New Books in Psychology

Latest Episodes:

Joshua Paul Dale, "Irresistible: How Cuteness Wired our Brains and Conquered the World" (Profile Books, 2023) Feb 10, 2024

Show notes

Why are some things cute, and others not? What happens to our brains when we see something cute? And how did cuteness go global, from Hello Kitty to Disney characters?

Cuteness is an area where culture and biology get tangled up. Seeing a cute animal triggers some of the most powerful psychological instincts we have - the ones that elicit our care and protection - but there is a deeper story behind the broad appeal of Japanese cats and saccharine greetings cards.

In Irresistible: How Cuteness Wired our Brains and Conquered the World (Profile Books, 2023) Dr. Joshua Paul Dale, a pioneer in the burgeoning field of cuteness studies, explains how the cute aesthetic spread around the globe, from pop brands to Lolita fashion, kids' cartoons and the unstoppable rise of Hello Kitty. Irresistible delves into the surprisingly ancient origins of Japan's kawaii culture, and uncovers the cross-cultural pollination of the globalised world. Understanding the psychology of cuteness can help answer some of the biggest questions in evolutionary history and the mysterious origins of animal domestication.

This is the fascinating cultural history of cuteness, and a revealing look at how our most powerful psychological impulses have remade global style and culture.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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John Horgan, "Terrorist Minds: The Psychology of Violent Extremism from Al-Qaeda to the Far Right" ( Columbia UP, 2023) Feb 08, 2024

Show notes

What makes a person want to become a terrorist? Who becomes involved in terrorism, and why? In what ways does participating in violent extremism change someone? And how can people become deradicalized?

John Horgan―one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of terrorism―takes readers on a globe-spanning journey into the terrorist mindset. Drawing on groundbreaking personal interviews as well as decades of research from psychologists and others, he traces the pathways that lead people into violent extremism and explores what happens to them as their involvement deepens. Horgan provides an up-to-date, evidence-based understanding of the patterns, motives, and mentalities of violent extremists from the Islamic State and al-Shabaab to white supremacists and incels. He argues that there is not a straightforward psychological profile of a terrorist, in part because of the great variety of today’s extremists, who are able to attract a more diverse pool of recruits than ever before. But even though there is no one-size-fits-all profile, psychological study can provide crucial insight into why and how people become terrorists.

Accessible and nuanced, Terrorist Minds: The Psychology of Violent Extremism from Al-Qaeda to the Far Right(Columbia UP, 2023) is an essential book for readers interested in what psychology can explain about extremist behavior.

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Vani Kant Borooah, "Economics, Religion and Happiness: God, Mammon and the Search for Spiritual and Financial Wealth" (Routledge, 2023) Feb 05, 2024

Show notes

Many books on happiness suggest that we have considerable control over our level of happiness by doing or not doing specific things, like mediation, exercise, and maintaining social ties.

Approaching happiness through the lens of economics, Vani Kant Borooah takes a different approach in his book Economics, Religion and Happiness: God, Mammon and the Search for Spiritual and Financial Wealth (Routledge, 2024). He argues that while it is true that we can take such actions to improve our relative level of day-to-day happiness, there are also significant influences which fall outside of our control and depend heavily upon the attitudes and actions of other people.

The book identifies the internal factors of personal happiness and measures the relative strength of their contribution, then contrasts that with an analysis of the externalities that people impose upon the happiness of others.

These externalities are the direct result of intolerance and feelings of envy and superiority. Taking a cue from Jean-Paul Sartre's aphorism, "hell is other people", this book examines those often negative and even violent externalities, a theme explored in the areas of religion, money, and prejudice where our happiness is contingent upon the perspectives and actions of those around us.

Recommended read:

Slaughter Among Neighbors: The Political Origins of Communal Violence(Human Rights Watch, 1995)

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Matthew Rubery, "Reader's Block: A History of Reading Differences" (Stanford UP, 2022) Jan 28, 2024

Show notes

Matthew Rubery's book Reader’s Block: A History of Reading Differences(Stanford UP, 2022) explores the influence neurodivergence has on the ways individuals read. This alternative history of reading is one of the few books which tells the stories of "atypical" readers and the impact had on their lives by neurological conditions affecting their ability to make sense of the printed word: from dyslexia, hyperlexia, and alexia to synesthesia, hallucinations, and dementia. Rubery's focus on neurodiversity aims to transform our understanding of the very concept of reading. Drawing on personal testimonies gathered from literature, film, life writing, social media, medical case studies, and other sources to express how cognitive differences have shaped people's experiences both on and off the page, Rubery contends that there is no single activity known as reading. Instead, there are multiple ways of reading (and, for that matter, not reading) despite the ease with which we use the term. Pushing us to rethink what it means to read; Reader's Block moves toward an understanding of reading as a spectrum that is capacious enough to accommodate the full range of activities documented in this fascinating and highly original book.

