The Courage to be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness
Author: Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
ISBN-10: ‎9781501197291
ISBN-13: 978-1501197291
 
APA Style Citation
Kishimi, I. & Koga, F. (2017). The courage to be disliked: The Japanese phenomenon that shows you how to change your life and achieve real happiness. Atria Books.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Courage-Be-Disliked-Phenomenon-Happiness-ebook/dp/B078MDSV8T?ref_=ast_author_mpb
​

Book Description
The Courage to Be Disliked is a unique philosophical dialogue between a young student and a philosopher, unfolding over five nights. Centered on Adlerian psychology, the book explores themes of happiness, freedom, and self-worth through thoughtful conversation and reflection. Adler and Freud were close in age and worked together as equals, unlike Jung, who regarded Freud as a father figure. Though psychology is often most associated with Freud and Jung, Adler is widely recognized as one of the three major figures in the field. He broke away to develop his own theory focused on individual purpose and social connection. Like Socrates, Adler left behind few written works, preferring direct, personal dialogue over writing. This conversational style is reflected in the book’s structure, offering readers an engaging and accessible path into Adler’s psychological philosophy.
 
In the first night of discussion between the philosopher and the student, the philosopher introduces key concepts of Adlerian psychology, emphasizing that trauma is not the cause of our unhappiness or failures. Instead of focusing on past experiences and deterministic cause-and-effect reasoning (etiology), Adlerian psychology centers on teleology—the purpose or goals individuals set for themselves. According to this view, people are not driven by their past but by the goals they choose, and emotions like anger are tools used to achieve those goals. Happiness and unhappiness are choices, and personality—or "lifestyle"—is something one consciously selects, typically around age ten. Changing this lifestyle requires great courage, as life is determined in the present moment, not by past events, which Adlerians argue do not truly exist.
 
In the second night of discussion, the philosopher explains that all problems are fundamentally interpersonal relationship problems. People often believe that achieving a specific goal will make life better, but even when wishes are fulfilled, their inner struggles often remain. Many seek to avoid getting hurt in relationships, but pain is an unavoidable part of human connection, and loneliness can exist even in the presence of others. Adlerian psychology emphasizes that feelings of inferiority are universal, but it's how we respond—through striving and growth—that matters. Inferiority and superiority complexes are unhealthy responses rooted in external validation and comparison, whereas a healthy pursuit of superiority means moving forward based on one's ideal self, not in competition with others. True freedom and happiness come when we abandon competition, embrace our uniqueness, and see others as comrades rather than rivals. Anger, often used as a tool for control, should be recognized as part of a power struggle to be stepped away from. Adlerian psychology encourages two life goals: self-reliance and living in harmony with others, achieved by courageously facing life’s tasks—work, friendship, and love. Avoiding these through blame or distraction creates a “life-lie.”
 
In the third night of discussion, the philosopher introduces the Adlerian principle of "separating tasks," urging the student to discard the need for recognition and stop intervening in others’ responsibilities. Many people seek approval because of a reward-and-punishment upbringing, but true freedom comes from not living to meet others' expectations—just as others are not obligated to meet yours. This doesn’t mean acting selfishly or disregarding others, but rather understanding boundaries: knowing what is and isn't your task. Before acting, one should ask, "Whose task is this?" and then avoid intruding. For example, a counselor can offer help, but whether the client changes is not their task. This mindset transforms interpersonal relationships by relieving the burden of needing to be liked or approved of. Living freely means accepting that some people may dislike you—and having the courage to be disliked is inseparable from the courage to be happy. Adlerian psychology does not promote neglect, but intentional understanding and respect for others’ autonomy.
 
In the fourth night of discussion, the philosopher emphasizes shifting from a self-centered worldview to one rooted in community and social interest. According to Adlerian psychology, the goal of interpersonal relationships is to cultivate a genuine sense of connection and equality—beginning with “you and I” and extending to all humanity. This requires moving away from attachment to self-interest and embracing concern for others, recognizing that we are not the center of the world. The world is not flat like a map but round like a globe, where everyone shares equal footing. In communication, Adlerian psychology rejects both praise and rebuke, as both reinforce vertical, hierarchical relationships. Praise, though seemingly positive, subtly implies superiority and can cause the recipient to believe they lack inherent ability, making them dependent on external validation. Creating even one vertical relationship can shift all interactions into power dynamics. Instead, Adlerian relationships are built on mutual respect, equality, and the courage to contribute to others without seeking control or approval.
 
In the fifth and final night of discussion, the philosopher urges the student to live earnestly in the here and now, grounding their life not in self-affirmation but in self-acceptance—acknowledging one’s limitations while still moving forward. Adlerian psychology teaches “affirmative resignation,” the ability to distinguish between what can and cannot be changed. Relationships are founded not on conditional trust but on unconditional confidence—believing in others without expectation or control, which builds horizontal, equal connections. Contribution to others, not self-sacrifice, is at the heart of meaningful work and a sense of purpose. True happiness stems from the feeling that “I am of use to someone,” though it is not up to us to determine the value of our contributions—that is the task of others. Adler warns against workaholism and the pursuit of “easy superiority,” such as acting out for attention, which masks avoidance and insecurity. Instead, he promotes the courage to be normal and to commit to one’s community through honest, consistent effort. The greatest life-lie, he concludes, is avoiding the present moment—failing to live here and now.
 
In conclusion, Adler teaches that life has no inherent meaning—any meaning must be created by the individual. Finding purpose begins with the courage to live freely, without fear of being disliked or conforming to others’ expectations. This path becomes clear when guided by the principle of contributing to others. As long as you focus on being of use, you won’t lose your way. True freedom is living your own life, and if you want the world to change, that change must start with you.
 
Other Related Resources
Productivity Game: THE COURAGE TO BE DISLIKED by F. Koga and I. Kishimi | Core Message
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFxn40zvl-E

Psychological Concepts and Figures
Alfred Adler
Sigmund Freud
Carl Jung
 
Determinism
Ideal self
Individual psychology
Inferiority
Personality
Rewards and punishments
Self-acceptance
Superiority
Trauma

​APA Style Citation
McRaney, D. (2022). How minds change: The surprising science of belief, opinion, and persuasion. Penguin, Random House, New York, N.Y.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/How-Minds-Change-Surprising-Persuasion/dp/0593190297
 
Book Description
You may know David McRaney from You Are Not So Smart or You Are Now Less Dumb. In his new book, McRaney discusses how we often dig into our beliefs, as well as how these beliefs might be changed. He begins the book by explaining that persuasion is not coercion because in coercion you are acting against your will and contrary to your preferences. In persuasion, you may not be aware of all of your options but still have the choice to reject what a person is trying to persuade you to do. Because of the aspect of free-will, McRaney considers persuasion to be ethical but not coercion. McRaney acknowledges that our beliefs are fluid and can change over time, but they are highly connected to our emotions and identities which may at times make changing a person’s beliefs more challenging. When trying to appeal only to the logical component of a persuasive argument, one will often be unsuccessful because it can trigger an intense emotional or defensive response. A better understanding of where our beliefs come from can in turn help us to understand how persuasion works (or sometimes does not).
 
Because beliefs have strong social connections, challenging a person’s beliefs may make them feel like a part of the out-group. They may feel like they will become alienated from friends and colleagues if they do not agree. McRaney does note that those who are members of diverse communities may be more open to change and new ideas because there may already be a diversity of ideas within their community. Additionally, humane and empathetic exposure to ideas that are different from one’s own, rather than aggressive and polarizing, may lead to more openness rather than digging in deeper to entrenched ideas. McRaney suggests capitalizing on these non-confrontational conversations by asking people to reflect on personal experiences or relating to people they know and care about. Research has demonstrated that this technique has been effective in changing people’s perspective on LGBTQ+ rights by appealing to people’s humanity and belief that all people should have access to certain human rights.
 
Another technique that McRaney identifies as street epistemology attempts to challenge people’s existing beliefs through respectful questioning. This technique gently asks people to consider the reasons behind their convictions and the implications that these beliefs may have for themselves of others. The goal here is to identify any inconsistencies in the person’s thinking rather than to aggressively confront individuals with opposing facts or opinions.
 
McRaney emphasizes that to really change someone’s thinking, they need to believe that the idea of change is their own idea and need to arrive at any potentially new conclusions on their own. He also discusses that shifts in thinking often happen over time. This can be seen with political ideas such as same sex marriage which was taboo a few decades ago but is now well accepted across a broad array of the population. McRaney suggests trying to create environments in which new ideas and opinions are welcome and considered and in which people are open to dialogue with others who may hold opinions different from their own. This may seem particularly challenging in a time of increased polarization, but How Minds Change provides some good ideas to get the conversation started.
 
