Biblical Representations of Moab: A Kenyan Postcolonial Reading employs critical theories on colonial, anticolonial, and postcolonial ethnicity and African cultural hermeneutics to examine the overlap of politics, ethnicity, nationality, economics, and religion in contemporary Kenya and to utilize those critical tools to illuminate the Hebrew Bible narratives concerning the Moabites. This book can be used by teachers and students of contemporary methods in Hebrew Bible studies, postcolonial studies, Africana studies, African biblical hermeneutics, political science, gender studies, history, philosophy, international studies, religion and peace studies, African affairs, and ethnic/racial conflict and resolution studies. It would also be of immense value to clergy and lay leaders engaged in interfaith or interethnic/racial dialogue.

The quality and productivity of a research work very much depends on the competency of the researchers. Such competency needs to be generated and nurtured properly among the researchers from the very beginning of their research career. This comprehensive book on research methodology discusses in detail how to carry out research studies in various disciplines of behavioural sciences in an organised manner. The book is meant for the postgraduate students of Education (M.Ed.), Sociology, Psychology and Management. In addition, it will also be useful to research scholars in learning the art of doing qualitative and quantitative research studies in behavioural sciences. Key Features Systematic and logical organisation of the subject matter providing step-by-step description of the research methodology for conducting research studies. Extensively illustrated with working examples, diagrams and tables. A comprehensive description of the essential data collection tools employed in quantitative and qualitative research studies, along with their proper construction, standardisation and validation. Complete and workable description of the techniques and methods of data analysis used in quantitative and qualitative research studies. A complete chapter devoted to the use of computer technology for the execution of the quantitative and qualitative research studies.

Jesus sent His disciples into the world as sheep among wolves, instructing them to be "as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves" (Matt. 10:16). In Using the Psychology of Attraction in Christian Outreach: Lessons from the Dark Side, Wendy L. Patrick proposes that consistent with this instruction, Christian outreach should incorporate effective strategies of interpersonal influence into a biblical, proactive approach to sharing faith. Drawing on her experience as a sex crimes prosecutor and a review of relevant research, this book exposes five powerful social and psychological techniques (proactivity, emotional appeal, identification, affirmation, and credibility) used successfully within both the dark side by criminals and on the positive side of interpersonal influence by those with selfless motives seeking to benefit others that capitalize on the power of attraction. Because the outcome of these techniques is dependent on the motivation of the user, this book explores the efficacy of using them authentically, selflessly, and benevolently in Christian outreach.

This book presents the results of Heide Goettner-Abendroth's pioneering research in the field of modern matriarchal studies, based on a new definition of "matriarchy" as true gender-egalitarian societies. Accordingly, matriarchal societies should not be regarded as mirror images of patriarchal ones, as they have never needed patriarchy's hierarchical structures of domination. On the contrary, matriarchal patterns are socially egalitarian, economically balanced, and politically based on consensus decisions. They have been created by women and are founded on maternal values. This new perspective on matriarchal societies is developed step by step by the analysis of extant indigenous cultures in Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

A half century of research shows that most citizens are shockingly uninformed about public affairs, liberal-conservative ideologies, and the issues of the day. This has led most scholars to condemn typical American voters as politically brainless and to conclude that policy voting lies beyond their reach. On Voter Competence breaks sharply from this view. According to Paul Goren, people vote based on abstract policy principles, a practice that has escaped scholars because they have searched for evidence of policy voting in the wrong places. Once we turn away from liberal-conservative predispositions and issue preferences, we find that nearly everyone holds genuine policy principles and uses these to guide their votes on election day.
Three key principles divide the Democratic and Republican parties: limited government, traditional morality, and military strength. Deftly integrating research in social and political history, social and political psychology, and electoral behavior, Goren argues that nearly all citizens keep these principles in mind. The principles function as central heuristics in their belief systems, are rooted deeply in basic human values, and guide presidential choice to a similar degree for voters across the sophistication spectrum. Goren's comprehensive analysis of opinion data from the past six presidential elections and several new national surveys yields unequivocal support for these claims.
Contrary to the indictment leveled by most of the scholarly community and political pundits more generally, ordinary citizens who are neither deeply knowledgeable nor engaged with the world of public affairs prove as adept as their more sophisticated counterparts in grounding presidential votes in abstract views about public policy. Insofar as citizen competence can be equated with the development and use of bedrock principles, the American voter performs far better than has been recognized in the past.

