Harvard University Press - PSYCHOLOGY

Experiments in Ethics

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Kwame Anthony Appiah
Appiah explores how the new empirical moral psychology relates to the age-old project of philosophical ethics. In this study, he urges that the relation between empirical research and morality, now so often antagonistic, should be seen in terms of dialogue, not contest. And he shows how experimental philosophy, far from being something new, is actually as old as philosophy itself.
Paperback October 2009

Young Minds in Social Worlds

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Katherine Nelson
Katherine Nelson re-centers developmental psychology with a revived emphasis on development and change, rather than foundations and continuity. Nelson argues that a child's entrance into the community of minds is a gradual process with enormous consequences for child development, and the adults that they become.
Paperback October 2009

Police Interrogation and American Justice

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Richard A. Leo
"Read him his rights." We all recognize this line from cop dramas. But what happens afterward? In this book, Leo sheds light on a little-known corner of our criminal justice system--the police interrogation. An important study of the criminal justice system, this book provides interesting answers and raises some unsettling questions.
Paperback September 2009

Addiction: A Disorder of Choice

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Gene M. Heyman
In a book sure to inspire controversy, Gene Heyman argues that conventional wisdom about addiction—that it is a disease, a compulsion beyond conscious control—is wrong. At the heart of Heyman’s analysis is a startling view of choice and motivation that applies to all choices, not just the choice to use drugs. Heyman’s analysis of well-established but frequently ignored research leads to unexpected insights into how we make choices—from obesity to McMansionization—all rooted in our deep-seated tendency to consume too much of whatever we like best.
Hardcover June 2009

The Long Shadow of Temperament

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jerome Kagan
Nancy Snidman
We have seen these children--the shy and the sociable, the cautious and the daring--and wondered what makes one avoid new experience and another avidly pursue it. At the crux of the issue is the study that Jerome Kagan and his colleagues have been conducting for more than two decades. Kagan and Nancy Snidman summarize the results of this unique inquiry into human temperaments, one of the best-known longitudinal studies in developmental psychology. These results reveal how deeply certain fundamental temperamental biases can be preserved over development.
Paperback June 2009

Healing Spaces

Sun, 31 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Esther M. Sternberg
If the distractions and distortions around you, the jarring colors and sounds, could shake up the healing chemistry of your mind, might your surroundings also have the power to heal you? This is the question Esther Sternberg explores in Healing Spaces, a look at the marvelously rich nexus of mind and body, perception and place. The book shows how a Disney theme park or a Frank Gehry concert hall, a labyrinth or a garden can trigger or reduce stress, induce anxiety or instill peace.
Hardcover May 2009

Mothers and Others

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
Mothers and Others finds the key in the primatologically unique length of human childhood. Renowned anthropologist Sarah Hrdy argues that if human babies were to survive in a world of scarce resources, they would need to be cared for, not only by their mothers but also by siblings, aunts, fathers, friends—and, with any luck, grandmothers. Out of this complicated and contingent form of childrearing, Hrdy argues, came the human capacity for understanding others. In essence, mothers and others teach us who will care, and who will not.
Hardcover April 2009

Sexual Fluidity

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Lisa M. Diamond
Is love "blind" when it comes to gender? For women, it just might be. This original book offers a radical new understanding of the context-dependent nature of female sexuality. Diamond argues that for some women, love and desire are not rigidly heterosexual or homosexual but fluid, changing as women move through the stages of life, various social groups, and, most important, different love relationships.
Paperback April 2009

Child Soldiers

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Michael Wessells
Compelling and humane, this book reveals the lives of the 300,000 child soldiers around the world, challenging stereotypes of them as predators or a lost generation. Based mainly on participatory research and interviews with hundreds of former child soldiers worldwide, Wessells allows these ex-soldiers to speak for themselves. A passionate call for action, Child Soldiers pushes readers to go beyond the horror stories to develop local and global strategies to stop this theft of childhood.
Paperback March 2009

The Physiology of Truth

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Jean-Pierre Changeux
Translated by M. B. DeBevoise
In this wide-ranging book, one of the boldest thinkers in modern neuroscience confronts an ancient philosophical problem: can we know the world as it really is? Drawing on provocative new findings about the psychophysiology of perception and judgment in both human and nonhuman primates, and also on the cultural history of science, Jean-Pierre Changeux makes a powerful case for the reality of scientific progress and argues that it forms the basis for a coherent and universal theory of human rights.
Paperback March 2009

Endocrinology of Social Relationships

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Edited by Peter T. Ellison
Edited by Peter B. Gray
This book, a rare melding of human and animal research and theoretical and empirical science, ventures into the most interesting realms of behavioral biology to examine the intimate role of endocrinology in social relationships.
Hardcover February 2009

Seeing Red

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 EST

Nicholas Humphrey
Beginning with the seemingly simple act of seeing red, this brilliantly unsettling essay builds toward an explanation of why consciousness makes compelling evolutionary sense. From sensations that probably began in bodily expression to the evolutionary advantages of a conscious self, Seeing Red tracks the "hard problem" of consciousness to its source and its solution, a solution in which the very hardness of the problem may make all the difference.
Paperback February 2009

The Accidental Mind

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

David J. Linden
A guide to the strange and often illogical world of neural function, this book shows how the brain is not an optimized, general-purpose problem-solving machine, but rather a weird agglomeration of ad-hoc solutions that have been piled on through millions of years of evolutionary history.
Paperback December 2008

Expression and the Inner

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EST

David H. Finkelstein
At least since Descartes, philosophers have been interested in the special knowledge or authority that we exhibit when we speak about our own thoughts, attitudes, and feelings. This book contends that even the best work in contemporary philosophy of mind fails to account for this sort of knowledge or authority because it does not pay the right sort of attention to the notion of expression. What's at stake is not only how to understand self-knowledge and first-person authority, but also what it is that distinguishes conscious from unconscious psychological states, what the mental life of a nonlinguistic animal has in common with our sort of mental life, and how to think about Wittgenstein's legacy to the philosophy of mind.
Paperback December 2008