Other Related Resources
Website for How Minds Change
Next Big Ideas Club
 
Facts Don't Change People's Mind: Here's What Does
 
David McRaney: The Psychology Podcast
 
Time Magazine: October, 2022
How to Actually Change Someone's Mind
 
Deepest Beliefs Lab: University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
The Study of People's Deepest Beliefs and How they Shape Society
 
BBC: The Simple Trick to Change other People's Mind
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Central route to persuasion
Conformity
Group polarization
Groupthink
In-groups
Neurons
Out-groups
Peripheral route to persuasion
Persuasion

​Get the App!
The iScore 5 AP Psych app is now available for $4.99 in the iTunes App Store for Apple devices or Google Play for Android devices.
 
iTunes  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iScore5.Psych&hl=en
Google Play https://apps.apple.com/us/app/iscore5-ap-psychology/id6739144070

App Description 
iScore 5 AP Psych is an app designed to help students achieve high scores on the AP examination. The app makes exam review entertaining and engaging for students. The creators have designed an app that functions as a game, helping students master all the CED vocabulary words for AP Psychology. The app, however, goes beyond merely learning basic vocabulary by challenging students to master multiple-choice questions in levels of increasing difficulty. The questions have been written by experienced AP Psychology teachers and college professors of psychology, all of whom are also AP exam readers.
 
The app's interactive interface is easy to navigate, and students can return to study mode at any point during the game to practice basic vocabulary. The app tracks a running score, enabling students to monitor their progress and gain a deeper understanding of the concepts they will need to know for the exam. Within each level, including the study mode, questions and practice items are organized by units, allowing for targeted study of specific areas in the AP curriculum.
 
The app is also an effective way for students to prepare for classroom unit exams, midterms, and finals. Because it is portable and easily accessible via phone or tablet, students are more likely to review more frequently. Even if students only have five or ten minutes to review at a time, this will result in an impressive increase in knowledge of psychology content due to the spacing effect.

 
Prepare for the AP Psychology Exam with iScore5
 
Study Level: All of the concepts from the updated CED are organized by AP Psychology unit and presented in a flashcard format. The study level is available for review at any level of the game.  

Play Level: Four levels of increasingly difficult multiple-choice questions.

​Level 1:  Vocabulary questions are organized by each of the AP Psychology units and presented in a multiple-choice format. Level 1 provides 20 terms at a time for each unit, so it is recommended that students play this level often, as the app generates a different set of terms each time the student plays.
 
Levels 2, 3, and 4:  These levels contain a set of multiple-choice questions in an AP format for each of the AP Psychology units in the CED. Each level increases in difficulty, ranging from level 2 (general understanding) to level 3 (intermediate) and level 4 (advanced). The correct answer to each question is explained, regardless of whether the student provided the correct response.
 
Practice Exam
Students are given the same amount of time they will have during the official AP Psychology exam (90 minutes) and are provided with their total score. After completing the practice test, they can review the questions they missed and see answer explanations. 

Reset: On the home screen, students can press the reset button to restart the game at any point, allowing them to play as often as they like.
 
The iScore5 AP Psych app provides students with a fun way to review for the exam.  Because all the questions are crafted by expert AP Psychology teachers and university psychology professors, the quality of the questions is very similar to what students will see on the AP exam.

​
 
Get the App!
The iScore 5 AP Psych app is now available for $4.99 in the iTunes App Store for Apple devices or Google Play for Android devices.
 
iTunes (iPhones and iPads) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iScore5.Psych&hl=en

Google Play (Android phones and Chromebooks) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/iscore5-ap-psychology/id6739144070
 
Other Apps Available from iScore5
The iScore5 company also offers review apps for other Advanced Placement topics, including AP United States Government and Politics, AP World History, and AP Human Geography. Visit the main iScore website for information about these other programs: http://www.iscore5.com.
 
Social Media
For more information about iScore5 AP Psych, visit the company website or follow them on Facebook and Instagram.
 
Website:
http://www.iscore5.com/apreg-psychology.html
 
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/iscore5/
 
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/iscore5/

​Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed.

Author: Dashka Slater
ISBN: 978-0-374-31434-7
 
APA Style Citation
Slater, D. (2023). Accountable: The True Story of a racist social media account and the teenagers whose lives it changed. MacMillan Publishing Group, New York, N.Y.
 
Buy this Book 
https://www.amazon.com/Accountable-Racist-Account-Teenagers-Changed-ebook/dp/B0B66JL4DR
 
Book Description
The true story took place in Albany, California, in 2017, a small liberal town in the Bay Area that was roughly 50% White, 25% Asian, and just over 10% Latino, while African Americans made up about 3% of the population. Most of the working population were professionals with college degrees. Many families stretched their budgets to move into the Albany school district, which was known for its high academic standards and smaller school sizes. High school students felt pressure to gain admission to a good college, and generally, they worked hard to earn good grades and high test scores. 
 
A group of junior boys often hung out at a boy named Charles’ house because the boy’s parents were often out or left the boys alone and did not always keep tabs on what they were up to. The boys drank, played video games, and when they were not together, communicated through social media. The girls at the school were typical of many other high school girls, worried about school, fashion, and their social standing. Some of the African American students in the school reported instances of micro-aggressions in which people might not expect that they were in AP classes, or they felt like they had to represent their race, and be the only black student in many of their classes. Charles sometimes made comments about race that the other students and his friends initially took as jokes, and others often made comments to Charles about his Asian background. 
 
While scrolling through Instagram one evening after going to a movie, a group of friends discovered an Instagram account created by Charles and his friends, which made fun of a girl’s hair and skin color. Both girls were African American. Other offensive posts were made about some of the Asian girls in the school, it did not take long for school officials to find out about the account. While Charles and his friends created the account, it was initially set up as a private account intended to roast others and was not anyone’s main account. Since most of the account's followers were in Charles’ inner circle, when things were impolite or racist, many of his friends assumed it was just Charles being himself. As more people began to follow the account, it started to include others who were not part of Charles’ inner circle. 
 
As word got out, the old posts and those that Charles thought he had deleted came out and were shared with others who were mentioned on the account. The posts included derogatory posts about looks, references to lynching, and racist groups/organizations. When the boys, including Charles, found out that people were upset about the account, it was deleted, thinking that was the end of it. But the repercussions were just beginning. Andrea, an African American girl at the school who had been friends with individuals from many racial groups, felt hurt and isolated by the posts because the posts targeted her race. She began to become reclusive and not trust others. 
 
Charles became a pariah and was scorned by those who were the target of the account, as well as by his friends, who had to be cautious about being seen with him. After the police were involved, he eventually found the courage to call his older sister and threatened to hurt himself because he believed that he had lost all his friends. While Charles was in middle school, his father was arrested for possession of child pornography and committed suicide shortly thereafter, and he did not want to further burden his mother with this issue. While Charles had pent-up anger after the events with his father, he never talked about it with others. Eventually, of course, his mother did find out, and the school recommended that he be expelled. 
 
While Charles claimed that this was all a joke, some of those who were the focus of the posts wanted the school to openly discuss what had occurred and prosecute the boys involved as if this were a hate crime. Others just wanted it to go away and continue their high school careers. The parents of the boys who were less directly involved wanted the punishment to reflect their level of involvement, but this was challenging considering the schools no-tolerance policy for these types of actions. Attempts at mediation led to a massive school protest, which ended with the boys being shuttled away from the school due to concerns for their safety. One of the boys had a broken nose after being punched in the face.
 
A church event finally provided a bit of catharsis for those targeted by the Instagram account, and some of the parents on both sides began to communicate. Some of this communication broke down, while in other cases it provided some healing. The boys who were affiliated with the account stayed home and homeschooled together while the girls who were the targets responded in a number of different ways. One cried every day. Another avoided school, especially classes that had account followers. As the school decided what to do, some of the girls found the courage to speak at a board meeting to describe what the account had meant to them and how it was impacting their well-being. 
 
Lawsuits from both sides began about the damage of the account and the right to a public education. Charles was ultimately expelled and lost a scholarship he had previously had to study in France. He moved in with his sister and her boyfriend, found a job and started to address his anger issues. He finished his GED and ultimately moved to Florida when his stepfather gave him an ultimatum to get a job or pay rent. Other students wound up in therapy, some tried to graduate early.
 
Ultimately, the case went before a judge who applied the “Tinker Test” to determine the degree of distraction posed by the Instagram account to the educational environment. It was ruled that the account caused a reasonable disruption since many of the pictures were taken at school, and that the account could not be expected to remain private. 
The school paid lawsuits to those on the account, which in some cases was not quite enough to cover the cost of online school. Others received payouts that covered the cost of their lawyers. These payouts were made to the student who created the account due to the lost time at school and emotional trauma experienced after the account was discovered, while Andrea received a collective payout of approximately $80,000 from the families of those who created the account. She used this money for her tuition at Howard University.
 
Accountable is a difficult book to read, but it covers an important topic about the power of social media to cause real harm, whether intended or not. It also addresses the responsibility of those who follow hateful accounts and the role of schools to mediate the accounts and fallout from the damage done, while also respecting all student’s constitutional rights.

