Roy F. Baumeister

John Marion Tierney

The authors review the latest research to report key findings on willpower and offer practical advice for increasing it.

Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength

Willpower

John Tierney

"The most important book at the borderland of psychology and politics that I have ever read."--Martin E. P. Seligman, Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology at that University of Pennsylvania and author of Learned Optimism Why are we devastated by a word of criticism even when it's mixed with lavish praise? Because our brains are wired to focus on the bad. This negativity effect explains things great and small: why countries blunder into disastrous wars, why couples divorce, why people flub job interviews, how schools fail students, why football coaches stupidly punt on fourth down. All day long, the power of bad governs people's moods, drives marketing campaigns, and dominates news and politics. Eminent social scientist Roy F. Baumeister stumbled unexpectedly upon this fundamental aspect of human nature. To find out why financial losses mattered more to people than financial gains, Baumeister looked for situations in which good events made a bigger impact than bad ones. But his team couldn't find any. Their research showed that bad is relentlessly stronger than good, and their paper has become one of the most-cited in the scientific literature. Our brain's negativity bias makes evolutionary sense because it kept our ancestors alert to fatal dangers, but it distorts our perspective in today's media environment. The steady barrage of bad news and crisismongering makes us feel helpless and leaves us needlessly fearful and angry. We ignore our many blessings, preferring to heed--and vote for--the voices telling us the world is going to hell. But once we recognize our negativity bias, the rational brain can overcome the power of bad when it's harmful and employ that power when it's beneficial. In fact, bad breaks and bad feelings create the most powerful incentives to become smarter and stronger. Properly understood, bad can be put to perfectly good use. As noted science journalist John Tierney and Baumeister show in this wide-ranging book, we can adopt proven strategies to avoid the pitfalls that doom relationships, careers, businesses, and nations. Instead of despairing at what's wrong in your life and in the world, you can see how much is going right--and how to make it still better.

How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It

The Power of Bad

Inside Human Violence and Cruelty

Evil

Have men really been engaged in a centuries-old conspiracy to exploit and oppress women? Have the essential differences between men and women really been erased? Have men now become unnecessary? Are they good for anything at all?In Is There Anything Good About Men?, Roy Baumeister offers provocative answers to these and many other questions about the current state of manhood in America. Baumeister argues that relations between men and women are now and have always been more cooperative than antagonistic, that men and women are different in basic ways, and that successful cultures capitalize on these differences to outperform rival cultures. Amongst our ancestors---as with many other species--only the alpha males were able to reproduce, leading them to take more risks and to exhibit more aggressive and protective behaviors than women, whose evolutionary strategies required a different set of behaviors. Whereas women favor and excel at one-to-one intimate relationships, men compete with one another and build larger organizations and social networks from which culture grows. But cultures in turn exploit men by insisting that their role is to achieve and produce, to provide for others, and if necessary to sacrifice themselves. Baumeister shows that while men have greatly benefited from the culture they have created, they have also suffered because of it. Men may dominate the upper echelons of business and politics, but far more men than women die in work-related accidents, are incarcerated, or are killed in battle--facts nearly always left out of current gender debates.Engagingly written, brilliantly argued, and based on evidence from a wide range of disciplines, Is There Anything Good About Men? offers a new and far more balanced view of gender relations.

How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

Is There Anything Good About Men?:How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men

Dianne M. Tice

Social Dimension of Sex, The

Why and How We Become Who We Are

Self Explained

Who among us has not at some point asked, what is the meaning of life?' In this extraordinary book, an eminent social scientist looks at the big picture and explores what empirical studies from diverse fields tell us about the human condition. MEANINGS OF LIFE draws together evidence from psychology, history, anthropology, and sociology, integrating copious research findings into a clear and conclusive discussion of how people attempt to make sense of their lives. In a lively and accessible style, emphasizing facts over theories, Baumeister explores why people desire meaning in their lives, how these meanings function, what forms they take, and what happens when life loses meaning. It is the most comprehensive examination of the topic to date.

Meanings of Life

Força de Vontade

Eli J. Finkel

Social psychology uses clever, even ingenious, research methods to explore the most essential questions of the human psyche: Why do we help some people and harm others? Why do we pay so much more attention to high-powered people than they pay to us? If humans evolved from great apes, why are human selves so much more elaborate? How does our attachment to our parents when we are infants influence the success or failure of our romantic relationships when we are adults? Can behaving morally "license" us to behave immorally shortly afterward? How do social relationships make us more versus less prone toward physical illness? This volume -- an update to the original, 2010 edition -- provides a graduate-level introduction to social psychology. The target audience consists of first-year graduate students (MA or PhD) in social psychology and related disciplines (marketing, organizational behavior, etc.), although it is also appropriate for upper-level undergraduate courses. The authors are world-renowned leaders on their topic, and they have written state-of-the-art overviews of the discipline's major research domains. The chapters are not only scientifically rigorous, but also accessible and engaging. They convey the joy, excitement, and promise of scientific investigations into human sociality.

