Why do boys instinctively bullsh*t more than girls? How do economic recessions shape a generation's confidence? Can we have too much confidence and, if so, what are the consequences?

Imagine we could discover something that could make us richer, healthier, longer-living, smarter, kinder, happier, more motivated and more innovative. Ridiculous, you might say... What is this elixir? Confidence. If you have it, it can empower you to reach heights you never thought possible. But if you don't, it can have a devastating effect on your future.

Confidence lies at the core of what makes things happen. Exploring the science and neuroscience behind confidence that has emerged over the last decade, clinical psychologist and neuroscientist Professor Ian Robertson tells us how confidence plays out in our minds, our brains and indeed our bodies. He explains where it comes from and how it spreads - with extraordinary economic and political consequences. And why it's not necessarily something you are born with, but something that can be learned.

Our ability to map and intervene in the structure of the human brain is proceeding at a very quick rate. Advances in psychiatry, neurology, and neurosurgery have given us fresh insights into the neurobiological basis of human thought and behavior. Technologies like MRI and PET scans can detect early signs of psychiatric disorders before they manifest symptoms. Electrical and magnetic stimulation of the brain can non-invasively relieve symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression and other conditions resistant to treatment, while implanting neuro-electrodes can help patients with Parkinsons and other motor control-related diseases. New drugs can help regenerate neuronal connections otherwise disrupted by schizophrenia and similar diseases.
All these procedures and drugs alter the neural correlates of our mind and raise fascinating and important ethical questions about their benefits and harms. They are, in a sense, among the most profound bioethical questions we face, since these techniques can touch on the deepest aspects of the human mind: free will; personal identity; the self; and the soul. This is the first single-author book on what has come to be known as neuroethics. Walter Glannon uses a philosophical framework that is fully informed by cutting edge neuroscience as well as contemporary legal cases such as Terri Schiavo, to offer readers an introduction to this fascinating topic. He starts by describing the state of the art in neuroscientific research and treatment, and gives the reader an up-to-date picture of the brain. Glannon then looks at the ethical implications of various kinds of treatments, such as: whether or not brain imaging will end up changing our viewson free will and moral responsibility; whether patients should always be told that they are at future risk for neurological diseases; if erasing unconscious emotional memories implicated in depression can go too far; if forcing behavior-modifying drugs or surgery on violent offenders can ever be justified; the implications of drugs that enhance cognitive abilities; and how to define brain death and the criteria for the withdrawal of life-support. While not exhaustive, Glannons work addresses a wide range of fascinating issues and his pathbreaking work should appeal to philosophers, psychiatrists, neurologists, neurosurgeons, radiologists, psychologists, and bioethicists.

Since antiquity, people have searched for a way to understand the colors we see--what they are, how many there are, and how they can be systematically identified and arranged in some kind of order. How to order colors is not merely a philosophical question, it also has many practical applications in art, design, and commerce. Our intense interest in color and its myriad practical applications have led people throughout history to develop many systems to characterize and order it. The number of color order systems developed throughout history is unknown but ranges in the hundreds. Many are no longer used, but continue to be of historical interest. Despite wrong turns and slow progress, our understanding of color and its order has improved steadily. Although full understanding continues to elude us, it seems clear that it will ultimately come from research in neurobiology, perception and consciousness. Color Ordered is a comprehensive, in-depth compendium of over 170 systems, dating from antiquity to the present. In it, Rolf Kuehni and Andreas Schwarz present a history and categorization of color systems, describe each one using original figures and schematic drawings, and provide a broad review of the underlying theory. Included are a brief overview of color vision and a synthesis of the various systems. This volume is a unique and valuable resource for researchers in color vision, and visual perception, as well as for neuroscientists, art historians, artists, and designers.

For thousands of years, one scientific puzzle has fascinated and perplexed the greatest philosophers, mathematicians, physicists, and psychologists - why do the moon and sun appear so much larger on the horizon than when high up in the sky? Now, two leading psychologists have provided a compelling account of this fascinating illusion. Taking us through the history, the characters involved, the attempts made to explain the illusion, through to modern day studies of visual perception, the book is the most comprehensive account of this puzzle so far. This is a work which will remain, for some time to come, the definitive book on a mystery that has fascinated and tested the greatest minds throughout the ages. Accessibly written, it will appeal to readers of popular science, along with those within the disciplines of psychology, mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy, from undergraduate upwards.

Consciousness has many elements, from sensory experiences such as vision, audition, and bodily sensation, to nonsensory aspects such as volition, emotion, memory, and thought. The apparent unity of these elements is striking; all are presented to us as experiences of a single subject, and all seem to be contained within a unified field of experience. But this apparent unity raises many questions. How do diverse systems in the brain co-operate to produce a unified experience? Are there conditions under which this unity breaks down? Is conscious experience really unified at all?

In recent years, these questions have been addressed by researchers in many fields, including, neurophysiologists and computational modellers, neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, and philosophy. With chapters from some of the leading thinkers on consciousness, this is a thought-provoking book that attempts to answer some of the big questions.

Contributors include - Chris Frith, David Chalmers, Guilio Tononi, Anne Treisman, Andrew Young, Sydney Shoemaker, Glyn Humphreys, Rodney Cotterill, Zoltan Dienes, Susan Hurley, Randall O'Reilly, Andreas Engel, Pierre Perruchet, Catherine Tallon-Baudry, and Francisco Varela.