 
Other Related Resources
Author’s website
https://www.accountablebook.com
 
Vanderbilt University: Best Practices for a Successful Social Media Account
Social media accounts
 
Cyberbullying Research Center
Smart Social Networking: 15 tips for teens
 
American Psychological Association
Keeping Kids safe on Social Media
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Dr. Brene Brown
James Flynn
 
Bystander effect
Catharsis
Deindividuation
Diffusion of responsibility
Discrimination
Flynn effect
Genetics
Prejudice
Stereotyping
Stereotype threat 

​Buzz: Inside the Minds of Thrill-Seekers, Daredevils, and Adrenaline Junkies
Author: Kenneth Carter 
ISBN-13: 978-1108738101
 
APA Style Citation
Carter, K. (2019). Buzz: Inside the minds of thrill-seekers, daredevils, and adrenaline junkies. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108751353

Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Buzz-Thrill-Seekers-Daredevils-Adrenaline-Junkies/dp/1108738109

Buzz: Inside the Minds of Thrill-Seekers, Daredevils, and Adrenaline Junkies
Author: Kenneth Carter 
ISBN-13: 978-1108738101
 
APA Style Citation
Carter, K. (2019). Buzz: Inside the minds of thrill-seekers, daredevils, and adrenaline junkies. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108751353

Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Buzz-Thrill-Seekers-Daredevils-Adrenaline-Junkies/dp/1108738109
 
Book Description
In Kenneth Carter’s Buzz: Inside the Minds of Thrill-Seekers, Daredevils, and Adrenaline Junkies, he explores individuals who actively seek intense, novel, and high-stimulation experiences and the personality theory of sensation-seeking. The book includes numerous case studies of high sensation-seeking individuals to illustrate how this personality trait influences behavior, from extreme sports and spontaneous travel to creative expression and career choices.
 
Sensation-seeking theory suggests that people differ in their need for stimulation. While some thrive on high-risk adventures, others prefer stability and predictability. Most individuals fall somewhere in between, balancing novelty with routine. The book describes the Sensation-Seeking Scale (SSS) created by psychologist Marvin Zuckerman to measure this trait, in detail. The test breaks sensation seeking into four key components:

• Thrill and Adventure Seeking – Enjoy physically risky activities like extreme sports, fast driving, or amusement park rides.
• Experience Seeking – Desire for novel experiences, such as travel, trying new foods, or creative exploration.
• Disinhibition – Impulsive, uninhibited behavior, often in social settings or when breaking norms.
• Boredom Susceptibility – Low tolerance for routine and a constant need for new stimulation.

 
Carter connects sensation-seeking to arousal theory, which suggests that individuals are motivated to maintain an optimal stimulation level. High sensation-seekers have a greater tolerance for arousal and actively seek intense or unpredictable experiences. This trait has biological roots, with differences in dopamine regulation making excitement more rewarding. Additionally, a slower-developing prefrontal cortex in sensation-seekers can contribute to impulsivity and risk-taking.
 
Sensation-seeking influences how people approach travel, food, social interactions, and hobbies. While extreme sports are a common outlet for high sensation-seekers, Carter also examines how this trait manifests in less conventional ways.
 
Many sensation-seekers approach travel with spontaneity, favoring unpredictable experiences over structured itineraries. The book introduces a traveler the author refers to as the White Rabbit, who embodies this mindset. Inspired by Alice in Wonderland, she embraces uncertainty, choosing destinations on impulse and using platforms like CouchSurfing to immerse herself in unfamiliar cultures. Rather than planning every detail, she allows chance encounters to shape her journey. Her travel style reflects experience-seeking and disinhibition, as she thrives on the excitement of new environments and the unpredictability of relying on strangers. The book discusses research that links sensation-seeking and independent, immersive travel. The book includes research by psychologists Andrew Lepp, Heather Gibson, and Helen Gilchrist that indicates high sensation-seekers prefer to travel without much preplanning or set itineraries. They value travel that leads to in-depth cultural exploration and first-hand authentic experiences. They’re more likely to travel to unfamiliar places and enjoy the excitement of navigating new environments independently. The travel preferences of high sensation seekers mainly highlight the experience seeking and disinhibition aspects of the personality trait. However, thrill and adventure-seeking may involve physically risky travel.
 
For some, food is more than just a necessity or pleasure. It’s an adventure. They are attracted to unexpected flavors and non-traditional foods, especially ones others might avoid. Rather than eating for routine or enjoyment, they see food as a gateway to new experiences, often embracing unfamiliar cuisines to connect with different cultures. Munir, featured in the book, seeks out rare and intimidating delicacies, from goat brains to baby octopuses, not just for the taste but for the thrill of the experience. For him, trying something new is as rewarding as the food itself. His approach exemplifies experience-seeking—finding excitement in novelty, diversity, and the unexpected. Many sensation-seekers share this mindset, whether by sampling street food in foreign countries, testing extreme spice levels, or seeking out the most unusual dish on the menu. Carter ties this behavior to the broader theme of sensation-seeking, showing how the drive for new experiences extends beyond travel and extreme sports to everyday choices. Food for these individuals is an opportunity to push boundaries, overcome hesitation, and embrace the unknown.
 
Carter profiles several high sensation-seekers who push their limits in extreme environments, demonstrating how this personality trait manifests differently.
Extreme adventurer Timmy O’Neill has built his life around high-risk pursuits, from climbing skyscrapers to kayaking the Grand Canyon. He has summited El Capitan multiple times and even survived a 120-foot fall while climbing in Pakistan. O’Neill describes the appeal of these experiences as facing "the crux"—a moment of intense challenge that demands resolution. For thrill-seekers like O’Neill, fear is not a deterrent but part of the experience. High sensation-seekers often report their most vivid emotional moments when navigating dangerous situations. One climber in Buzz recounted a narrow escape from a rising tide on California’s Lost Coast, while another described climbing an eroding cliff as the ground crumbled beneath him. Instead of being paralyzed by fear, they channel it into focus and adaptability.
 
World-record paraglider and elite ice climber Will Gadd shows the precision and control required in high-risk sports. In 2015, he became the first to ascend Niagara Falls, navigating unstable ice formations and freezing mist following a careful plan. For Gadd, adrenaline is not the goal; it’s a distraction. He believes excessive adrenaline impairs judgment and his success relies on mental discipline, focus, and strategic thinking. This demonstrates that high sensation-seekers are not necessarily reckless but highly skilled at managing risk.
 
High sensation-seekers, especially those who score highly on thrill and adventure seeking, look for ways to test their physical and mental limits. The drive to test their limits, face discomfort head-on, and overcome obstacles motivates them to find extreme challenges. Matt Davis, for example, discovered Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) at 40 through the Warrior Dash, initially seeing it as a fun challenge. However, this single event led him into the world of extreme endurance races like Tough Mudder and the Spartan Death Race. OCR events are more than strength and speed; they require resilience and the ability to navigate grueling obstacles such as crawling under barbed wire, plunging into ice-cold water, and enduring electrical shocks. OCR appeals to sensation-seekers who crave intensity and thrive in high-adrenaline environments. Many OCR racers say these events push them past their limits, changing how they see their strength. Despite the physical costs and risks, they keep returning for the rush of achievement and the bond they form with others—because for high sensation-seekers, the challenge is the reward.
 
Research by Christopher Cronin and colleagues found that individuals involved in extreme sports score significantly higher in experience-seeking and thrill-seeking than those who prefer low-risk activities. Sensation-seeking also plays a role in career choices. While high sensation-seekers often choose fields like emergency response, entrepreneurship, or entertainment, those with lower sensation-seeking tendencies are found more often in structured, predictable careers. Carter emphasizes that sensation-seeking is neither good nor bad, but understanding it helps individuals make informed choices about their activities, careers, and social interactions.
 
Through numerous case studies, Buzz demonstrates that sensation-seeking is more than adrenaline-fueled sports. High sensation-seekers look for novelty, excitement, and self-discovery through spontaneous travel, adventurous eating, creative risk-taking, or extreme endurance challenges. They look to move beyond routine and find unique and stimulating experiences, building their lives around curiosity, resilience, and the thrill of the unknown. This book can be easily applied to high school psychology courses, as it provides real-world applications of personality theory, motivation, and biological psychology. Buzz helps students understand how personality traits influence behavior, decision-making, and risk-taking by examining case studies of high sensation-seekers.
 
 
Other Related Resources
Author’s website
https://www.drkencarter.com/
Are You a Thrill Seeker? Kenneth Carter, PhD (about 2 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1l8_bfPSdc
 
 
Just For The Thrill Of It: An Inside Look At Sensation Seeking Kenneth Carter, PhD TEDx Emory (13 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJbbMasBSGY
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Paul Costa and Robert McCrae
Mihaly Csikszentmihaly
Charles Darwin
Angela Duckworth
Hans Eysenck
Sigmund Freud
William James
Carl Jung
Wilhelm Wundt
 
Adrenaline
Amygdala
Arousal Theory
Belonging
Big Five Personality Traits
Biological Perspective and Sensation-Seeking
Bystander Effect
Cortisol
Delayed Gratification
Disgust Reaction
Disinhibition
Dopamine
Emotional Intelligence
Epigenetics
Evolutionary Perspective and Sensation-Seeking
Fight or Flight Response
Flow State
Grit
Habituation
Heritability Estimates
Id
Interpersonal Intelligence
Intrapersonal Intelligence
Likert Scales
Marshmallow Test
Minnesota Study of Twins Raised Apart
Nature v. Nurture
Norepinephrine
Optimal Level Theory
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Resilience
Sensation-Seeking
Serotonin
Testosterone
Tolerance
Trauma
Vicarious Conditioning
Zuckerman’s Sensation-Seeking Scale
 
 

How Do We Know Ourselves: Curiosities and Marvels of the Human Mind
Author: David G. Myers
ISBN: 976-0-374-60195-9
 
APA Style Citation
Myers, D.G. (2022). How do we know ourselves: Curiosities and marvels of the human mind. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, N.Y.
 
