Payback: Why We Retaliate, Redirect Aggression, and Take Revenge Review

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Payback: Why We Retaliate, Redirect Aggression, and Take Revenge ReviewBasically, though neither of the husband-and-wife team of authors uses the phrase, this book is a backgrounder evolutionary psychology done right, with a full course of social psychology, on why people usally act back ... in one of three ways ... when attacked either physically or verbally/emotionally.
The "ev psych done right"? Briefly, the authors note that many animals either retaliate against aggression or else redirect it lower down the food chain while we (and chimpanzees) are the only ones so far known to also use revenge. From there, they look at how this affects/relieves stress, in both humans and other animals.
Then it's on to the human social psychology. They ask how this affects ideas of "justice" and more. The chapter on justice, with its looks at retributive and rehabilitative aspects of justice in light of humans' built-in payback propensities, could become a book by itself were the authors of a mind to do so.
Both in humans and animals, besides stress issues, the authors note aggression, and the various ways of dealing with it, relate closely to social status issues. they suggest this is part of why simple apologies often don't satisfy victims. Rather, whether consciously or not, victims are looking for a restoration of lost status, and perhaps a diminution of the aggressor's status. That doesn't happen after a few words.
Finally, the authors look at various religious traditions, as well as modern psychology, to suggest some ideas for forgiveness, for development of better non-retaliation skills and more.
Finally, don't just take my word for it. Any book with good blurbs by Robert Sapolsky and Frans de Wall ... another "Recommend" right there. So dive in!Payback: Why We Retaliate, Redirect Aggression, and Take Revenge Overview

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Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives Review

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Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives ReviewAs much as we rely on our brains to navigate the complex world before us, anyone who has ever forgotten someone's name, or misread a situation, or made a poor decision in the heat of the moment knows that the brain does not always work as we would want. In his new book `Brain Bugs', neurobiologist Dean Buonomano explores the brain's many pitfalls and mistakes (and how and why it makes them), and also offers up some advice on how we can best manage these so called `brain bugs' in our everyday lives.
Buonomano identifies 3 major sources whence brain bugs originate. The first has to do with the fact that our brains are the product of evolution, and have evolved as they have to answer the specific challenges that we faced in our evolutionary history; therefore, while our brains may be well adapted to perform functions that were particularly important in our survival and reproduction in the environment in which our species evolved, they may not do as well at functions which, though handy, did not figure as prominently in our evolutionary past (remembering names seems to fall under this category). The second source of our brain bugs may be attributed to the fact that while evolution has brought us a host of useful mental abilities that have allowed us to survive and thrive, it is still a rather clumsy process, and as such does not always offer up perfect, or even optimal solutions; thus the mental systems that we have are sometimes prone to error and quirky behaviour (hence optical illusions, the ever raging and somewhat awkward battle between our reason and our impulses, and a number of other interesting effects). Finally, the third source of our brain bugs stems from the fact that while many of the brain systems that we have inherited were well adapted to the environment in which our species evolved, this environment has changed considerably in the recent past, to the point where some of the adaptations themselves may be ineffective and even counter-productive today (our craving of sugary, fatty foods, for instance, would have been very useful in the environment in which we evolved--where starvation was much more of a threat than heart disease, but can be positively disastrous in the modern world, where the opposite is more often the case). For a more elaborate summary of the main argument of the book, as well as some of the juicier details to be found therein, visit my blog: it's called nonfictionforum at the wordpress site, and read the article entitled "On `Brain Bugs'".
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The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us Review

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The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us ReviewJames Pennebaker studies words. Originally interested in the beneficial effect of writing about personal trauma, he and his students developed software to analyze this writing. Their investigation soon expanded to include spoken conversations, emails, political speeches, and other language samples. They discovered that much can be learned from the short "stealth words" that we barely notice, but that make up more than half of our speech. "Pronouns (such as I, you, we, and they), articles (a, an, the), prepositions (e.g., to, for, over), and other stealth words broadcast the kind of people we are."
Pennebaker summarizes his trauma research, noting that "people who benefit from writing express more optimism, acknowledge negative events, are constructing a meaningful story of their experience, and have the ability to change perspective as they write." Searching for reliable linguistic indicators of these processes identified writing style rather than more substantive content words. The resulting LIWC software works well regardless of a text's content.
Using both research findings and representative everyday examples, Pennebaker reviews what he has learned. Topics addressed include gender, status and social class, personality, leadership style, deception, interpersonal attraction, and group solidarity. The author not only presents conclusions from his own research, but links to supporting findings using non-linguistic methods. Specific findings include:
-LIWC correctly identifies an author's gender 72% of the time using writing style. This increases to 76% when content words are included. (Human guesses range from 55 to 65%.)
-On detecting depression: "Sadness generally causes people to focus inwardly. Pronouns tend to track people's focus of attention, and when in great emotional or physical pain, they tend to use I-words at high rates. Sadness, unlike most other emotions, is associated with looking back into the past and into the future. In other words, people tend to use past- and future-tense verbs more when they are sad or depressed compared to other strong emotions."
- "No system has ever been shown to reliably catch liars at rates higher than 65 percent. And even those with hit rates in that neighborhood (including me) have done so in highly controlled and artificial circumstances."
- "Linguistic style matching" across nine categories of function words occurs within the first 15 to 30 seconds of an attentive conversation. It is generally beyond conscious awareness. LSM profiles can predict a number of things better than chance, including whether a "speed dating" couple will pursue a further relationship after their initial four-minute discussion.
Pennebaker clearly wants to share, not just his insights, but the methods used to achieve them. Much of his research was done collaboratively, not just with students and fellow researchers, but with public figures, professionals in other fields, and anyone else with interesting documents. Readers are pointed to web sites that let them experiment with Pennebaker's techniques and a version of his LIWC software is available for more in-depth investigations. An appendix includes "A Handy Guide for Spotting and Interpreting Function Words in the Wild."
This book is an accessible summary of James Pennebaker's work with helpful citations of similar research by others. It serves as a guide to more technical discussions of text analysis through an extensive Bibliography and References section--and pointers to downloadable research reports from the author's web site. Interested readers might also enjoy Roderick Hart's Campaign Talk or one of the other related books the author mentions.The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us Overview

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