Understanding Human Behavior Book

Introduction.

How to Study—Especially This Book.

I. SCIENCE IS A POWERFUL AND UNIQUE WAY OF UNDERSTANDING HUMAN BEHAVIOR.

1. Science Works (Or Why People Argue about Politics but Not about Whether the Earth Revolves around The Sun.)

2. A Powerful Way to Investigate Human Behavior Is by Making Measurements and Looking for Correlations among Them (Or How Psychologists Look for Relationships.)

3. A Powerful Way to Investigate Human Behavior Is by Changing the Environment and Then Observing What Happens (Or How Psychologists Look for Causal Relationships.)

II. OUR BASIC HUMAN NATURE ARISES FROM OUR EVOLUTIONARY PAST.

4. Much Human Behavior Is the Result of Both Long-Term and Short-Term Adaptations (Or Why Nature and Nurture Are Inextricably Intertwined.)

5. Understanding the Brain Is the Foundation for Understanding the Mind. (Or Why Biology and Psychology are Inextricable Intertwined.)

6. The Properties of the Mind Arise From Specific Circuits in the Brain. (Or Why the Brain is Not a Tabula Rasa.)

7. Some Male-Female Differences Are the Result of Long-Term Adaptations (Or Why Nearly All the Clients of Prostitutes Are Male.)

III. OUR MINDS FORM HIGHLY ADAPTIVE (BUT IMPERFECT) REPRESENTATIONS OF THE WORLD.

8. We Respond to Change, But We Adapt to Lack of Change. (Or Why You Notice Your Refrigerator Only When it Starts or Stops Running.)

9. How We See the World Is Determined Both by What's Outside in the Environment and by What's Inside Us (Or Why Reality, Like Beauty, is in the Eye of the Beholder.)

10. We Learn to Perceive the World (Or How We Can Get Along in a World Turned Upside Down.)

11. There is No Credible Evidence for Extrasensory Perception (Or Why Nobody Has Collected The Amazing Randi's Million Dollars)

IV. OUR PRESENT BEHAVIOR IS INFLUENCED BY OUR PAST EXPERIENCE.

12. The Brain Is Programmed to Form Associations (Or Why People Salivate at the Smell of Burning Charcoal)

13. Reward Has Powerful, Predictable Effects on Behavior (Or How Obnoxious Children Get That Way.)

14. Punishment Has Powerful, Often Unpredictable Effects on Behavior (Or Why People Who Are Punished for Doing Bad Things Don't Always Stop Doing Them.)

15. Behavior is Flexible, But It Isn't Infinitely Flexible (Or Why It's Hard to Teach a Pig to Use a Piggy Bank.)

16. Television Has Substantial Negative Effects on Beliefs and Behavior (Or Why It's Better for kids to Watch PBS Than Network TV.)

V. OUR MINDS FORM (IMPERFECT) MEMORIES OF THE PAST.

17. Working Memory is Involved in Many Cognitive Activities But Has a Very Limited Capacity (Or Why Phone Numbers Have Seven Digits.)

18. Long-Term Memory Is Vast and Powerful, but Fallible (Or How You Know Who You Are, Where You Are, and Where You're Going—Most of the Time.)

19. The More You Know The Easier It Is to Learn New Things (Or How to Learn the Material in This, and Most Other, Books.)

VI. WE THINK AND REASON In HIGHLY ADAPTIVE (BUT IMPERFECT) WAYS.

20. Intuitive Judgments about Things Having to Do with Numbers Are Often Wrong (Or Why Millions of People Play the Lottery Every Week.)

21. Beliefs Are Supported By Powerful Biases (Or Why We're Often Wrong Even When We're Sure We're Right.)

22. Behavior Affects Beliefs (Or Why the Marines Send Their Recruits to Boot Camp.)

23. People Are Not Always Consciously Aware of the Causes of Their Behavior. (Or Why Freud Was Right- About Some Things.)

VII. WE CHANGE OVER TIME.

24. Early Experience Has a Major Impact on Later Behavior (Or Why Brothers and Sisters Rarely Marry Each Other.)

25. A Child Is Not a Miniature Adult (Or Why You Should Expect Your Child to Act Like a Child.)

26. Humans Have a Biologically Programmed Capacity for Language (Or Why Children, but Not Chimpanzees, Easily Master English.)

VIII. WE ARE STRONGLY AFFECTED BY OTHER PEOPLE.

27. Social Influence Is One of the Most Powerful Determinants of Human Behavior (Or Why Someone Who Grows Up in Iraq Is More Likely to be a Muslim Than a Christian.)

28. The Mere Presence of Other People Has a Substantial Impact on Behavior (Or Why Most Six-Year-Old Violinists Play More Poorly at a Recital Than at a Rehearsal.)

29. Cooperation Can Happen Even When Everyone Is Looking Out for Themselves (Or Why Some Soldiers in the Trenches in World War I Stopped Shooting at Each Other.)

IX. WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT.

30. It is Difficult, But Not Impossible, to Develop Meaningful Psychological Tests (Or Why You Can't Say You're Twice as Smart as Somebody Else)

31. Behavior Can Be Predicted From Personality Measures—But Imperfectly (Or Why Personality is Best Thought of As Interaction Between Traits and Situations.)

32. Intellectual Ability Has a Powerful Impact on Many Aspects of People's Lives (Or Why Not Everybody Can be a Rocket Scientist.)

33. Many Individual Differences Have a Strong Genetic Component (Or Why Identical Twins Behave More Similarly Than Fraternal Twins.)

X. WE ARE STRONGLY AFFECTED BY OUR FEELINGS.

34. Emotions, Like Thoughts, Arise in the Brain (Or Why You Get Goose Bumps.)

35. Stress Can Seriously Affect Your Health (Or Why Driving to Work Everyday Can Kill You, Even if You Never Have an Accident.)

36. Happiness is More Strongly Related to How People Live Their Lives Than to Their Material Circumstances (Or Why Money Doesn't Buy Happiness.)

XI. MOST OF US FUNCTION PRETTY WELL; SOME OF US DO NOT.

37. Psychological Health Means Behaving Appropriately to the Situation (Or Why Most People Function Pretty Well—Most of the Time.)

38. Psychotherapy Can Help Many People Who Behave Inappropriately (Or What Classical Conditioning Has to Do With Phobias.)

39. Schizophrenia, the Most Serious Form of Mental Illness, Is a Brain Disease (Or Why There Are Many Fewer Patients in Mental Hospitals Today Than There Were in 1960.)

40. Mood Disorders Are the Most Common Form of Severe Mental Illness (Or What Abraham Lincoln and Georgia O'Keeffe Had in Common.)

XII. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH CAN ILLUMINATE MANY ASPECTS OF OUR EVERYDAY LIVES.

41. People's Judgments about Why Things Have Happened to Them Can Have A Big Impact on Their Lives (Or Why a Little Optimism Is a Good Thing.)

42. Expectations Have a Substantial Effect on Behavior (Or Why It's Important To Do Well on the First Quiz)

43. Good Decision making Requires Knowing the World and Knowing Yourself (Or How to Look Before You Leap.)

44. Many Machines Are Harder to Use Than They Ought to Be (Or Who Is to Blame if you Can't Program Your VCR.)

Epilogue: Psychology and Human Values.