Buy This Book 
https://www.amazon.com/How-Do-Know-Ourselves-Curiosities/dp/037460195X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=132R4UVO8UGHD&keywords=How+Do+We+Know+Ourselves%3A+Curiosities+and+Marvels+of+the+Human+Mind&qid=1685917569&sprefix=how+do+we+know+ourselves+curiosities+and+marvels+of+the+human+mind%2Caps%2C230&sr=8-1
​

​David Myers is well known for his contributions to research and raising awareness for those with hearing differences. He is also known for his best-selling textbooks in both the college and high school markets. Myers has used money from the sales of his textbooks to provide ongoing professional development in the area of psychology and has given countless hours to present at conferences, speak with students and faculty, and generally promote the discipline of psychology. How Do We Know Ourselves: Curiosities and Marvels of the Human Mind displays Myer’s expertise in social psychology and describes the many ways in which psychology shapes our day-to-day life. 
 
The book is organized into short chapters that each feature a singular psychological phenomenon such as the self-fulfilling prophecy, overconfidence, well-being, generosity, and many more. The book is a wonderful introduction to the field and would work well to assign in an introductory class. These small digestible chapters are a great way to introduce students to new psychological concepts and begin to see the impact of psychology in their everyday life.
 
Myer’s endless positivity can be seen throughout the book, although he does not shy away from challenging and timely topics. For example, Myers tackles the issue of increasing social isolation in his chapter titled; Friends or Phones. Myers introduces the word “phubbing” to describe feeling snubbed when talking with their partner because their partner keeps glancing at their cell phone. He describes the “evolutionary mismatch” between close relationships and smartphones and the feeling of isolation people are reporting even when they are around others. People feel disconnected when they are trying to engage with others in a face-to-face setting and people are distracted by their phones or other technology. Myers is careful to point out the many benefits that smartphones have brought, including the ability to video with distant family and friends anytime. In order to enjoy these benefits, while not experiencing or making someone else feel “phubbed,” he recommends some simple modifications for interacting with one another, here are a few:
            –At social events, leave phones in another room.
            –If someone else is distracted by their phone, stop talking until they are finished.
–At a dinner, pile up phones in the center of the table and the first person to reach for their phone pays for dinner.
 
Another timely and controversial topic that Myers tackles is that of the “replication crisis” in the field of psychology. While many would describe this as a problem with methodology in the field, Myers points out that this can also be a positive reflection of the ways in which society has changed since many of these “non-replicable” studies have been conducted. Myers provides a three-point rebuttal to those who are willing to dismiss psychological science because some studies, such as the facial-feedback hypothesis or Marshmallow test, have not found the same results as earlier trials. First, he responds that this is how science works. When we find out new information we adjust and teach accordingly, we need not accept that a study from 40 or 50 years ago will necessarily yield the same results today. Humans and societies are ever-changing, and some results may be reflective of these changing norms. Second, some phenomena are genuine, but situation specific. He uses the example of the facial-feedback hypothesis and reports that people who are being videotaped do not display the same characteristics as those who are not. Third, he claims that what endures are many research studies in the field that have been replicated and that is what we teach. He poses that we can encourage critical thinking, while also being careful not to dismiss the field outright because a few popular studies have not replicated the same way as earlier studies have reported. In some cases, this was fraud or misrepresentation but in others, society has changed for the better.
Myers’ positive outlook provides new light to psychological phenomena yet again. This is a book that can introduce people to the field of psychology or enrich those already entrenched in its research. As always, Myers’ approachable writing style is engaging and enriching.
 
Other Related Resources
WGN News: Interview with David Myers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDyZx4vCQa0
 
Society for the Teaching of Psychology: This is how I teach
https://teachpsych.org/page-1703896/4962005
 
Psych Sessions Podcast: Interview with David Myers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17WFtvZVbr0
 
Three Life Lessons from the Sage of Psychology: Psychology Today
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sex-murder-and-the-meaning-life/202211/three-life-lessons-great-sage-psychology
 
Seize the Moment Podcast with David Myers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOaXdTZ5hd0
 
Next Big Idea Club Podcast
https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/know-curiosities-marvels-human-mind-bookbite/38437/
 
 
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Roy Baumeister
Robert Cialdini
Hans Eysenck
Sigmund Freud
John Gottman
Jonathan Haidt
Daniel Kahneman
Stanley Milgram
David Rosenhan 
Oliver Sacks
Muzafar Sherif
Norman Triplett
Jean Twenge
Robert Zajonc
 
Automatic processing
Availability heuristic
Behavioral genetics
Confirmation bias
Blindsight
Dual-processing
Dunning-Krueger effect
Equity
fMRI
Group polarization
Groupthink
Heritability
Hindsight bias
Implicit bias
Loss aversion
Mere exposure effect
Minority influence
Narcissism
Overconfidence
Partial reinforcement schedule
Representativeness heuristic
Self-disclosure
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Self-serving bias
Similarity
Social comparison
Social facilitation
Social identity
Social inhibition
Spotlight effect

Give and Take: Why helping others drives our success
Author: Adam Grant
ISBN: 978-0-670-02655-5
 
APA Style Citation 
Grant, A. (2013). Give and take: Why helping others drives our success. Penguin Book.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Give-Take-Helping-Others-Success/dp/0143124986
​

​Book Description
Adam Grant discusses the potential benefits and drawbacks of being a giver, matcher or taker. We can all think of individuals who fall into each of these given categories, and Grant sets out to determine how each of these types of individuals fares in a competitive environment. What he finds is somewhat surprising. Grant examines students in the first year of medical school and finds that those who are identified as “givers” wind up at the bottom of their medical school class. In large part, this occurs because they are spending time helping others instead of focusing on their own work. Takers, on the other hand, wind up on top because they are utilizing their most generous classmates to help them prepare for exams. Matchers wind up in the middle as they will help others if they believe that in the future, that favor can be returned. These results may cause you to believe that givers are often taken advantage of to their own detriment. Grant does find evidence that givers make, on average, 14 percent less than takers, who are far more likely to aggressively negotiate their salaries. 
 
Givers however, often have unseen advantages. They are likely to benefit from dormant ties, having done a favor for someone years before, when the giver needs something in return, people are more than happy to help out. Givers do not help others out with this intention in mind, and that becomes clear to others who appreciate their genuine assistance. Givers are willing to provide with no expectation of reciprocity. Matchers, on the other hand, let reciprocity drive their decisions to help (or not) others. Conversely, takers often “kiss up and kick down.” They look for ways that others can help them get ahead and often treat those who cannot give them an advantage with disdain. Samuel Johnson once wrote, “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.” Grant gives the example of the disgraced former CEO of Enron Kenneth Lay, who filled his company’s annual reports with photos of himself. His leadership at Enron became about himself (a telltale sign of a taker) rather than the company and how the company could do good for others and benefit its shareholders. Takers burn bridges over time, looking out only for themselves and seeking out others whom they can use to their own benefit and then discard after those benefits no longer bear any returns. 
 
Famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright is a classic taker. He took advantage of clients, charging them exorbitant amounts of money to build what he wanted, disregarding their requests. He had his associates do most of the work but rarely gave them credit and often did not pay them, believing the opportunity to work with him was payment enough. Eventually, people stopped working with him, and he earned fewer and fewer commissions over time, leaving him nearly destitute. Grant indicates that takers may be geniuses, but givers are genius makers.
 
Givers are happy to rely on the expertise of others and give them recognition without fearing that the abilities of others poorly reflect on themselves. The taker wants to claim all of the credit for themselves and often put others down both privately and publicly. Givers enjoy mentoring, they like finding diamonds in the rough and helping smooth out the edges. Givers are also more likely to demonstrate grit and recognize it in others, they, on the whole, work harder and longer than matchers and takers.
 
There are downfalls to being a giver, and Grant points to the potential for burnout, but givers often thrive when helping others, and the five-minute rule is one that many high-powered givers practice. If helping someone out takes less than five minutes it should be done almost immediately. This short time commitment can serve a great benefit to others and can be executed quickly by the giver. Much research has now demonstrated that helping others is a main factor in increasing happiness, so these small actions serve as a win-win for both the giver and the person they are helping. A bit more work from givers provides benefits for both themselves and others.
 
