Problems in the Behavioural Sciences Series including Hunger (le Magnen), Thirst (Rolls & Rolls) and Contemporary Animal Learning Theory (Dickson). |
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