Matthew Rubery is Professor of Modern Literature at Queen Mary University of London. His earlier books include The Novelty of Newspapers: Victorian Fiction after the Invention of the News (Oxford, 2009) and The Untold Story of the Talking Book (Harvard University Press, 2016). He has also edited or co-edited Audiobooks, Literature, and Sound Studies (Routledge, 2011), Secret Commissions: An Anthology of Victorian Investigative Journalism (Broadview, 2012), and Further Reading (Oxford, 2020). Currently, he is working on a history of “projected reading”, a form of assisted reading that involves projecting books on ceilings which a patient can read while lying in bed. This was first used to help World War 2 soldiers injured on duty who could not read conventionally. Matthew also likes to collaborate with charities and other organisations to think about ways of reading more suited to people with disabilities or neurodivergent readers.

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Ghostwriting Psychology and Overcoming Anxiety Associated with Writer’s Block Jan 21, 2024

Show notes

Barbara Richter is an accomplished author, public speaker, French-to-English translator, and founder of DIYBook and In Ink Ghostwriting. Raised in a home steeped in books and greatly influenced by her father, an award-winning editor and National Book Award finalist, Barbara's upbringing richly nurtured her literary heritage and profoundly honed her critical thinking skills. Barbara’s multifaceted career, marked by her roles as the Managing Editor for Literary Features Syndicate, columnist for Fine Books and Collections Magazine, and contributor to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Daily News, and The Sewanee Review, has firmly established her as a prominent figure in both modern literature and entrepreneurship.

Building off her extensive writing expertise, Barbara launched DIYBook in 2023, a comprehensive solution designed to make book writing and publishing accessible and affordable for authors at all levels, from novices to seasoned professionals. The platform is a step-by-step process equipped with weekly email prompts catering to various categories such as trauma, military service, relationships, and more. This tailored approach simplifies writing and publishing by providing structured guidance, helping users overcome writer's block, lack of direction, and feeling overwhelmed. DIYBook's support system includes various tools and resources to enhance writing quality and efficiency, thereby making the publishing journey more approachable for anyone with a story to tell.

Barbara is also the founder of In Ink Ghostwriting (2014), one of the premier ghostwriting firms in the NYC area with clients from around the world, which delivers an assortment of writing services. From business books to memoirs and novels, the firm caters to a diverse clientele, such as best-selling authors, NFL players, Fortune 500 CEOs, artists, musicians, doctors, entrepreneurs, and attorneys. This all-inclusive service range sets In Ink Ghostwriting apart, offering not just writing and publishing mastery but also essential design services with a skilled graphic design artist who can provide clients with the option to enhance the visual appeal of their books. Her foray into ghostwriting was spurred by her distinctive ability to encapsulate the voices and ideas of those with compelling stories but limited writing proficiency or time.

Barbara holds a BA and MA in French Language and Literature from Smith College and Tufts University. She is a founding member of the Ticknor Society, a voting member of the National Book Critics Circle, and a member of the Grolier Club, the country’s oldest bibliophilic association. Currently residing in Westchester, New York, with her family and beloved basset hounds, Barbara continues to enrich the landscape of literature and entrepreneurship, contributing significantly to the domains of storytelling and literary access.

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Harry van der Hulst, "A Mind for Language: An Introduction to the Innateness Debate" (Cambridge UP, 2023) Jan 20, 2024

Show notes

How does human language arise in the mind? To what extent is it innate, or something that is learned? How do these factors interact? The questions surrounding how we acquire language are some of the most fundamental about what it means to be human and have long been at the heart of linguistic theory.

Harry van der Hulst's book A Mind for Language: An Introduction to the Innateness Debate (Cambridge UP, 2023) provides a comprehensive introduction to this fascinating debate, unravelling the arguments for the roles of nature and nurture in the knowledge that allows humans to learn and use language. An interdisciplinary approach is used throughout, allowing the debate to be examined from philosophical and cognitive perspectives. It is illustrated with real-life examples and the theory is explained in a clear, easy-to-read way, making it accessible for students without a background in linguistics. An accompanying website contains a glossary, questions for reflection, discussion themes and project suggestions, to further deepen students’ understanding of the material.