Successful advocacy approaches are essential for the practice of law. Lawyers, law professors, judges, and other legal commentators have offered numerous recommendations for how trial lawyers can persuade juries, including techniques in verbal and non-verbal communication, attorney demeanour, and so forth. These recommendations have been put into trial practice handbooks and are frequently taught in law schools as part of the trial advocacy curriculum. However, they often rely on popular assumptions or intuition rather than social and behavioural science. Research is needed to differentiate intuition and speculation from scientific proof of efficacy. This book fills this critical gap by reviewing the scientific support for popular advocacy recommendations. It first summarises trial commentators' recommendations, then reviews the scientific support for these recommendations, and finally evaluates the recommendations in light of the scientific support. Research is culled from not only trial and simulated trial settings, but also other social and behavioural settings. Topics include attorney demeanour, verbal and non-verbal communications, the attorney-client relationship, and storytelling (narrative techniques). This book will appeal to researchers in psychology, communications, linguistics, and other social sciences, as well as trial commentators and practising attorneys.

Grounded in public health practice, this text offers a comprehensive study of the health behavior theories that are the foundation of all health education and promotion programs. Your students will come away with a clear understanding of essential relationships between human behavior and health, as well as the practical application of theory and approaches to health promotion research and practice. Designed for graduates or upper level undergraduates, the book maintains a consistent, single voice and offers many examples throughout. Contents: Section I. Theory in Context: 1. Health Behavior in the Context of Public Health 2. A Social Ecological Perspective 3. Theories of Motivation and Behavior: A Brief History and Contemporary Perspectives Section II. Cognitive and Social Theories of Motivation and Behavior 4. Expectancy Value Models 5. Operant Conditioning, Self-Regulation, and Social Cognitive Theory 6. Social Influence Theory: The Effects of Social Factors on Health Behavior 7. Diffusion of Innovations Theory Section III. Behavior Change Theories 8. Learning, Teaching, and Counseling 9. Self-Determination Theory and Motivational Interviewing 10. Stage Models 11. Health Communication and Social Marketing 12. Communities and Health Promotion

Understanding the ways in which people save for their retirement is an urgent issue. So much has changed in the last 10 to 15 years, especially in the area of the provision of pensions and retirement income. Around the world, greater and greater responsibility is being allocated to individuals while governments discount their contributions to social security and employers retreat from the provision of supplementary retirement income.
This book explores the behavioral revolution and its implications for understanding financial decision-making and saving for the future. Recognizing the profound implications of this research program, it goes beyond issues of risk aversion, framing, and decision-making to consider how social identity and the resources due to people by virtue of their place in society figure in savings behavior. It gives considerable attention to the context of the environment in which people make financial decisions, arguing that this allows a better understanding of the coexistence of sophistication and naivety apparent in patterns of retirement saving.
Utilizing databases from the UK, the book provides an empirical foundation to its theoretical arguments, demonstrating how an integrated approach to individual financial decision-making is necessary if we are to address the apparent shortfall in many people's planning for the future. The book concludes by setting the agenda for the design, governance, and regulation of pension savings schemes consistent with delivering cost-effective solutions to pension adequacy. In these ways, it sets forth a strategy for rethinking individual behavior as well as the design of retirement income systems.

