Annie Murphy Paul

A bold new book reveals how we can tap the intelligence that exists beyond our brains--in our bodies, our surroundings, and our relationships Use your head. That's what we tell ourselves when facing a tricky problem or a difficult project. But a growing body of research indicates that we've got it exactly backwards. What we need to do, says acclaimed science writer Annie Murphy Paul, is think outside the brain. A host of "extra-neural" resources--the feelings and movements of our bodies, the physical spaces in which we learn and work, and the minds of those around us-- can help us focus more intently, comprehend more deeply, and create more imaginatively. The Extended Mind outlines the research behind this exciting new vision of human ability, exploring the findings of neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, psychologists, and examining the practices of educators, managers, and leaders who are already reaping the benefits of thinking outside the brain. She excavates the untold history of how artists, scientists, and authors--from Jackson Pollock to Jonas Salk to Robert Caro--have used mental extensions to solve problems, make discoveries, and create new works. In the tradition of Howard Gardner's Frames of Mind or Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence, The Extended Mind offers a dramatic new view of how our minds work, full of practical advice on how we can all think better.

The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

The Extended Mind

How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves

The Cult of Personality

Millions of people worldwide take personality tests each year to direct their education, to decide on a career, to determine if they'll be hired, to join the armed forces, and to settle legal disputes. Yet, according to award winning psychology writer Annie Murphy Paul, the sheer number of tests administered obscures a simple fact: they don't work. Most personality tests are seriously flawed, and sometimes unequivocally wrong. They fail the field's own standards of validity and reliability. They ask intrusive questions. They produce descriptions of people that are nothing like human beings as they actually are: complicated, contradictory, changeable across time and place. THE CULT OF PERSONALITY documents, for the first time, the disturbing consequences of these tests. Children are being labelled in limiting ways. Businesses and the government are wasting hundreds of millions of dollars every year, only to make ill-informed decisions about hiring and firing. Job seekers are having their privacy invaded and their rights trampled, and our judicial system is being undermined by faulty evidence. Paul's eye-opening chronicle reveals the fascinating history behind a lucrative and largely unregulated business. Captivating, insightful, and sometimes shocking, THE CULT OF PERSONALITY offers an exhilarating trip into the human mind and heart.

How Personality Tests are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves

Paul presents an in-depth examination of how personalities are formed by biological, social, and emotional factors.

How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives

Origins

在大腦外思考：各領域專家如何運用身體、環境、人際關係，打破只靠大腦思考、決策、學習、記憶的侷限

What makes us the way we are? Some say it’s the genes we inherit at conception. Others are sure it’s the environment we experience in childhood. But could it be that many of our individual characteristics—our health, our intelligence, our temperaments—are influenced by the conditions we encountered before birth? That’s the claim of an exciting and provocative field known as fetal origins. Over the past twenty years, scientists have been developing a radically new understanding of our very earliest experiences and how they exert lasting effects on us from infancy well into adulthood. Their research offers a bold new view of pregnancy as a crucial staging ground for our health, ability, and well-being throughout life. Author and journalist Annie Murphy Paul ventures into the laboratories of fetal researchers, interviews experts from around the world, and delves into the rich history of ideas about how we’re shaped before birth. She discovers dramatic stories: how individuals gestated during the Nazi siege of Holland in World War II are still feeling its consequences decades later; how pregnant women who experienced the 9/11 attacks passed their trauma on to their offspring in the womb; how a lab accident led to the discovery of a common household chemical that can harm the developing fetus; how the study of a century-old flu pandemic reveals the high personal and societal costs of poor prenatal experience. Origins also brings to light astonishing scientific findings: how a single exposure to an environmental toxin may produce damage that is passed on to multiple generations; how conditions as varied as diabetes, heart disease, and mental illness may get their start in utero; why the womb is medicine’s latest target for the promotion of lifelong health, from preventing cancer to reducing obesity. The fetus is not an inert being, but an active and dynamic creature, responding and adapting as it readies itself for life in the particular world it will enter. The pregnant woman is not merely a source of potential harm to her fetus, as she is so often reminded, but a source of influence on her future child that is far more powerful and positive than we ever knew. And pregnancy is not a nine-month wait for the big event of birth, but a momentous period unto itself, a cradle of individual strength and wellness and a crucible of public health and social equality. With the intimacy of a personal memoir and the sweep of a scientific revolution, Origins presents a stunning new vision of our beginnings that will change the way you think about yourself, your children, and human nature itself.

The New Science of Smart

Brilliant

Award-winning psychology writer Annie Paul delivers a scathing exposé on the history and effects of personality tests. Millions of people worldwide take personality tests each year to direct their education, to decide on a career, to determine if they'll be hired, to join the armed forces, and to settle legal disputes. Yet, according to award-winning psychology writer Annie Murphy Paul, the sheer number of tests administered obscures a simple fact: they don't work. Most personality tests are seriously flawed, and sometimes unequivocally wrong. They fail the field's own standards of validity and reliability. They ask intrusive questions. They produce descriptions of people that are nothing like human beings as they actually are: complicated, contradictory, changeable across time and place. The Cult Of Personality Testing documents, for the first time, the disturbing consequences of these tests. Children are being labeled in limiting ways. Businesses and the government are wasting hundreds of millions of dollars every year, only to make ill-informed decisions about hiring and firing. Job seekers are having their privacy invaded and their rights trampled, and our judicial system is being undermined by faulty evidence. Paul's eye-opening chronicle reveals the fascinating history behind a lucrative and largely unregulated business. Captivating, insightful, and sometimes shocking, The Cult Of Personality Testing offers an exhilarating trip into the human mind and heart.

The Cult of Personality Testing

La mente estesa. Pensare meglio smettendo di usare solo il cervello

Women who become pregnant today are bombarded with urgent messages about the food they eat, the chemicals they’re exposed to, the stress they feel—and how such prenatal influences will affect their future children. When Annie Murphy Paul first encountered the intense anxiety and overwhelming responsibility that now accompany pregnancy, she was shocked, then baffled, then curious. And when she become pregnant a second time, she decided to investigate. Over the course of nine months, Paul explores how fetuses are shaped in utero, separating the evidence from the hype and filling in the historical and cultural context. As a science writer, she goes deep into the exciting new field of fetal origins, examining its claims that many of our individual characteristics—from susceptibility to disease, to appetite and metabolism, to intelligence and even personality and temperament—begin in the womb. And as a pregnant woman, she probes the cultural mania that surrounds pregnancy today, bringing to bear her own intimately observed experience. Filled with startling insights and eye-opening perspectives, Origins will change the way you think about yourself, your children, and human nature itself.

Annie Murphy Paul

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