The State of the Science

Advanced Social Psychology

The idea of the self is immediately familiar to everyone, yet elusive to define and understand. From pioneering researcher Roy F. Baumeister, this volume synthesizes a vast body of knowledge to provide a panoramic view of the human self--how it develops and functions, why it exists, and what problems it encounters on the journey through life. What are the benefits of self-knowledge, and how attainable is it? Do we have one self, or many? What is the relationship of self and society? In 28 concise chapters, Baumeister explains complex concepts with clarity and insight. He reveals the central role played by the self in enabling both individuals and cultures to thrive.

The Self Explained

Brad J. Bushman

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE, 4th Edition, offers a remarkably fresh and compelling exploration of the fascinating field of social psychology. Respected researchers, teachers, and authors Roy Baumeister and Brad Bushman give students integrated and accessible insight into the ways that nature, the social environment, and culture interact to influence social behavior. While giving essential insight to the power of situations, the text's contemporary approach also emphasizes the role of human nature -- viewing people as highly complex, exquisitely designed, and variously inclined cultural animals who respond to myriad situations. With strong visual appeal, an engaging writing style, and the best of classic and current research, SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE helps students make sense of the sometimes baffling -- but always interesting -- diversity of human behavior. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

Social Psychology and Human Nature, Brief

You are a member of a social world on a planet that is home to about 8 billion people. This social world is filled with paradox, mystery, suspense and outright absurdity. Explore how social psychology can help you make sense of your own social world with this engaging and accessible book. Roy F. Baumeister and Brad J. Bushman's SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AND HUMAN NATURE, 5th Edition, can help you understand one of the most interesting topics of all -- the sometimes bizarre and baffling but always fascinating diversity of human behavior, and how and why people act the way they do. Thoroughly updated with the latest research, the new edition includes expanded coverage of social media use and loneliness, findings on mimicry, high divorce rates among attractive people, nonbinary gender theory, and prejudice and what may reduce it. After reading this book, you will have a much better understanding of people. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

Social Psychology and Human Nature, Comprehensive Edition

Social psychology is a flourishing discipline. It explores the most essential questions of the human psyche (e.g., Why do people help or harm others? How do influence professionals get us to do what they want, and how can we inoculate ourselves against their sometimes-insidious persuasion tactics? Why do social relationships exert such powerful effects on people's physical health?), and it does so with clever, ingenuitive research methods. This edited volume is a textbook for advanced social psychology courses. Its primary target audience is first-year graduate students (MA or PhD) in social psychlogy, although it is also appropriate for upper-level undergraduate courses in social psychology and for doctoral students in disciplines connecting to social psychology (e.g., marketing, organizational behavior). The authors of the chapters are world-renowned leaders on their topic, and they have written these chapters to be engaging and accessible to students who are just learning the discipline. After reading this book, you will be able to understand almost any journal article or conference presentation in any field of social psychology. You will be able to converse competently with most social psychologists in their primary research domain, a use skill that is relevant not only in daily life but also when interviewing for a faculty position. And, most importantly, you will be equipped with the background knowledge to forge ahead more confidently with your own research.

Kathleen D. Vohs

Revised edition of Handbook of self-regulation, 2011.

Research, Theory, and Applications

Handbook of Self-Regulation, Third Edition

Francis Eppes Eminent Scholar and Professor of Psychology Roy F Baumeister, PhD

Todd F. Heatherton

Self-regulation refers to the self's ability to control its own thoughts, emotions, and actions. Through self-regulation, we consciously control how much we eat, whether we give in to impulse, task performance, obsessive thoughts, and even the extent to which we allow ourselves recognition of our emotions. This work provides a synthesis and overview of recent and long-standing research findings of what is known of the successes and failures of self-regulation. People the world over suffer from the inability to control their finances, their weight, their emotions, their craving for drugs, their sexual impulses, and more. The United States in particular is regarded by some observers as a society addicted to addiction. Therapy and support groups have proliferated not only for alcoholics and drug abusers but for all kinds of impulse control, from gambling to eating chocolate. Common to all of these disorders is a failure of self-regulation, otherwise known as "self-control." The consequences of these self-control problems go beyond individuals to affect family members and society at large. In Losing Control, the authors provide a single reference source with comprehensive information on general patterns of self-regulation failure across contexts, research findings on specific self-control disorders, and commentary on the clinical and social aspects of self-regulation failure. Self-control is discussed in relation to what the "self" is, and the cognitive, motivational, and emotional factors that impinge on one's ability to control one's "self." Discusses the importance of the concept of self-regulation to general issues of autonomy and identity Encompasses self-control of thoughts, feelings, and actions Contains a special section on the control of impulses and appetites First book to integrate recent research into a broad overview of the area