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a complex and evolving model of treatment that has been developed for and applied to a wide range of mental and physical problems and disorders. CBT's flexibility as a model can also make it a difficult technique to master. To be an effective cognitive behavioural therapist, the practitioner must be able to learn the broad principles related to CBT, and understand how to adapt those principles to his or her varied clients. Intended as a stand-alone companion to the APA video series of the same title, this book brings together three esteemed leaders and trainers in the field to elucidate the key principles, frameworks, and therapeutic processes that are used by effective cognitive behaviour therapists. In engaging language, this slim and approachable volume follows the typical sequence of delivering CBT to a client, with chapters focusing on assessment, case conceptualizations, core beliefs, behavioural strategies, problem-solving strategies, cultural responsiveness, and techniques to address distorted thinking. Featuring illustrative hypothetical cases and discussion of cutting-edge research, this book will give therapists a rich understanding of the various methods, approaches, and ideas that drive modern CBT.

Tax evasion is a complex phenomenon which is influenced not just by economic motives but by psychological factors as well. Economic-psychological research focuses on individual and social representations of taxation as well as decision-making. In this 2007 book, Erich Kirchler assembles research on tax compliance, with a focus on tax evasion, and integrates the findings into a model based on the interaction climate between tax authorities and taxpayers. The interaction climate is defined by citizens' trust in authorities and the power of authorities to control taxpayers effectively; depending on trust and power, either voluntary compliance, enforced compliance or no compliance are likely outcomes. Featuring chapters on the social representations of taxation, decision-making and self-employed income tax behaviour, this book will appeal to researchers in economic psychology, behavioural economics and public administration.

Feelings argues for the counter-intuitive idea that feelings do not cause behavior, but rather follow from behavior, and are, in fact, the way that we know about our own bodily states and behaviors. This point of view, often associated with William James, is called self-perception theory. Self-perception theory can be empirically tested by manipulating bodily states and behaviors in order to see if the corresponding feelings are produced.
In this volume, James D. Laird presents hundreds of studies, all demonstrating that feelings do indeed follow from behavior. Behaviors that have been manipulated include facial expressions of emotion, autonomic arousal, actions, gaze, and postures. The feelings that have been induced include happiness, anger, fear, romantic love, liking, disliking, hunger, and feelings of familiarity. These feelings do not feel like knowledge because they are knowledge-by-acquaintance, such as the knowledge we have of how an apple tastes, rather than verbal, knowledge-by-description, such as the knowledge that apples are red, round, and edible.
Many professional theories of human behavior, as well as common sense, explain actions by an appeal to feelings as causes. Laird argues to the contrary that if feelings are information about behaviors that are already ongoing, feelings cannot be causes and that the whole mechanistic model of human behavior as "caused" in this sense seems mistaken. He proposes an alternative, cybernetic model, involving hierarchically stacked control systems. In this model, feelings provide feedback to the control systems, and in a further elaboration, this model suggests that the stack of control systems matches a similar stack of levelsof organization of the world.
An original contribution to the study of the relationship between feelings and behavior, the volume will be of interest to social, emotional, and cognitive psychologists.

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.

Bill Starbuck has been one of the leading management researchers over several decades. In this book he reflects on a number of challenges associated with management and social science research - the search for a 'behavioral science', the limits of rationality, the unreliability of many research findings, the social shaping of research agendas, cultures and judgements. It is an engaging, chronologically structured account in which he discusses some of his own research projects and various methodological debates. This is a feisty argument from someone who has been fully engaged with all aspects of research - carrying out research programmes, evaluating research, tirelessly questioning the assumptions and claims of social science research, and never avoiding the awkward theoretical or practical challenges that face organizational researchers. Well written, provocative and unusual, this quasi autobiographical account will inform and entertain, and be a valuable guide to current and future research students.