Givers may be more prone to being taken advantage of, so they must recognize agreeable takers who seem sincere but are only looking out for themselves. Givers often initially give more than they receive but do not seem bothered by this. Once they figure out where to best focus their energies and can identify people who may be taking advantage of their generosity they fare better. In some cases, givers must be more assertive to stand up to unrelenting takers. However, successful givers are happy to stop helping takers when they realize it takes away from helping those who can genuinely benefit and do good for others because of their assistance. Givers advance themselves without cutting others down and find ways to expand the pie so that everyone benefits. 
 
Grant returns to the medical school in the fifth year and finds, at this point, the givers are on top of the class. Over the many years, medical students spend together, they realize whom they can count on for help and who is in it just for themselves. This causes the takers to be rejected and isolated, whereas the givers benefit from their generosity towards others and people are more than happy to return a favor or help them out. Givers create a ripple effect of success around them, and while they may seem to lose out in the short run, it often serves to the advantage of both themselves and others in the long run. It takes time for people to understand what givers have to offer, and Grant likens it to losing the 100-yard dash but winning the marathon. 
 
Other Related Resources
Adam Grant’s Webpage for Give and Take
https://adamgrant.net/book/give-and-take/
 
Give and Take Quiz by Adam Grant
https://adamgrant.net/quizzes/give-and-take-quiz/
 
YouTube Are you a Giver or a Taker? 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyXRYgjQXX0
 
Why should you be a giver?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-jqIoAxEw
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Dan Ariely
Elliot Aronson
Susan Cain
Raymond Cattell
Robert Cialdini
Angela Duckworth
Jonathan Haight
Daniel Kahneman
Daniel Pink
Robert Rosenthal
Herbert Simon
Frans De Waal
 
Cognitive dissonance
Commoner’s dilemma
Common identity
Empathy
Fight-or-flight
Grit
Motivation
Reciprocity
Responsibility bias
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Sunk-cost fallacy
 
 
 
 
 

Cultural DNA: The Psychology of Globalization
Author: Gurnek Bains
ISBN-10: ‎ 9781118928912
ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1118928912
 
APA Style Citation
Gains, G. (2015). Cultural DNA: The psychology of globalization.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Cultural-DNA-Globalization-Gurnek-Bains/dp/1118928911
​

Book Description
How can humanity be alike and different at the same time? Humans express similar fears, challenges, desires, and motivations. However, if we oversimplify with stereotypes or assume that everyone is the same, these assumptions can become problematic. Humans do have different behaviors and preferences, and seeing the individual for who they are is helpful. But exaggerating these differences is also problematic. Author, Gurnek Baines, explores the cultural DNA of eight regions around the world, including North America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East, India, China, Europe, Latin America, and Australia. He explains cultural DNA as “the deeply grained aspects of culture that are replicated over generations rather than biological differences.” While he acknowledges biological factors, he points out the environmental challenges that each culture faced historically. He uses primary data, secondary sources of information, and explanatory research as his evidence. While the discussion of culture can be a sensitive topic, his exploration of the main regions has the reader analyzing culture on a deeper level. He hopes to foster empathy and respect and have readers question their implicit bias.
 
Each chapter of the book explores a particular region more in-depth. Baines describes the founders and their effects. In his “looking ahead” section of each chapter he summarizes the gifts each culture offers the world and some attributes to be addressed so the gifts do not hold them back in a changing world.
 
America- The Change-Makers
Gifts

• Culture of change-makers, embrace the new
• Positivity and optimism, tolerance of plurality, preparedness to take risks, functionality

 
Sub-Sahara Africa: Under Nature’s Shadow
Gifts

• Energy, daily joy, laughter, intellectual flexibility, creativity, live in the moment
• Human relationships are valued, interdependence
• Desire to control the environment, used to nature being extreme and unpredictable

 
India: Beyond this World
Gifts

• Preference for thinking, talking, and perceiving, as well as looking within
• Diversity and nonviolence
• Business strengths in IT, pharmaceutical research, finance

 
Middle East: Ambivalence and Uncertainty in the Modern Age
Gifts

• Intellectualism, openness to learning, respect for knowledge
• Commercial instinct and skills

 
China: The Seekers of Harmony
Gifts

• A striving for balance and harmony
• Introverted

 
Europe: The Equal Society
Gifts

• Deep sense of equality, tolerance of individuality, rigorous and systematic approach to thinking
• Environmental mastery and resulting dynamic creativity

 
Latin America: The Ever-Changing Melting Pot
Gifts

• Challenging power and rebellion; movement to more open, balanced, and transparent systems
• Resourcefulness, flexibility, creativity, collaboration

 
Australia: Mateship in a Far-Off Land
Gifts

• Practical-mindedness, pulling together, incredible resilience in difficult conditions

 
Other Related Resources
Gurnek Bains- CEO and Founder of Global Future
https://ourglobalfuture.com/about-us/

People Matters-Big Interview with Gurnke Bains
https://www.peoplematters.in/article/strategic-hr/big-interview-gurnke-bains-11601
 
Psychological Concepts and Figures
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Carl Jung
Abraham Maslow
Walter Mischel
 

The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business
Author: Erin Meyer
ISBN-10: ‎1610392507
ISBN-13: 978-1610392501
 
APA Style Citation
Meyer, E. (2014). The culture map: Breaking through the invisible boundaries of global business. New York, NY: PublicAffairs.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Map-Breaking-Invisible-Boundaries/dp/1610392507/ref=asc_df_1610392507/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312006100296&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16864645460974634994&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9018727&hvtargid=pla-406163964393&psc=1
​

Book Description
Looking at culture is not always easy and it can be challenging to hear cultural stereotypes about one’s own culture. Stereotypes are also problematic as they can lead to bias and discrimination. There are individual differences in every culture and it is important to not make assumptions about individual traits based on where individuals are from. However, assuming culture doesn’t matter is also problematic. Cultural stereotypes can help reduce our cognitive load. Being aware of cultural differences can improve communication and effectiveness, especially for those involved in international business.  In "The Culture Map", author Erin Meyer shares eight scales that map the world’s cultures and helps create a better understanding of how each culture functions. It is important to note that each graph provides norms for a culture, but individual differences are still important to consider. Individuals can map their own culture on these graphs, and then compare and relate to other cultures.
 
The first scale is about communication. Cultures are classified as having either low-context or high-context communication. Cultures with low-context communication, such as the United States, assume a low level of shared context and want simple and clear communication. Messages are accepted at face value and repetition is valued. Cultures with high-context communication, such as Iran, assume a high level of shared context and do not need explicit communication. Individuals often read between the lines and messages are implied. This difference in communication could be especially important when emailing.
 
The second scale is about evaluating performance and providing feedback. Cultures are classified as either providing direct or indirect evaluation. Cultures that provide direct negative feedback, such as Germany, often upgrade by providing stronger words before or after feedback, such as “absolutely” or “totally.” Negative feedback is blunt and honest and may be given in front of others. Cultures that provide indirect feedback, such as Thailand, often downgrade, by providing words that soften the criticism, such as a “little” or “maybe.” American culture is in the middle of the scale.  Stereotypes about how a culture speaks is often associated with their position on the communication scale as opposed to the evaluation scale. When working with other cultures it is important to take into consideration their position on both the communication and evaluation scales.
 
The third scale is about persuasion. Cultures are classified as either principle-first (deductive reasoning) or applications-first (inductive reasoning). Cultures that use deductive reasoning, such as France, often begin with facts and later support or explain the conclusion as necessary. The preference for a business meeting might be to start with a summary and discussions are practical and concrete in nature. Individuals may want to know why the boss is making a request before moving on. Cultures that use inductive reasoning, such as the United States, often begin with the theory before the facts. The preference for a business meeting would be to start with a theoretical argument before reaching a conclusion. Individuals focus less on the why and more on the how.
 
The fourth scale is about leadership, hierarchy, and power. The leading scale classifies cultures as either egalitarian (lower power) or hierarchal (high power). In egalitarian cultures, such as Denmark, the distance between a boss and their employee is low and the boss is seen as equal. Communication often skips the hierarchy. The boss riding a bike to work may symbolize equality. Many cultures claim to prefer egalitarian, but evidence suggests the opposite. In hierarchal cultures, such as China, the distance between a boss and their employee is high. The boss leads from the front and status is valued. Communication follows a hierarchy. The boss riding a bike to work may cause embarrassment. Americans believe they are egalitarian but often fall more in the middle of the scale.
 
The fifth scale is about decision making. Cultures are classified as either consensual or top-down. Consensual countries, such as Germany, make unanimous group decisions. Top-down countries, such as Nigeria, have decisions made by individuals who are in a position of power. Many cultures that are egalitarian are also consensual decision-makers. The American culture is more of an outlier because it combines egalitarian leadership with top-down decision making. Germany is also an outlier combining hierarchal leadership with consensual decision making. Japan is even more unique with strong hierarchal leadership and very strong consensual decision making.
 