Madhumanti Datta completed her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Southern California, USA.

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What Decision Means Jan 19, 2024

Show notes

Listen to Episode No.5 of All We Mean, a Special Focus of this podcast. All We Mean is an ongoing discussion and debate about how we mean and why. The guests on today's episode are Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, professors at the University of Illinois, and also Gang Wang, Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois. In this episode of the Focus, our topic is what decision means.

Decision is no simple matter, whether the decider in question is human or machine. In a sense, both are black boxes to us, and yet the urgency today to open the lid on A.I. is heightened because of how human-like the machine seems to be able to do decision. This is why, across disciplines, we need to convene and discuss and decide together on how to understand and use A.I. The alternative is grisly: Everyone using a tool that no one fully understands — no one using the tool in full understanding or for that matter, in any understanding at all.

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Cross-Cultural Research on Gaming and “Gaming Disorder” Jan 19, 2024

Show notes

In 1998 the phrase “internet addiction” was first used to describe problematic prolonged internet use, and encompassed a wide range of online activities including reading news, connecting in chat rooms, viewing pornography, and gambling. Since then, particular focus has been placed on internet gaming, and in 2022 the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (11th edition) classified Gaming Disorder as a "mental disorder due to addictive behaviors." But as Dr. Veli-Matti Karhulahti and Dr. Yaewon Jin explain, there is far from universal consensus on what “gaming disorder” exactly is. They share their insights as researchers of the ORE (Ontological Reconstruction of Gaming Disorder), a five-year interdisciplinary project funded by the European Research Council, and discuss the difficulties not only in identifying “gaming disorder” but in categorizing the various kinds of games that are considered. They share their own experiences with computer gaming, from early 1990s Finnish schools to South Korea’s PC bangs (internet cafés). They leave us to contemplate culturally and historically dependent perspectives not only on what constitutes a so-called disorder, but why individuals play games.

This episode is supported by the Otto A. Malm Foundation.

Dr. Veli-Matti Karhulahti is the ORE project’s principle investigator and is an interdisciplinary senior researcher of play, games, and the philosophy of science at the University of Jyväskylä. Dr. Yaewon Jin is a post-doctoral researcher at Jyvaskyla, and focuses on South Korea as part of the project. She is also currently a visiting professor at Yonsei University and principal researcher at the Game-n-Science institute.

The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland) and Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Norwegian Network for Asian Studies.

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Tara Brach, "Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha" (Random House, 2004) Jan 17, 2024

Show notes

It can be so easy to feel like we’re not enough or that we’re somehow insufficient. According to meditation teacher Tara Brach, this feeling of unworthiness is fundamentally a disease of separation, as it alienates us from ourselves and the people around us. For Brach, one way to free ourselves from this trance of unworthiness is the practice of radical acceptance. In the twentieth-anniversary edition of her classic book, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha (Random House, 2004), she uses a blend of psychology and Buddhist insights to lay out a path to freedom in the face of pervasive feelings of inadequacy and isolation.

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Brach to discuss what she’s learning by revisiting the book now, why she believes we’re living in a collective spiritual crisis, and how we can learn to recognize our own basic goodness.

Tricycle Talks is a monthly podcast featuring prominent voices from within and beyond the Buddhist fold. Listen to more episodes here.

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Mudita Nisker and Dan Clurman, "Let's Talk: An Essential Guide to Skillful Communication" (2022) Jan 14, 2024

Show notes

Let's Talk: An Essential Guide to Skillful Communication(2022) is a transformative guide to elevate your everyday conversations. Authored by Mudita Nisker and Dan Clurman, this practical handbook equips you with essential skills to navigate challenging topics, boost self-expression confidence, and foster respectful influence. Drawing from psychology, sociology, learning theory, and spiritual traditions, the book offers a comprehensive yet accessible approach to one-on-one communication. It's an invitation to revolutionize your connections—one conversation at a time.

Ohad Fedida lives in Miami and is a psychology research and clinical assistant. He is pursuing a graduate degree in psychology, and is involved in a wide array of initiatives and studies from legal philosophy, Jewish programming, and psychology.

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