Bridging the gap between human-computer engineering and control engineering, Human Behavior Learning and Transfer delineates how to abstract human action and reaction skills into computational models. The authors include methods for modeling a variety of human action and reaction behaviors and explore processes for evaluating, optimizing, and transferring human skills. They also cover modeling continuous and discontinuous human control strategy and discuss simulation studies and practical real-life situations. The book examines how to model two main aspects of human behavior: reaction skills and action skills. It begins with a discussion of the various topics involved in human reaction skills modeling. The authors apply machine learning techniques and statistical analysis to abstracting models of human reaction control strategy. They contend that such models can be learned sufficiently to emulate complex human control behaviors in the feedback loop. The second half of the book explores issues related to human action skills modeling. The methods presented are based on techniques for reducing the dimensionality of data sets, while preserving as much useful information as possible. The modeling approaches developed are applied in real-life applications including navigation of smart wheel chairs and intelligent surveillance. Written in a consistent, easily approachable style, the book includes in-depth discussions of a broad range of topics. It provides the tools required to formalize human behaviors into algorithmic, machine-coded strategies.

What makes us human? Why do people think, feel, and act as they do? What is the essence of human nature? What is the basic relationship between the individual and society? These questions have fascinated both great thinkers and ordinary humans for centuries. Now, at last, there is a solid basis for answering them, in the form of the accumulated efforts and studies by thousands of psychology researchers. We no longer have to rely on navel-gazing and speculation to understand why people are the way they are - we can instead turn to solid, objective findings. This book, by an eminent social psychologist at the peak of his career, not only summarizes what we know about people - it also offers a coherent, easy-to-understand, through radical, explanation. Turning conventional wisdom on its head, the author argues that culture shaped human evolution. Contrary to theories that depict the individual's relation to society as one of victimization, endless malleability, or just a square peg in a round hole, he proposes that the individual human being is designed by nature to be part of society. Moreover, he argues that we need to briefly set aside the endless study of cultural differences to look at what most cultures have in common - because that holds the key to human nature. Culture is in our genes, although cultural differences may not be. This core theme is further developed by a powerful tour through the main dimensions of human psychology. What do people want? How do people think? How do emotions operate? How do people behave? And how do they interact with each other? The answers are often surprising, and along the way the author explains how human desire, thought, feeling, and action are connected.

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.

Sexual Selection in Primates provides an up-to-date account of all aspects of sexual selection in primates, combining theoretical insights, comprehensive reviews of the primate literature and comparative perspectives from relevant work on other mammals, birds and humans. Topics include sex roles, sexual dimorphism in weapons, ornaments and armaments, sex ratios, sex differences in behaviour and development, mate choice, sexual conflict, sex-specific life history strategies, sperm competition and infanticide. The outcome of the evolutionary struggle between the sexes, the flexibility of roles and the leverage of females are discussed and emphasised throughout. Sexual Selection in Primates is aimed at graduates and researchers in primatology, animal behaviour, evolutionary biology and comparative psychology.

