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Now available in paperback?a provocative new look at biology, evolution, and human behavior ?as disturbing [as it is] fascinating? (Publishers Weekly). Why are most neurosurgeons male and most kindergarten teachers female? Why aren?t there more women on death row? Why do so many male politicians ruin their careers with sex scandals? Why and how do we really fall in love? This engaging book uses the latest research from the field of evolutionary psychology to shed light on why we do the things w...

What were the consequences of Tolstoy's unusual reliance on members of his family as source material for War and Peace? Did affection for close relatives influence depictions of these real prototypes in his fictional characters? Tolstoy used these models to consider his origins, to ponder alternative family histories, and to critique himself. Comparison of the novel and its fascinating drafts with the writer's family history reveals increasing preferential treatment of those with greater related...

Humans are storytelling animals. Stories are what make our societies possible. Countless books celebrate their virtues. But Jonathan Gottschall, an expert on the science of stories, argues that there is a dark side to storytelling we can no longer ignore. Storytelling, the very tradition that built human civilization, may be the thing that destroys it.In The Story Paradox, Gottschall explores how a broad consortium of psychologists, communications specialists, neuroscientists, and literary quant...

When did humans develop spiritual thought? What is religion's evolutionary purpose? And in our increasingly secular world, why has it endured?Every society in the history of humanity has lived with religion. In How Religion Evolved, evolutionary psychologist Professor Robin Dunbar tracks its origins back to what he terms the 'mystical stance' - the aspect of human psychology that predisposes us to believe in a transcendent world, and which makes an encounter with the spiritual possible. As he ex...

Psychoanalytic Reflections on The Freudian Death Drive is a highly accessible book that investigates the relevance, complexity and originality of a hugely controversial Freudian concept which, the author argues, continues to exert enormous influence on modernity and plays an often-imperceptible role in the violence and so-called "sad passions" of contemporary society. With examples from cinema, literature and the consulting room, the book's four chapters - theory, the clinic, art and contempor...

" It's undeniable-technology is changing the way we think. But is it for the better? Amid a chorus of doomsayers, Clive Thompson delivers a resounding "yes." The Internet age has produced a radical new style of human intelligence, worthy of both celebration and analysis. We learn more and retain it longer, write and think with global audiences, and even gain an ESP-like awareness of the world around us. Modern technology is making us smarter, better connected, and often deeper-both as individual...

In "No Two Alike", Judith Rich Harris presents a fascinating exploration of human nature that looks within the mind to discover why people differ in personality. The detective work Harris began in her controversial book "The Nurture Assumption" has its triumphant conclusion in "No Two Alike". Harris tackles a question that has long been a mystery: why do identical twins who grow up together - with the same genes, reared by the same parents - differ in personality? Her ground-breaking answer - th...

Es gibt verschiedene Zugänge zur Erforschung des Gehirns. Hier wird in einem ersten Schritt die evolutive Perspektive gewählt. In gewisser Hinsicht ‚erzählt‘ die Gehirnanatomie die evolutive Entwicklung, weil bekannt ist, welche Regionen sich sehr früh und welche sich später entwickelt haben. So nennt man z.B. eine im menschlichen Gehirn sehr alte Region, den Hirnstamm auch ‚Reptiliengehirn‘, weil sie in ihrer Struktur große Ähnlichkeiten mit den Gehirnen von Reptilien hat. Die erste Hälfte des...

Every decision, from buying a home to grabbing a daily latte, has costs and benefits-personal as well as financial. The Real Cost of Living helps you make better decisions, both big and small- decisions that involve money, but aren't all about money. Well-known personal finance expert Carmen Wong Ulrich makes personal finance personal and takes into account that we all have motivations that go way beyond number crunching. From marriage and family to career, investing, and more, Carmen examines t...

This eBook+ version includes the following enhancements: Popup definitions of key terms throughout the book to help readers understand a wide variety of specialist terms used within cognitive neuroscience Interactive flashcards for each chapter Multiple choice questions to help test knowledge This comprehensive, cutting-edge textbook offers a layered approach to the study of cognitive neuroscience and psychology. It embraces exciting alternative and influential theoretical approaches such...

Gregory F. Tague's An Ape Ethic and the Question of Personhood argues that great apes are moral individuals because they engage in a land ethic as ecosystem engineers to generate ecologically sustainable biomes for themselves and other species. Tague shows that we need to recognize apes as eco-engineers in order to save them and their habitats, and that in so doing, we will ultimately save earth's biosphere. The book draws on extensive empirical research from the ecology and behavior of great ap...

Sperm Wars turns the conventional thinking about the biology of sex on its head. Evolutionary biologist Robin Baker argues that human sexuality follows certain laws, and all of those laws are governed by one thing: sperm warfare. In the interest of promoting competition between sperm to fertilize the same egg, evolution has built men to conquer and monopolize women while women, without ever knowing they are doing it, seek the best genetic input on offer from potential sexual partners. In this bo...

Psychological research has produced a rich body of empirical data documenting humanity's propensity to commit infidelity in the context of long-term relationships, but comparatively little work has been dedicated to synthesizing these data into an integrated framework that encompasses the full range of its processes, from why it occurs in the first place to how it affects the long-term relationship thereafter. This edited handbook integrates a broad range of topics such as characteristics rela...