How and Why People Fail at Self-Regulation

Losing Control

Daniel Read

George Loewenstein

How do people decide whether to sacrifice now for a future reward or to enjoy themselves in the present? Do the future gains of putting money in a pension fund outweigh going to Hawaii for New Year's Eve? Why does a person's self-discipline one day often give way to impulsive behavior the next? Time and Decision takes up these questions with a comprehensive collection of new research on intertemporal choice, examining how people face the problem of deciding over time. Economists approach intertemporal choice by means of a model in which people discount the value of future events at a constant rate. A vacation two years from now is worth less to most people than a vacation next week. Psychologists, on the other hand, have focused on the cognitive and emotional underpinnings of intertemporal choice. Time and Decision draws from both disciplinary approaches to provide a comprehensive picture of the various layers of choice involved. Shane Frederick, George Loewenstein, and Ted O'Donoghue introduce the volume with an overview of the research on time discounting and focus on how people actually discount the future compared to the standard economic model. Alex Kacelnik discusses the crucial role that the ability to delay gratification must have played in evolution. Walter Mischel and colleagues review classic research showing that four year olds who are able to delay gratification subsequently grow up to perform better in college than their counterparts who chose instant gratification. The book also delves into the neurobiology of patience, examining the brain structures involved in the ability to withstand an impulse. Turning to the issue of self-control, Klaus Wertenbroch examines the relationship between consumption and available resources, showing, for example, how a high credit limit can lead people to overspend. Ted O'Donoghue and Matthew Rabin show how people's awareness of their self-control problems affects their decision-making. The final section of the book examines intertemporal choice with regard to health, drug addiction, dieting, marketing, savings, and public policy. All of us make important decisions every day-many of which profoundly affect the quality of our lives. Time and Decision provides a fascinating look at the complex factors involved in how and why we make our choices, so many of them short-sighted, and helps us understand more precisely this crucial human frailty.

Economic and Psychological Perspectives of Intertemporal Choice

Time and Decision

This authoritative handbook reviews the breadth of current knowledge on the conscious and nonconscious processes by which people regulate their thoughts, emotions, attention, behavior, and impulses. Individual differences in self-regulatory capacities are explored, as are developmental pathways. The volume examines how self-regulation shapes, and is shaped by, social relationships. Failures of self-regulation are also addressed, in chapters on addictions, overeating, compulsive spending, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Wherever possible, contributors identify implications of the research for helping people enhance their self-regulatory capacities and pursue desired goals. New to This Edition: * Incorporates significant scientific advances and many new topics. * Increased attention to the social basis of self-regulation. * Chapters on working memory, construal-level theory, temptation, executive functioning in children, self-regulation in older adults, self-harming goal pursuit, interpersonal relationships, religion, and impulsivity as a personality trait.

Handbook of Self-Regulation, Second Edition

Joseph P. Forgas

The ability to regulate and control our behaviors is a key accomplishment of the human species, yet the psychological mechanisms involved in self-regulation remain incompletely understood. This book presents contributions from leading international researchers who survey the most recent developments in this fascinating area. The chapters shed new light on the subtle and often subconscious ways that the people seek to regulate their thoughts, feelings and behaviors in everyday social life. The contributions seek answers to such intriguing questions as: How can we improve our ability to control our actions? How do people make decisions about which goals to pursue? How do we maintain and manage goal-oriented behavior? What happens when we run out of self-regulation resources? Can we match people and the regulatory demands of to specific tasks so as to optimize performance? What role does self-regulation play in sports performance, in maintaining successful relationships, and in managing work situations? The book offers a highly integrated and representative coverage of this important field, and is suitable as a core textbook in advanced courses dealing with social behavior and the applications of psychology to real-life problems.

Cognitive, Affective, and Motivational Processes

Psychology of Self-Regulation

Il raggiungimento degli obiettivi personali - una famiglia felice, la sicurezza economica, una salute di ferro - si basa soprattutto su due fattori: l'intelligenza e l'autodisciplina. Mentre ci sono dubbi sulla possibilità di aumentare il livello di intelligenza, è stato scoperto che l'autocontrollo si può migliorare in modo significativo. Le ricerche hanno rilevato che i principali problemi personali e sociali derivano dalla mancanza di autocontrollo: gioco d'azzardo, shopping compulsivo, scarsi risultati scolastici e lavorativi, abuso di droghe, disturbi dell'alimentazione, cattiva forma fisica. Dopo aver raggiunto il punto di massimo discredito negli anni '60 e '70, quando si celebravano le libertà individuali e l'importanza dell'autostima, oggi la forza di volontà - e la conseguente autodisciplina -, grazie soprattutto alle ricerche di Baumeister, è di nuovo uno dei temi più considerati nell'ambito delle scienze sociali. Volere è potere insegna non solo a migliorare la forza di volontà (che per Baumeister è come un muscolo che può essere rafforzato con l'esercizio), ma anche a conservarla, fissando i giusti obiettivi e monitorando i progressi ottenuti.

La forza di volontà è la chiave di ogni successo e può essere allenata

Volere è potere

The ability to regulate and control our behaviors is a key accomplishment of the human species, yet the psychological mechanisms involved in self-regulation remain incompletely understood. This book presents contributions from leading international researchers who survey the most recent developments in this fascinating area.

Roy F. Baumeister

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