Providing an invaluable resource for scholars and researchers, this book investigates positive psychology and relationships theory and research across a range of settings and life stages-intimate, work, educational, senior/retirement, and in the context of diversity. Nearly universally, relationships are a key source of what we all seek in life: happiness, fulfillment, and well-being. The experts who contributed to this novel volume apply the framework of positive psychology to the findings of relationships research across a variety of practical contexts. What actions create and sustain respectful, caring, joyous, stimulating, and loving relationships? How do people rich in friendship, intimacy, and interpersonal skills think and behave? How do they unconsciously cultivate positive relationships? This book brings together authoritative reviews, cutting-edge research, and thoughtful scholarship that serve to answer these questions and document the benefit of positive relationships in a variety of settings and across the human life span. Following a comprehensive introduction, the book addresses positive intimate relationships, positive relationships at work, positive relationships during different stages of life (in youth, in adolescence, and among older adults), and positive relationships intersecting with diversity. The chapters underscore the simple concept that relationships are central to what makes life worth living and are fundamental to well-being across all life domains as they play out at home, in school, at work, in retirement homes, and in the community at large. Explores recent relationships research in the most important life domains and life stages-in romance and at work, during youth and in old age, and in contexts of diversity Brings together contributions from renowned leaders and prolific thinkers in positive relationships Presents science-based information that will be useful to scholars and students as well as general readers

This book addresses important current and historical topics in astrobiology and the search for life beyond Earth, including the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The first section covers the plurality of worlds debate from antiquity through the nineteenth century, while section two covers the extraterrestrial life debate from the twentieth century to the present. The final section examines the societal impact of discovering life beyond Earth, including both cultural and religious dimensions. Throughout the book, authors draw links between their own chapters and those of other contributors, emphasizing the interconnections between the various strands of the history and societal impact of the search for extraterrestrial life. The chapters are all written by internationally recognized experts and are carefully edited by Douglas Vakoch, professor of clinical psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies and Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute. This interdisciplinary book will benefit everybody trying to understand the meaning of astrobiology and SETI for our human society.

The concepts of psychological literacy and the psychologically literate citizen promise to invigorate a new global approach to psychology education. They pose a basic question: What attributes and capabilities should undergraduate psychology majors acquire? Many psychological organizations have defined psychological literacy by guidelines and lists of student learning outcomes, but although psychology educators across the globe have been working towards helping students to acquire these attributes over the past 50 years, educators have only recently explicitly delineated attributes and learning outcomes, and sought to develop appropriate learning, teaching, and assessment strategies, including whole program approaches.
The contributors to this volume argue that psychological literacy is the most important outcome of an undergraduate psychology education and that psychologically literate citizens use their knowledge of psychology to problem-solve in ethical and socially responsible ways that directly benefit their communities. In this book, a rich variety of international perspectives contribute to the development of the two key concepts of psychological literacy and the psychologically literate citizen. Authors provide practical guidance for classroom psychology educators, as well as curriculum developers and reviewers. Ultimately, they make the case for a paradigm shift in psychology education.

This book is the outcome of a joint collaboration between East China Normal University and the University of Luxembourg, initiated by the Center of Ideas for the Basic Education of the Future (IBEF), and focuses on kindergartens in China from a cultural psychology perspective. By coupling young scholars from diverse cultural backgrounds as research tandems, this book uses an innovative methodological method to reveal a deeply immersing research perspective of the often complicated issues in the Chinese social reality, where long historical tradition and strong motivation for a "modernized" future are fused together and continuously evolve itself into a vibrant and intricate landscape. Meanings and values consciously or unconsciously promoted and conducted in the kindergarten are semiotic devices and they mediate children's and educator's daily behaviours and activities, which are constantly navigating among different social institutions and crossing the border of kindergarten. The book discusses the process of children's socialization in the kindergarten from different angles such as cultural objects, moral education, conflict negotiation, children's drawing analysis and the role of Lego in numeracy development. It also provides an overview of basic educational needs in Chinese kindergartens as well as three commentaries to provide background information and to add a reflective angle for the readers. By reading the book, readers will hopefully go through a constantly transforming process between familiarizing and de-familiarizing along with the research tandem and develop their own understanding of the complex landscape of the Chinese kindergarten and its children as developing subjects constantly living and transcending the context.