Are people rational? This question was central to Greek thought; and has been at the heart of psychology and philosophy for millennia. This book provides a radical and controversial reappraisal of conventional wisdom in the psychology of reasoning, proposing that the Western conception of the mind as a logical system is flawed at the very outset. It argues that cognition should be understood in terms of probability theory, the calculus of uncertain reasoning, rather than in terms of logic, the calculus of certain reasoning.

Eye movements are a vital part of our interaction with the world. They play a pivotal role in perception, cognition, and education. Research in this field is now proceeding at a considerable pace and casting new light on how the eyes move and what information we can derive during the frequent and brief periods of fixation. However, the origins of this work are less well known, even though much of our knowledge was derived from this research with far more primitive equipment. This book is unique in tracing the history of eye movement research. It shows how great strides were made in this area before modern recording devices were available, especially in the measurement of nystagmus. When photographic techniques were adapted to measure discontinuous eye movements, from about 1900, many of the issues that are now basic to modern research were then investigated. One of the earliest cognitive tasks examined was reading, and it remains in the vanguard of contemporary research. Modern researchers in this field will be astonished at the subtleties of these early experimental studies and the ingenuity of interpretations that were advanced one and even two centuries ago. Though physicians often carried out the original eye movement research, later on it was pursued by psychologists - it is within contemporary neuroscience that we find these two strands reunited. Anyone interested in the origins of psychology and neuroscience will find much to stimulate and surprise them in this valuable new work.

Advances in Motivation Science, Volume Nine, the latest release in Elsevier's serial on the topic of motivation science, contains interesting articles that cover topics such as The Relentless Pursuit of Acceptance and Belonging, Reward uncertainty and the aversion-attraction dilemma, Neurobiological Mechanisms of Selectivity in Motivated Memory, Accounting for long-term motivation and sustained motivated learning, Interest: A Unique Affective and Cognitive Motivational Variable That Develops, and Neural systems for aversively motivated behavior, Neural systems for aversively motivated behavior, and more.

Advances in Motivation Science, Volume Eight, the latest release in Elsevier's serial on the topic of motivation science, contains interesting articles that cover topics such as The functional architecture of human motivation: Personality systems interactions theory, Teacher motivational messages used prior to examinations: What are they, how are they evaluated, and what are their educational outcomes?, Understanding peer relationships during childhood and adolescence through the lens of social motivation, Self-efficacy and human motivation, The creation and curation of all things worthy: Inspiration as vital force in persons and cultures, and Motivational decision-making in achievement settings: A competence-in-context approach.

The Advances in Experimental Social Psychology series is the premier outlet for reviews of mature, high-impact research programs in social psychology. Contributions to the series provide defining pieces of established research programs, reviewing and integrating thematically related findings by individual scholars or research groups. Topics discussed in Volume 64 include Moral Inference, Coalitional Cognition, Motivated Perception and Self-Regulation, Morality in Impression Development, and Self-Uncertainty and Group Identification.

The Advances in Experimental Social Psychology series is the premier outlet for reviews of mature, high-impact research programs in social psychology. Contributions to the series provide defining pieces of established research programs, reviewing and integrating thematically related findings by individual scholars or research groups. Topics discussed in Volume 62 include Racial Bias in Weapon Identification and Decisions to Shoot, Evolution of Pride and Social Hierarchy, Valence Asymmetries in Information Processing, Goal Congruity and Social Structure, and Affordance Management and Social Stereotypes.

This book presents and discusses seven contemporary theoretical approaches to behavior analysis that build upon the foundations laid by B.F. Skinner's radical behaviorism and renew its legacy. These contemporary approaches show that behaviorism is not a monolithic or static intellectual tradition, but a dynamic movement, which changes and adapts in face of new questions, issues, and perspectives. The death of behaviorism has been proclaimed since its early days - a "premature" assessment, to say the least - but this volume shows that behaviorism is alive and kicking, even thirty years after its main proponent passed away. This volume contains seven sections, each one dedicated to a particular variation of contemporary behaviorism: Howard Rachlin's teleological behaviorism, William Baum's molar behaviorism and multiscale behavior analysis, John Staddon's theoretical behaviorism, John Donahoe's biological behaviorism, Gordon Foxall's intentional behaviorism, Steven Hayes' contextual behaviorism or contextual behavioral science, and Emilio Ribes-Inesta's field-theory behaviorism. Each section contains three chapters: the first one written by the original proponent of each of these forms of behaviorism, the second one written by a commentator, and the third one written by the proponent, replying to the commentator. Contemporary Behaviorisms in Debate will be a valuable tool to behavior analysts and psychologists in general by providing an introduction to contemporary forms of behaviorism and promoting debates about the main philosophical issues faced by the field of behavior analysis today- issues that can directly influence future epistemological variations in the selection process of "behaviorisms." By doing so the book is directed not only to the present, but, more importantly, toward the future of the field.

Psychology is of interest to academics from many fields, as well as to the thousands of academic and clinical psychologists and general public who can't help but be interested in learning more about why humans think and behave as they do. This award-winning twelve-volume reference covers every aspect of the ever-fascinating discipline of psychology and represents the most current knowledge in the field. This ten-year revision now covers discoveries based in neuroscience, clinical psychology's new interest in evidence-based practice and mindfulness, and new findings in social, developmental, and forensic psychology.

This book integrates findings from across domains in performance psychology to focus on core research on what influences peak and non-peak performance. The book explores basic and applied research identifying cognition-action interactions, perception-cognition interactions, emotion-cognition interactions, and perception-action interactions. The book explores performance in sports, music, and the arts both for individuals and teams/groups, looking at the influence of cognition, perception, personality, motivation and drive, attention, stress, coaching, and age. This comprehensive work includes contributions from the US, UK, Canada, Germany, and Australia.