10 Best Psychology Books
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1. Great Ideas Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud
Freud enumerates what he sees as the fundamental tensions between civilization and the individual. The primary friction, he asserts, stems from the individual’s quest for instinctive freedom and civilization’s contrary demand for conformity and repression of instincts. Freud states that when any situation that is desired by the pleasure principle is prolonged, it creates a feeling of mild contentment. Many of humankind’s primitive instincts (for example, the desire to kill and the insatiable craving for sexual gratification) are clearly harmful to the well-being of a human community. As a result, civilization creates laws that prohibit killing, rape, and adultery, and it implements severe punishments if these rules are broken. Thus our possibilities for happiness are restricted by the law. This process, argues Freud, is an inherent quality of civilization that gives rise to perpetual feelings of discontent among its citizens.
2. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
In this highly acclaimed New York Times bestseller, Dr. Robert B. Cialdini — the seminal expert in the field of influence and persuasion — explains the psychology of why people say yes and how to apply these principles ethically in business and everyday situations.
You’ll learn the six universal principles of influence and how to use them to become a skilled persuader — and, just as importantly, how to defend yourself against dishonest influence attempts.
3. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
In The Power of Habit reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed.
The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, being more productive, and achieving success is understanding how habits work. As Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.
4. The Social Animal by Elliot Aronson
Through vivid narrative, lively presentations of important research, and intriguing examples, Elliot Aronson probes the patterns and motives of human behavior, covering such diverse topics as terrorism, conformity, obedience, politics, race relations, advertising, war, interpersonal attraction, and the power of religious cults.
5. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath
In Switch, the Heaths show how everyday people — employees and managers, parents and nurses — have united both minds and, as a result, achieved dramatic results.
In a compelling, story-driven narrative, the Heaths bring together decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology, and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change. Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that matter to you, whether your interest is in changing the world or changing your waistline.
6. Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
Gilbert’s central thesis is that, through perception and cognitive biases, people imagine the future poorly, in particular what will make them happy. He argues that imagination fails in three ways:
- Imagination tends to add and remove details, but people do not realize that key details may be fabricated or missing from the imagined scenario.
- Imagined futures (and pasts) are more like the present than they actually will be (or were).
- Imagination fails to realize that things will feel different once they actually happen — most notably, the psychological immune system will make bad things feel not so bad as they are imagined to feel.
The advice Gilbert offers is to use other people’s experiences to predict the future, instead of imagining it. It is surprising how similar people are in much of their experiences, he says. He does not expect too many people to heed this advice, as our culture, accompanied by various thinking tendencies, is against this method of decision making.
Also, Gilbert covers the topic of ‘filling in’ or the frequent use of patterns, by the mind, to connect events which we do actually recall with other events we expect or anticipate fit into the expected experience. This ‘filling in’ is also used by our eyes and optic nerves to remove our blind spot or scotoma, and instead substitute what our mind expects to be present in the blind spot.
The book is written for the layperson, generally avoiding abstruse terminology and explaining common quirks of reasoning through simple experiments that exploited them.
7. The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt
In “The Happiness Hypothesis, psychologist Jonathan Haidt exposes traditional wisdom to the scrutiny of modern science, delivering startling insights. We learn that virtue is often not its own reward, why extroverts really are happier than introverts, and why conscious thought is not as important as we might like to think…Drawing on the rich inspiration of both philosophy and science, “The Happiness Hypothesis” is a remarkable, original and provocative book — ancient wisdom in our time.
8. Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman
Everyone knows that high IQ is no guarantee of success, happiness, or virtue, but until Emotional Intelligence, we could only guess why. Daniel Goleman’s brilliant report from the frontiers of psychology and neuroscience offers startling new insight into our “two minds” — the rational and the emotional — and how they together shape our destiny.
9. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Why is there more chance we’ll believe something if it’s in a bold type face? Why are judges more likely to deny parole before lunch? Why do we assume a good-looking person will be more competent? The answer lies in the two ways we make choices: fast, intuitive thinking, and slow, rational thinking. This book reveals how our minds are tripped up by error and prejudice (even when we think we are being logical), and gives you practical techniques for slower, smarter thinking. It will enable to you make better decisions at work, at home, and in everything you do.
10. Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
In this newly revised and expanded edition of the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller, Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in fundamentally rational ways. From drinking coffee to losing weight, from buying a car to choosing a romantic partner, we consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. Yet these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They’re systematic and predictable — making us predictably irrational.
Thanks for reading!
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