One of the most distinguished living social philosophers, Margaret Gilbert develops and extends her application of plural subject theory of human sociality, first introduced in her earlier works On Social Facts and Living Together. Sociality and Responsibility presents an extended discussion of her proposal that joint commitments inherently involve obligations and rights, proposing, in effect, a new theory of obligations and rights. In addition, it demonstrates the extensive range and fruitfulness of plural subject theory by presenting accounts of social rules, scientific change, political obligation, collective remorse, collective guilt, shared intention and an important class of rights and obligations.

Modern men the world over are becoming increasingly fascinated with their image, spending more of their disposable income on beautification products and services. This book examines 'metrosexuality', highlighting the negotiation and construction of masculinities and sexualities in the twenty-first century.

This publication was made possible by the Rector's Fund in support of publications and books, Bar Ilan University, Israel. The Andragogic Learning Center examines an eight-year study at the Bar Ilan School of Social Work, Israel (1989-1997). The study tested the efficacy of an innovative community-based teaching approach, combining field and class instruction. The efficacy of interaction between teaching and learning style in learning process and context was also examined. More than 400 B.S.W. students participated, divided each year into an experimental group of twelve students learning all three social work methods, and two control groups learning two social work methods. A number of hypotheses were tested, utilizing a detailed before/after questionnaire, which included a learning style questionnaire (TABS) and Middleman's Study Guide for ACSW Certification Exam. Role, Learning, and Andragogy Theories provided a framework for interpreting and understanding the process and results.

social neuroscience, social psychology, developmental, psychology, social cognition, vision research and clinical psychology. social neuroscience, social psychology, developmental, psychology, sThis comprehensive volume reviews current developments in our evolving knowledge of social attention and its processes. In doing so, it examines the brain-behavioral bases of social attention from diverse complementary fields, including disordered and healthy adult findings, infant and developmental studies and social neuroscience. The studies explored in this volume reflect the ongoing shift toward naturalistic, context-based experiments and integrative scientific approaches, and away from relying solely on standardized tasks in laboratory settings. In keeping with this proactive perspective, the authors pose critical questions throughout the book to point readers toward the potential next wave of research developments and interventions.Included in the coverage: The development of social attention in human infants. Neural bases for social attention in healthy humans. Social attention, social presence, and the dual function of gaze. Early departures from normative processes of social engagement in infants with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Aberrant social attention and its underlying neural correlates in adults with ASD. The future of social attention research. The Many Faces of Social Attention will interest researchers in social neuroscience, social psychology, developmental psychology, social cognition, visual attention and cognition, and clinical psychology, and inspire new advances in this increasingly important area of study. ocial cognition, vision research and clinical psychology.

In recent years, there has been an increase in new forms of employment. Namely, thanks to the use of platforms in business and the emergence of the ""gig economy"", there are gradual changes in this domain. These include part-time, temporary, informal, and unpaid family work. This type of employment can be defined as any job, but only of short or uncertain duration. The experiences gained by the countries of the European Union, as well as the countries of the Western Balkans from the COVID-19 crisis, during which they used new technologies in work, should in the future make working systems even more adapted to the digital age. At last, whether working from home is the product of one's own choice or is the result of a pandemic or other environmental shock, the change in the way work is done is real and governments must understand the implications and take steps to position their economies accordingly.

Exploring Twins presents an analysis of twinship considered as a specifically social phenomenon. Drawing upon a wide range of interdisciplinary, historical and cross-cultural data, Dr Stewart argues that in both traditional and modern societies, twinship represents a recurrent anomaly which calls into question the assumptions around which different types of society are organized. Part One identifies and analyses the fascinating range of cultural and disciplinary approaches to the interpretation of twinship, while Part Two considers the possibilities for a distinctively social analysis of twinship.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of how communities can leverage their social capital to improve overall quality of life for citizens. In addition, it offers detailed guidance on the design, implementation, and evaluation of social capital initiatives. It defines critical concepts of social capital, its decline in recent years, and the potential for rebuilding it through progressive social policy initiatives. Chapters present an innovative social policy template, Serve Here, for improving Americans' collective quality of life, starting with young adults. Serve Here sets out a comprehensive, sustainable service learning plan aimed at increasing quality higher education for young adults, reducing college debt, and enhancing long-term civic participation and community building. The book offer guidelines for developing tailored solutions to ensure greater parity of social capital to regional, demographic, and other marginalized populations. Featured topics include: The civic value of social capital. The economics of social capital in communities. Building social capital across communities by leveraging personal relationships. Social capital and returning military veterans. Millennials and social capital. Teaching the social entrepreneurs of tomorrow. Social Capital and Community Well-Being: The Serve Here Initiative is a valuable resource for clinicians and practitioners as well as researchers and graduate students in community psychology, social work, education, and healthcare policy.