The sixth scale is about trust. Cultures are classified as either task-based or relationship-based. Task-based countries, such as the United States, build trust through business-related activities. Work relationships are quickly formed and easily broken. Personal relationships do not impact business interactions because “business is business.” Relationship-based countries, such as Brazil, build trust through sharing meals and meeting in communal areas. Work relationships form slowly and on a deeper level.  Personal relationships enhance business interactions because “business is personal.” American culture can be tricky to understand on this scale. There are team-building activities and icebreakers, but once the relationship is created often individuals get down to business. American work relationships are often based on function and practicality. Icebreakers are rarer in relationship-based cultures because relationships are built more slowly and on deeper emotional levels. It is important to note that being friendly is not the same as being relationship-based. American are more likely to smile at strangers, but later when they don’t follow through it may be interpreted as being hypocritical.
 
The seventh scale is about disagreeing productively. Cultures are classified as either confrontational or avoiding confrontation. Cultures viewed as confrontational, such as France, view debate as a positive attribute. Open disagreement is seen as appropriate and does not hurt the relationship. Cultures viewed as avoiding confrontation, such as Japan, view debate as negative to the group. Open disagreement is seen as inappropriate and harmful to group harmony. The Unites States fall somewhere in the middle. It is also important to note that emotional expressiveness is not the same as being comfortable with openly disagreeing. For example, Peru is seen as having an emotionally expressive culture, but people strongly avoid open disagreement because it may destroy a relationship.
 
The final scale is about scheduling and perception of time. Cultures are classified as being linear-time or flexible-time. Linear-time cultures, such as Germany, approach projects sequentially. The focus is on the deadline and schedule. Being prompt and having good organization is valued. Flexible-time cultures, such as India, approach projects in a fluid and changing manner. Interruptions are accepted and there are many balls in the air at once. The focus is on flexibility and adaptation. The American culture leans more to linear-time.
 
Remember it is not always about where a culture is located on the scale, but rather its relative location to another culture. Knowing where a culture is mapped on these eight scales is the starting point to successful interactions. But it goes well beyond the awareness of culture. Having more information about how a culture functions may help avoid miscommunication and frustration. The Culture Map also helps to better understand the multi-dimensional ways in which cultures interact with one another. Check out the book for successful strategies for working with people from all different cultures.
 
Other Related Resources
Author's Websites
https://erinmeyer.com/books/the-culture-map/

Harvard Business Review
https://hbr.org/2014/05/navigating-the-cultural-minefield

Global Leadership Network-Video
https://globalleadership.org/videos/leading-others/the-culture-map-2?locale=en

Psychological Concepts and Figures
Kurt Lewin
 
Active listening
Cultural norm
Cultural relativity
Culture
Deductive reasoning
Dialectical reasoning
Emotional expressiveness
Hierarchy
In-group
Low or high-context communication
Out-group
Personality
Persuasion
Relationship-based
Stereotypes
Task-based

Why We Act: Turning Bystanders into Moral Rebels
Author:  Catherine A. Sanderson, PhD
ISBN:  9780674241831

APA Style Citation
Sanderson, C. A. (2020). Why we act: turning bystanders into moral rebels. Belknap Press Harvard University. 

Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Act-Turning-Bystanders/dp/0674241835

Book Description
 
Author Catherine Sanderson, Chair of Psychology at Amherst College, has published over 25 journal articles, several trade books, four university-level textbooks, as well as textbooks for middle and high school students. Her research has received funding from the National Science Foundation and National Institute of Health for her work on topics ranging from social norms, health, parenting, bystander apathy, heroism, health, and longevity.
 
In Why We Act, Sanderson explores the various factors that explain why good individuals engage in bad behavior, fail to act when faced with the bad behavior of others, and how this inaction leads to more bad behavior. She explores bad behavior, including bullying in school and unethical workplace behavior, corporate fraud, political corruption, sexual harassment, and the inaction of bystanders. Her book also explores individuals who are more likely to act, who she calls moral rebels, and what we can learn from their examples.
 
In Part 1, The Silence of Good People the book explores what Sanderson calls the myth of monsters and the various reasons good people engage in bad behavior or fail to intervene. She combines classic research in social psychology (e.g., Philip Zimbardo, Stanley Milgram) and modern neuroscience research to explore the impact of deindividuation, obedience to authority, and gradual escalation of both bad behavior and inaction. Research indicates that gradual escalation plays an important role in unethical behavior due to the foot-in-the-door effect. For example, she cites examples of corporate fraud that began with small unethical actions but slowly built to substantial unethical and criminal behaviors. The author compares this to findings in Milgram’s study that began with small “shocks” and gradually escalated to extremely dangerous ones. This section also explores research on social loafing in various settings. For example, restaurants add a minimum gratuity or tip to bills for larger groups. This is because, left to their own devices, individuals contributing to a group bill are likely to tip poorly because they believe the group will not notice their contribution amount. The text also offers current research on other reasons behind the phenomenon of social loafing, the bystander effect, and diffusion of responsibility, including the cost of helping, ambiguity, connection, and the influence of social groups.
 
In Part 2, Bullies and Bystanders, the author explores these different roles (bully and bystander) in various contexts. For example, the author discusses bullying in schools and how most students who witness bullying do not stand up for the victim but actively watch. It is also disturbing to note that more students join in the bullying than intervene. Neuroscience research partially explains this lack of intervention — deviating from the group activates the same areas of the brain as physical pain. Research has revealed that students who intervene in cases of bullying have social capital (e.g., support from peers or teachers, social skills, or high social status in the group). This may seem counterintuitive, as earlier research found that bullies often have high social status. Researchers believe bullying is a social tool, and only a few students at the very top of the social hierarchy have enough security in their level of popularity to stand up for the bullied students. In addition to high social status, research has found that other factors predict if a student will stand up for bullied students, including high levels of self-confidence and self-efficacy. The section on bullying in schools ends with research on how to reduce bullying in schools. Subsequent sections address bullying and bystander apathy in university and career settings.
 
In Part 3, Learning to Act, the book explores developing moral courage and tactics for becoming a moral rebel. Key characteristics of moral rebels include a lack of social inhibition and high levels of empathy. Sanderson provides a range of examples for resisting the pressures of conformity, social loafing, and the bystander effect. Regarding building moral rebels, the author suggests developing a belief in change and practicing strategies for speaking up as a bystander. She recommends paying attention to the “small stuff” because of the effect of the foot-in-the-door phenomenon on how small acts can easily build to increasingly more unethical responses. She provides tools for building empathy, widening the in-group, utilizing ethical leaders, finding a friend, shifting social norms, and changing the culture.
 
Why We Act provides a research-based explanation for bad behavior and addresses how that research can be used to train individuals to stand up to bullying in schools, online, and in the workplace. By acknowledging the forces that prevent individuals from intervening or engaging in unethical behaviors, it is possible to build strategies for resilience and resistance.
 
Other Related Resources
 
Author Catherine Sanderson’s website
https://sandersonspeaking.com/
 
Author Catherine Sanderson’s TEDx talk – The Psychology of Inaction (17:42)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_Lmf7ZT_04
 
Author Catherine Sanderson - The Psychology of Courage and Inaction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMPDkPU1hps
 
Resources for the Teaching of Social Psychology
http://jfmueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/crow/
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Solomon Asch
Albert Bandura
Carol Dweck
Kitty Genovese
Bibb Latane
Stanley Milgram
Philip Zimbardo
 

​The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness
By Susan Cahalan
ISBN: 9781538715284
 
APA Citation
Cahalan, S. (2019). The great pretender: The undercover mission that changed our understanding of madness. Grand Central, New York, N.Y.
 
Buy the book here
https://www.amazon.com/Great-Pretender-Undercover-Mission-Understanding/dp/1538715287
 

​Book description
In her follow-up to the acclaimed Brain on Fire, Susannah Cahalan tackles the infamous 1970s study “On Being Sane in Insane Places.” In this study, David Rosenhan and seven volunteers checked themselves into mental health care facilities to see if the mental health care workers could determine who had a mental illness from those who did not.  Cahalan begins with a history of asylums and efforts to improve the conditions and treatment of individuals. In some cases, individuals were held against their will in these facilities. She cites that many individuals living in these asylums reported the ease of getting admitted but the difficulty of getting out. Cahalan’s interest in this study stems from her misdiagnosis with schizophrenia and time in a mental health ward, even though her disorder stemmed from brain inflammation. 
 
Calahan recounts the familiar story of the Rosenhan study, in which eight people (three women and five men, including Rosenhan) checked themselves into mental health care facilities reporting that they were hearing the words, “thud, empty, and hollow.” Once the pseudopatients were admitted, they no longer displayed any symptoms and acted normally. Patients spent on average four and one-half minutes per day with doctors. The doctors and staff in many facilities treated patients rudely and often ignored their requests or questions. The pseudopatients had stays that ranged from 17-51 days. While it took the staff a long time to determine that the pseudopatients were sane, many other patients identified the pseudopatients as being a journalist or a professor quickly after their arrival. 
 