English summary: At the beginning of the 20th Century, Lou Andreas-Salome (1861-1937) met two major protagonists of very different ideologies who were devoted to the study of subjective inner worlds: Sigmund Freud with his new science of psychoanalysis, and Rainer Maria Rilke and his philosophy of an inner sky. Deeply touched by both worlds of thought, Lou Andreas-Salome developed her own synthesis. Unlike Freud, for whom the unconscious was a reservoir for the repressed, and thus potentially pathological, Andreas-Salome saw precisely these internal components as a source of creativity and development. She saw the drive not primarily as something harassing that one was delivered to, but rather as a desire for the Other, as a longing for relationship. Especially because of this, Lou Andreas-Salome saw intrapsychic development processes as induced. Thus, she is to be regarded not only as a student of Freud, but as a thinker who furthered psychoanalytic thought. Her perceptions of relationship, the intuitive, and the spiritual as an expanded dimension of the psyche is today included in binding and psychotherapy research, as well as in the discussion and mentalization processes. German text. German description: Lou Andreas-Salome (1861-1937) begegnete zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts zwei bedeutenden Protagonisten sehr unterschiedlicher Geistesstromungen, die sich der Erforschung von subjektiven Innenwelten widmeten: Sigmund Freud mit seiner neuen Wissenschaft der Psychoanalyse und Rainer Maria Rilke mit seiner Philosophie eines Innerlichkeitskosmos. Von beiden Gedankenwelten zutiefst beruhrt, entwickelte Lou Andreas-Salome eine eigene Synthese. Anders als Freud, fur den das Unbewusste als ein Reservoir fur Verdrangtes und somit potenziell Pathologisches galt, betrachtete Andreas-Salome gerade diese Innenanteile als Quelle fur Kreativitat und Weiterentwicklung. Den Trieb verstand sie nicht als etwas den Menschen primar Bedrangendes, dem er ausgeliefert sei, sondern eher als ein Begehren nach dem Anderen, als eine Sehnsucht nach Beziehung. Gerade hierdurch sah Lou Andreas-Salome intrapsychische Entwicklungsprozesse induziert. Somit ist sie nicht nur als eine Schulerin Freuds, sondern als eine Weiterdenkerin psychoanalytischen Gedankenguts zu betrachten. Ihre Auffassungen von Beziehung und ihr Einfordern des Intuitiven und Spirituellen als einer erweiterten Dimension des Psychischen finden sich heute aufgegriffen in der Bindungs- und Psychotherapieforschung und auch in der Diskussion um Mentalisierungsprozesse.

Over the past two decades, the epidemic of HIV/AIDS has challenged the public health community to fundamentally rethink the framework for preventing infectious diseases. While much progress has been made on the biomedical front in treatments for HIV infection, prevention still relies on behaviour change. This book documents and explains the remarkable breakthroughs in behavioural research design that have emerged to confront this new challenge: the study of partnership networks. Traditionally, public health research focused on the "knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP)" of individuals, an approach designed for understanding health-related behaviour like seat-belt wearing and cigarette smoking. For HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, however, there are at least two people involved in transmission. This may not seem like a big difference, but in fact it changes everything. First, it means that your risk depends on your partners - and on their partners, and their partners: it depends on your position in the network of partnerships. Consider, for example, the rise of infections among monogamous women. Second, it means that individuals are not free to simply change their behaviour - condom use, or abstinence, needs to be negotiated with a partner. both the epidemiology of risk and constraints to behaviour are therefore a function of the partnership network. And our ability to design effective prevention strategies depends on our ability to measure and summarize that network. Using the traditional research designs, you would not see this network at all - you would only see the unconnected nodes. They key to solving this problem lies in Network Analysis, before now a relatively obscure subfield in Sociology. For empirical studies of networks to become feasible, however, many problems had to be solved. This book documents the rapid progress that has been made. It brings together eight pioneering studies that have sought to map the networks that spread infection around the world. Each chapter reviews the questions that drove the study, the changes in methodology that were needed to implement the network survey, the mistakes and successes encountered, and the central findings that the network design made possible. An introduction provides an overview of network survey design, a glossary provides a summary of network terminology, and example questionnaires from each study provide a template for further research. This is a unique and valuable resource for the international public health research community.

Altruistically Inclined? examines the implications of recent research in the natural sciences for two important social scientific approaches to individual behavior: the economic/rational choice approach and the sociological/anthropological. It considers jointly two controversial and related ideas: the operation of group selection within early human evolutionary processes and the likelihood of modularity--domain-specific adaptations in our cognitive mechanisms and behavioral predispositions. Experimental research shows that people will often cooperate in one-shot prisoner's dilemma (PD) games and reject positive offers in ultimatum games, contradicting commonly accepted notions of rationality. Upon first appearance, predispositions to behave in this fashion could not have been favored by natural selection operating only at the level of the individual organism. Emphasizing universal and variable features of human culture, developing research on how the brain functions, and refinements of thinking about levels of selection in evolutionary processes, Alexander J. Field argues that humans are born with the rudiments of a PD solution module--and differentially prepared to learn norms supportive of it. His emphasis on failure to harm, as opposed to the provision of affirmative assistance, as the empirically dominant form of altruistic behavior is also novel. The point of departure and principal point of reference is economics. But Altruistically Inclined? will interest a broad range of scholars in the social and behavioral sciences, natural scientists concerned with the implications of research and debates within their fields for the conduct of work elsewhere, and educated lay readers curious about essential features of human nature. Alexander J. Field is the Michel and Mary Orradre Professor of Economics at Santa Clara University.