Dr. David Scharff explores the role of sexuality in human relationships by combining his extensive experience in individual, marital, family, and sex therapy with theoretical contributions from object relations theory and child development.

This significant book explains why family psychology-an entirely different field from family therapy-provides a cutting-edge description of human behavior in context and as such represents the wave of the future in psychology. Family Psychology: Theory, Research, and Practice is the definitive introductory text on family psychology, a fast-growing specialty and increasingly dominant voice for the field in the 21st century. Authors John W. Thoburn, PhD, ABPP, and Tom Sexton, PhD, ABPP, have created the first introductory book focused on this specialty, laying the groundwork that students as well as developing therapists can use to understand the basics of family psychology. This single-volume book makes the history and development of family psychology relevant to contemporary research and practice, explaining how the ecosystemic approach of family psychology provides a cutting-edge description of human behavior in context and as such is the most promising field in psychology. It addresses the history, research, theory, treatments, diagnoses, and assessment of family psychology; ethics and supervision along with related areas such as systems sex therapy; family forensic psychology; international family psychology; and systems consultation, providing a comprehensive overview of the career and practice of family psychology. Family Psychology: Theory, Research, and Practice also identifies how it differs from the individualistic therapy of traditional psychology and how it differs from the field of marriage and family therapy. Chapters include vignettes from family sessions that effectively illustrate the issues being addressed and examine the significance of gender, culture, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Supplies a comprehensive treatise on the value of family psychology to the field of psychology as a whole Provides a historical overview of family psychology and makes the important differentiation between family psychology and marriage and family therapy Examines the relationship between research and practice, cure and care, and the science and art of family psychology Documents how family psychology strives to view persons in context of their situation and the relationships within the family

This book proposes new perspectives on relational wellness and the contemporary family-combining a psychoanalytic overview with scientific research about the burgeoning popularity of divorce, the increase in "stepfamilies," and the use of social networks as well as other technologies. In this day and age, psychoanalysis has become increasingly interested in hyper-modern scenarios; for example, social networks and apps provide matching algorithms, which allow users to connect with people of similar interests. These networks have become one of the places where dissatisfied partners seek "more satisfactory situations." In the United Kingdom, cohabitation lasts for up to two years, on average, and 40% of marriages end in divorce. In the United States, the percentage rises: it has now reached 50%. Today the value of temporariness, in which everything is fragmented, is exalted. On the other hand, is it wrong to deny the natural ebb and flow of human feeling?

Human nature is enigmatic. Are we cruel, selfish creatures or good merciful Samaritans? This book takes you on a journey into the complexities of human mind and kind, from altruism, sharing, and large-scale cooperation, to cheating, distrust, and warfare. What are the building blocks of morality and sociality? Featuring contributions from leading researchers, such as Christophe Boesch, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, Azar Gat, Dennis Krebs, Ara Norenzayan, and Frans B. M. de Waal, this fascinating interdisciplinary reader draws on evolutionary and comparative perspectives, and is essential reading for any students interested in the unique characteristics that define humanity and society.

The past several decades of rapid organizational change and global economic activity beseech a fresh understanding of work conditions and mental health across all nations and regions. This volume addresses psychosocial factors at work, legislation, frameworks, research innovations and common perceptions in the Asia Pacific countries. It presents new research on psychosocial factors at work from an Asia Pacific perspective, introducing exciting new research on workaholism, bullying, work-life balance and conflict, work demands classifications, and psychosocial safety climate. Insights regarding workplace psychosocial factors, worker health and well-being have evolved mainly within North American and European cultural contexts and developed industrial countries. This state of the art account of knowledge development in the Asia Pacific region will stimulate new insights for researchers and policy makers to improve the quality of workers' lives worldwide. "This very informative book highlights the significance and uniqueness of job stress problems encountered by workers of different countries in the Asia Pacific region. Occupational health researchers all around the world will find this book a great inspiration for future research." Yawen Cheng, ScD, Institute of Health Policy and Management, Taiwan "Initiatives and interventions reported from collaborative projects present useful hints for filling gaps in policies and practices for managing psychosocial risk factors in diverse work-life situations in the Asia Pacific region". Dr. Kazutaka Kogi, President, International Commission of Occupational Health