The study has often been cited as addressing the problem of labeling people with disorders and the need to develop clear criteria for diagnosis. Rosenhan also wanted to address the need for more time with the staff who work in the facilities.  Cahalan obtained the original files from a good friend of Rosenhan (who died in 2012), Lee Ross.  Ross was a good friend of Rosenhan and a well-respected social psychologist. As the author searched to find more of the pseudopatients, she runs into many inconsistencies in Rosenhan’s notes, which nobody can quite work out. Rosenhan used aliases for all of the patients, and Cahalan quickly determined that Rosenhan was David Lurie. She finds evidence and speaks to a number of those involved with the study, and she is even able to work out who one of the pseudopatients was and get a direct account of their experiences. The others were harder to track down, and in continuing her research, she begins to question if the remainder of the pseudopatients ever took part in the study.  She finds much misinformation in Rosenhan’s notes to demonstrate that many of the pseudopatients were highly embellished if not made up entirely. Callahan is not convinced that all the participants were real. She finds evidence that in some cases, the events and characteristics attributed to one participant were a conglomeration of the experiences of others who in some cases were from outside of the study. She finds credible evidence that one pseudopatient had the characteristics of a good friend of Rosenhan, and that other patients in the wards were depictions of some of his own patients. Rosenhan had a book deal to write a full report about the study but never completed the manuscript and was sued by the publisher. 
 
While she cannot conclude decisively that many of the pseudopatients were falsified, she does create a credible case that this study has some fatal flaws. This book comes as yet another hit to some of the most famously cited studies in psychology and calls into question the legitimacy of one of the most often cited studies in the field of abnormal psychology. 
 
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Alois Alzheimer
Paul Bleuler
Rene Descartes
Dorothea Dix
Sigmund Freud
Emil Kraepelin
Philippe Pinel
David Rosenhan
Benjamin Rush
Carl Wernicke
Philip Zimbardo
 
Alzheimer’s disease
Antipsychotic medication
Asylum
Belief perseverance
Bipolar disorder
Borderline personality disorder
Cognitive behavioral therapy
Delusion
DSM
Lobotomy
MRI scan
Munchausen syndrome
Paranoia
Psychoanalytic psychology
Psychosis
Schizoaffective disorder
Schizophrenia
Trephination
 
Related Resources
 
NPR Interview with Susannah Callahan
https://www.npr.org/2019/11/13/777172316/the-great-pretender-investigates-a-landmark-moment-in-psychiatric-history
 
Susannah Callahan discusses The Great Pretender
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LUqGRa2Iqo
 
Being Sane in Insane Places: Science
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.179.4070.250
 
David Rosenhan on being Sane in Insane Places
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6bmZ8cVB4o
 
 
 
 

Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive our Life
Author: Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D.
ISBN: 978-1-4019-6198-5
E-book ISBN: 978-1-4019-6199-2
 
APA Style Citation
Taylor, J.B. (2021). Whole brain living: The anatomy of choice and the four characters that drive our life. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, Inc.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Whole-Brain-Living-Anatomy-Characters/dp/1401961983
​

Book Description
In 2008, Dr. Taylor who is a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist delivered one of the first TED Talks and quickly her and TED talks became famous. Her first book, My Stroke of Insight, shared her personal experience of a stroke shutting down her brain over four hours. Because of her background as a neuroscientist, she knew what was happening as her stroke occurred. She suffered damage to her left parietal lobe and her brain was silent for five weeks, but then she began her eight-year recovery. During this time, she came to recognize the power of turning on and off her emotional circuitry by choice. She explains, humans are feeling creatures who think rather than thinking creatures who feel. The left hemisphere is commonly identified as being linear and a sequential processor, while the right hemisphere is a parallel processor. The left brain provides our individuality, while the right brain connects us with the collective whole and consciousness of the universe. Dr. Taylor offers the 4-character framework that identifies a left and right-thinking brain and a left and right emotional brain. By utilizing all 4 characters, she proposes whole-brain living as a way to bring about peace. It is important to note that the left and right brains do not function in isolation. In the 70s and 80s, our society went overboard with split-brain studies and right/left brain comparisons, with schools establishing curricula based on these differences. But modern technology has confirmed that both hemispheres are actively participating at all times.
 
Character 1- Left Thinking
This character perceives and processes information according to these attributes: serial processor, verbal, thinks in language, linear, past/future based, analytical, detail-orientated, finds differences, judgmental, punctual, individual, concise, fixed, focus is on me, busy, conscious, structure/order. This character is not always the friendliest or the best self; it often wants to control and conquer the day. While character 1 is effective in leadership, it is also highly critical of its own performance and comparing itself to others. Rules are to be followed and order is necessary.
 
Character 4- Right Thinking
This character perceives and processes information according to these attributes: parallel processor, nonverbal, thinks in pictures, experiential, present moment-based, kinesthetic/body, wholistic big picture, finds similarities, compassionate, lost in the flow of time, collective, flexible/resilient, open to possibilities, focus is on WE, available, unconscious, fluid/flow. This character is the authentic self and the energy within which we exist. It is the part of our brain that is a spiritual being having a physical experience. Studies have found that while meditating or praying, the left-brain centers become silent. Choosing to bring your mind to the present moment and embody a deep sense of gratitude can bring you in touch with your character 4. By learning to set our intention, we can choose to change the way that energy flows. Multiple details can be juggled at the same time, without being paralyzed by fear or a feeling of being overwhelmed. There is no judgement, simply the wonder of life. Children are often more comfortable with their character 4 than adults.
 
Each moment, information is entering your emotional brain. You are being asked “Am I safe?”  and your amygdalae have to make an automatic threat assessment based on how something feels. The left brain uses the wisdom of your past and sounds the internal alarm if there is a threat. The right brain stays in the moment and does not compare to the past. There are two different emotional responses done simultaneously by each side of your brain. Fear is often triggered by the present moment right brain, while anxiety can also be triggered by an experience or trauma from the past. Both emotional characters can throw a fit at any time because our emotional systems never mature. Cell bodies of our emotional brains are present at birth, while the cell bodies of our thinking characters have moved to the cortex when we were born but then take years to interconnect and fully develop.
 
Character 2- Left Emotion
This character perceives and processes information according to these attributes: constricted, rigid, cautious, fear-based, stern, loves conditionally, doubts, bullies, righteous, manipulates, tried-and-true, independent, selfish, critical, superior/inferior, right/wrong, good/bad. This character often is key to one’s physical and mental well-being. Character 2 needs to filter out immediate danger and help us focus our attention. By focusing on the external world, we end up being suspicious and dissatisfied. Some of our deepest emotions exist in Character 2. If you are feeling unappreciated, undervalued, unwanted, or unworthy, your character 2 is activated. While many of these traits are negative, the core of this behavior is due to pain and fear. When you see someone acting like a bully, seeking revenge, being belligerent, using sarcastic humor, or purposely trying to provoke you, then their character 2 is on public display.
 
Character 3- Right Emotion
This character perceives and processes information according to these attributes: expansive, open, risk-taking, fearless, friendly, loves unconditionally, trusts, supports, grateful, goes with the flow, creative, collective, sharing, kind, equality, and contextual. This character sees everything as interconnected and evaluates the bigger picture. To activate this character, feel a deep sense of gratitude, do something fun and be messy. Joy is the underlying feeling. Kids embrace this character while playing on the playground.
 
Dr. Taylor proposes you can learn to know which character is engaged and make conscious choices about who and how we want to be.  The 4 characters become familiar with one another and create healthy relationships among themselves. She created an acronym to help remember the steps of the B.R.A.I.N. huddle for the 4 characters. B is for breathe (pause button), R is for recognize (which is running in the present moment), A is for appreciate (listen to all 4), I is for Inquire (invite all 4 and strategize), N is for navigate (all 4 bring their best game). There are benefits to having a B.R.A.I.N, huddle, which include pushing the pause button, encouraging all 4 characters to voice their opinion, and knowing that a decision was based on the support of all 4 characters. With more experience you can see how the 4 characters play out in the lives of those around you, you can use it as a tool for quick and precise communication, and personal reflection can lead to positive change. With practice when we run a circuit by choice, it becomes stronger. The B.R.A.I.N, huddle can also be beneficial for resetting a connection with others during conflict or rescuing yourself in a challenging moment.
 
To help understand each of the 4 characters, Dr. Taylor uses analogies and modern topics in society. She explains what each character would title this book, what they might say after reading this book, and provides a message to each of your characters. She also relates each character at work and each character at the beach. The examples are easy to follow and there are personal reflection questions after each character description. Each character is connected to the body in how they would manage an illness, fitness, diet, and dieting. All are described as to how they relate to medical professionals and how they age. Then, each character is characterized for their connection with others. Each character is discussed for their role in romantic relationships, partner patterns, and when a relationship goes bad. Dr. Taylor takes the reader through the 4 character’s role in addiction and recovery. She describes her own addiction to tobacco and draws connections between the power of the B.R.A.I.N. huddle, hero’s journey, and 12 step programs. Finally, she looks at the influence of technology over the last 100 years. She explores the 4 characters for the GI generation, Silent generation, Baby boomers, Generation X, Millennials, Generation Z, and Alpha generation.
 