This volume brings together contributions to the burgeoning research area of behavioural economics from a number of well-known international scholars in the field. Topics covered include 'irrational' conducts; imperfect self-knowledge; imperfect memory; time and utility; and experimental practices in psychology, economics, and finance. The book will provide a point of entry to anyone wishing to investigate the intellectual terrain between economics and psychology.

A collection of carefully selected contributions to behavioral economics from some of the leading international scholars in the field. Designed to fully complement Volume One, topics covered include preferences, behavioral game theory, motivated mental states and emotions and decision making.

This authoritative book is a brilliant resource for teachers, social workers, health visitors, family support in fact, anyone working with children. It highlights the importance of helping parents tackle any concerns early on in their child's development and is a guide to dealing with typical problems of childhood and adolescence. Written in a clear, jargon-free style, the resource includes background material and group activities for many sessions. Content includes: thoughts and values about children and family life; influences of their own childhood on parenting style and relationships; what sort of parent are they; communicating with the family; family structure; strengthening family relationships and developing resilience.

The concept of "psychological tools" is a cornerstone of L. S. Vygotsky's sociocultural theory of cognitive development. Psychological tools are the symbolic cultural artifacts--signs, symbols, texts, formulae, and most fundamentally, language--that enable us to master psychological functions like memory, perception, and attention in ways appropriate to our cultures. In this lucid book, Alex Kozulin argues that the concept offers a useful way to analyze cross-cultural differences in thought and to develop practical strategies for educating immigrant children from widely different cultures.

Kozulin begins by offering an overview of Vygotsky's theory, which argues that consciousness arises from communication as civilization transforms "natural" psychological functions into "cultural" ones. He also compares sociocultural theory to other innovative approaches to learning, cognitive education in particular. And in a vivid case study, the author describes his work with recent Ethiopian immigrants to Israel, whose traditional modes of learning were oral and imitative, and who consequently proved to be quick at learning conversational Hebrew, but who struggled with the reading, writing, and formal problem solving required by a Western classroom. Last, Kozulin develops Vygotsky's concept of psychological tools to promote literature as a useful tool in cognitive development.

With its explication of Vygotsky's theory, its case study of sociocultural pedagogy, and its suggested use of literary text for cognitive development, "Psychological Tools" will be of considerable interest to research psychologists and educators alike.

Ithiel de Sola Pool was a distinguished scholar of the political process, and one of the most original thinkers in the development of an integrated social science. This volume focuses upon his contributions to the development of research methods that deepen our understanding of human behavior.

The book is divided into five parts treating the analysis of communications, computer simulation, forecasting, network theory, and the social sciences in political contexts. The first part considers the problems and possibilities of analysis raised by the unprecedented quantity of data made available by widespread and improved communications technology; what should be counted and how should inferences be made. Part two explores computer simulation in the study of presidential election patterns and how it can provide in-depth analyses of crisis situations in history. Part three focuses on strategies for predicting the future of international politics and methods to forecast the impacts of new communications technologies, while part four offers a rigorous analysis of domestic and global contact networks and the so-called "small world" phenomenon. Part five is concerned with external challenges to the use of social science to create more humane politics, including the question of value neutrality, ideology, "deconstructive" critical theory, and threats by government to the health of universities. In a concluding essay Lloyd Etheredge draws upon Pool's work to discuss several new ways in which the methods treated in this volume can be applied to contemporary social change.