This is an innovative study of 300 delinquent boys in a medium security institution and after their release. This longitudinal field experiment shows how peers affect the rehabilitation of different group members, how staff use those influences to lead to prosocial change after release from the institution, and how different behavior, values, and feelings improved. This well-designed research has broad implications for use in graduate courses in sociology, criminology and penology, social and personality psychology, and group dynamics. The book is equally useful to administrators and policymakers dealing with delinquents and individuals with behavior problems. The field experiment was devised with both practical and theoretical purposes in mind, to develop corrective programs for delinquent youth and to test social science hypotheses in the context of a longitudinal experimental research design. The study presents a typology of delinquent boys that guides differential treatment, focuses on peer group and staff influences, and identifies factors in residential treatment and in the open community that facilitate prosocial reentry. The findings test hypotheses about group and staff impact on anti-social behavior within the institution and after release.

"Scott Harms Rose takes up questions about intimacy among gay men, which even in these post-postmodern times is not a well-traveled subject ... The exploration of the subjects' sense of masculinity, and of their relationships with their fathers and with romantic partners in adulthood, sheds light on the interplay of identity and relationship as it plays out for gay men in a heterosexist environment ... As truly good clinical and theoretical work usually does, it also calls to mind the various experiences of gender and intimate relations across the spectrums of orientation, desire, identification, and biological sex." - Dr. Paul E. Lynch, Instructor in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School and Boston University School of Medicine
"Scott Harms Rose has given us a deeply moving account of the ways in which inner experience and outer realities shape the emergence of self and the course of relational life in gay men. His case studies are carefully informed by his experience as a clinician as well as a rich appreciation of the object relations tradition and empirical study in contemporary psychoanalysis. His renderings of persons and lives deepen our understanding of vulnerabilities across the course of development and enlarge our appreciation of essential concerns in the therapeutic endeavor. This work belongs to that rare category of book that promises to engage theoreticians, researchers, and psychotherapists alike." - William Borden, Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Service Administration and Lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Chicago
"If you want to gain a sense of what it is like to read this book, think of Eugene O'Neill's 'Long Days Journey Into Night' or Miller's 'Death of a Salesman'. For Rose's case studies--the core of this deeply moving study of the life of homosexual men--have a painful accuracy to them. Rose's work is ostensibly a study of homosexuality and his review of the literature is thorough and his discussion of his findings clinically illuminating. It is also a book about fathers and sons and in this respect it helps us to see some homosexualities in a universal context. A fine book." - Christopher Bollas, author of The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known, Cracking Up, and Being a Character.

The Psy complex governs us all by inscribing, diagnosing and interfering in our lives. This volume takes historical, sociological and psychological perspectives in exploring the complicity of patients, professions and governments with Psy and attempts by all three to constrain the industry's activities.

This first book-length study of the socialisation of MPs uses questionnaire data gathered over two Parliaments (1992-97 and 1997-2001) to find out how MPs learn about, and what their attitudes are towards, their role as a Member of Parliament. It analyzes their participation in debates, the use of Parliamentary Questions and committee work.

This evidence-rich collection takes on the broad diversity of traumatic stress, in both its causes and outcomes, as well as the wide variety of resources available for recovery. Its accessible coverage shows varied presentations of post-traumatic stress affected by individual, family, and group contexts, including age, previous trauma exposure, and presence or lack of social resources, as well as long-term psychological, physical, and social consequences. Contributors focus on a range of traumatic experiences, from environmental disasters (wildfires, Hurricane Katrina) to the Holocaust, from ambiguous loss to war captivity. And the book's final section, "Healing after Trauma," spotlights resilience, forgiveness, religion, and spirituality, using concepts from positive psychology. Included among the topics: The Great East Japan earthquake: tsunami and nuclear disaster. Posttraumatic stress in the aftermath of mass shootings. Psychosocial consequences: appraisal, adaptation, and bereavement after trauma. Loss, chaos, survival and despair: the storm after the storms. Aging with trauma across the lifetime and experiencing trauma in old age. On bereavement and grief: a therapeutic approach to healing. Psychologists, social workers, researchers studying trauma and resilience, and mental health professionals across disciplines will welcome Traumatic Stress and Long-Term Recovery as a profound source of insight into stress and loss, coping and healing.