While you may have a dominant character, each of our 4 characters show up in different situations. You are not bound to your past. Everyone has the power to train their brain to easily shift between the characters and build new neural connections. She truly believes that if you are open to the 4 characters, you will have the power to influence your life in a positive way. She goes on to offer several suggestions on how to practice whole-brain living. Dr. Taylor has done her best to make sure readers do not fall deaf to the message that we all are perfect, whole, and beautiful beings. She believes there are two beautiful hemispheres that process information in their own unique way, but by bringing them together into whole-brain living there is a road map to both a deep inner peace and peace in the world. Her first TED talk was about her, but now her message is about you. According to Dr. Taylor, “You have the power to choose, moment to moment, who and how you want to be in the world… The more time you spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of your right hemisphere, the more peace you will project into the world and the more peaceful our planet will be. And I still think that’s an idea worth spreading.”
 
Other Related Resources
TED Talk- My Stroke of insight/Jill Bolte Taylor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU

My Stroke of Insight Website
http://www.mystrokeofinsight.com/

Whole Brain Living with Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor/ The You-est YOU Podcast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LisJ6vFwEk

Neuro Movement Revolution Podcast: Whole Brain Living with Jill Bolte Taylor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aExhhx12pY

The Secret to Using Your Whole Brain with Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor & Jim Kwik
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwwC0Vi3FrU

Learn the Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our LIfe/ Dr Jill Bolte Taylor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhOeaxfdPg4

Good Life Project- Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor/ Whole Brain Living
https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/dr-jill-bolte-taylor-whole-brain-living/

Psychological Concepts and Figures
Carl Jung
Michael Gazzaniga
Roger Sperry
 
Addiction
Amygdala
Archetypes
Attachment
Brain stem
Collective unconscious
Corpus callosum
Egocentric
Fast-track pain fibers
Hemisphere
Hippocampus
Intelligence
Limbic system
Motor cortex 
Multiple personality disorder
Myer-Briggs type indicator 
Nature v. nurture
Neuroanatomy
Neurogenesis 
Neuroplasticity
Parietal lobe
Personality 
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Schizophrenia
Scientific method 
Slow-track pain fibers
Split-brain surgery
Stroke
 

The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing
Author: Merve Emre
ASIN: B07B78TJ11
 
APA Style Citation
Emre, M. (2018). The personality brokers: The strange history of Myers-Briggs and the birth of personality testing. Toronto, ON: Random House Canada.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B78TJ11/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
​

Book Description
Have you been asked to take a personality test to be matched to the ideal college roommate or perfect summer job? If so, perhaps you have taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). But what exactly is this test and should you believe its results? Marve Emre, author of The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing takes the reader on a journey to discover the history of the test and its authors Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers.
 
Katharine was a self-reflective and intelligent young child. At a young age she attended college and met her husband Leyman Briggs. Once upon graduating, they lived in the Washington D.C. area and started their family. Katharine began her experiments and personality testing on her only daughter Isabel. Her living room became a laboratory for baby training. Soon she used her methods on neighborhood children and family acquaintances as well. Her daughter Isabel was a bright young child, just like her mother. Writing under a pseudonym, she wrote a checklist for transforming any child into an obedient and curious one.
 
While in college, Isabel met Clarence “Chief” Myers. Isabel quickly fell in love and they were engaged. They kept their engagement secret, which was scandalous and provided a divide with her mother. Upon President Wilson declaring war on Germany, Chief left college and joined the army. They were married June of 1918 and Chief encouraged her to pursue her passions. During WWI, Isabel recognized that there should be a division of labor so everybody works but at the job fit for them. This would become the goal of the MBTI, which promised to match workers to the jobs they were best suited for based on their needs. Isabel titled her first and only book Gifts Differing. When Chief returned, they moved to Philadelphia so he could attend law school. After Chief was fired from his teaching assistance position, she moved back home with her parents to save money. It was at just the right time; her mother was struggling with depression.
 
Katharine was obsessed with Carl Jung and that is not being dramatic. After ordering his book Psychological Types, she spent the next five years contemplating life and classifying all of her friends and family. His book became her Bible. Jung, the man from Zurich, was her personal God on earth. She wanted to bring Jung’s theories to the masses. She wrote another magazine article titled, “Meet Yourself: How to Use the Personality Paintbox.” It provided sixteen ways to grow from infancy to maturity. Later she created a questionnaire, but first she started with a 3x5 index cards method. If the reader recognized a description on a card, they would move it to the top of the table, only to be replaced if something else spoke to them more strongly. Self-discovery became accessible and even fun! Katharine was consumed and wanted to know more. She wrote a letter to Jung, asking more about intuition. Before Isabel returned home to her husband, Katharine shared her notes on type and child-rearing and encouraged her to use type language to improve her marriage.
 
Katharine turned to dream analysis. She was known for documenting her husband’s dreams when he awoke on her 3x5 cards. She also started a dream study club to analyze women in the neighborhood. She did not think of ethical concerns, which would be drafted two decades later by the APA.  Katharine analyzed other people's dreams and sought Jung's opinion.
 
In 1925, Henry Murray and Jung spent three weeks sailing Lake Zurich talking about life and women. Murray fell in love with Christina Morgan and took her to meet Jung. Once hypnotized, her inner self appeared to Jung in images rather than language.  Eventually, Murray was prompted to create images rather than ask for images when testing personality. Morgan was a skilled artist and created 19 original pictures. Subjects were handed a card and allowed to examine it for 20 seconds before being asked to name the main character. Most subjects then told developed stories. Morgan was the co-creator of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), but was never given credit. Murray went on to be the director of Harvard Psychological Clinic and became the public image of American personality psychology.
 
Both Murray and the Briggs family contributed to WWII and spent time trying to type Adolf Hitler’s personality. Murray was approached by the Office of Strategic Services (OCC) to analyze Hitler from his biography, political speeches, and classified reports. While it was fraught with speculation, Murray felt it was his patriotic duty and essential to the war effort. Katharine was fascinated by Hitler and her husband was asked to join a special advisory committee on the atomic bomb. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Isabel used her mother’s materials to create a questionnaire to match people’s different gifts to different professions. She called her device form A and insisted on putting her mother’s last name first- Briggs Myers Type Indicator.
 
Isabel started to work on her own indicator and was convinced to study normal behavior rather than the abnormal. In 1943, Isabel debuted her finished indicator, but not with her mother’s approval. Katharine did not believe it was necessary to have a questionnaire, when only simple observation was needed. But Isabel wanted the indicator to move on to the masses. The test now had 117 questions and offered two answer options.
 
The first request for the MBTI was from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), led by Murray. They were interested in matching spies to the secret missions that best suited their personalities. The use of Isabel’s indicator meant she now played a role in the war effort. In the 1950’s Isabel’s fortunes rose along with capitalism, but her mother’s dementia was also developing. Isabel sent a letter to Jung sharing form C. Jung had his secretary respond warmly that the type indicator would be helpful to the future of type theory. He died shortly after. Isabel’s clients grew to some of the largest utility and insurance companies in the US. As she became more confident in the indicator, its influence began to spread more. Soon she was using it for admission to medical school. By 1954, she had typed over 5,000 medical students from 45 schools.
 
Isabel attended the first national conference on personality measurement in 1960.  She was not well liked by many members of the ETS staff. However, she was under the wing of president and founder of ETS Henry Chauncey, who was known for administering the SAT to Army and Navy reserve officers and then college admissions. Chauncey wanted to find the test that could do what the SAT did for cognitive testing. He released a memo called “Why the MBTI Seems Promising” with six practical reasons and made several changes to the indicator. First, he had Isabel change the last names so it would not be called BM. He also revised the test and recalibrated the answer keys. Then he switched intuition to N rather than I so as not to get mixed up with introversion. Chauncey’s lengthening and strengthening of the indicator turned the newly debuted form D into a questionnaire of 250 items. He also had the power of the computer, which made it possible to score tests at a much faster rate and collect data. Throughout the early 60s ETS worked to check the validity of each test item.
 
Isabel was hired as a consultant by ETS. For the first five years, she refused to share the answer keys with the statisticians. She thought validating each question was only a delay. During her time at ETS, she had several handlers throughout the transition to form E and F. However, her most challenging mentor was Lawrence Stricker. He was only 27 years-old and younger than her kids when he partnered with her. He prepared a secret document to be provided to the research department that outlined the major problems with the MBTI. Systematically he dismantled her indicator. Isabel was shaken, but returned to ETS being careful to reveal her true feelings. As the ability of validating the MBTI grew more and more impossible, Chauncey was still unwilling to give up. Instead, he shifted his attention to what the test could do without being valid. He believed it had a simple systematic language that any layman could identify with to help better understand their expressed preferences.
 
Isabel’s relationship with ETS was fracturing and she experienced several personal struggles, including her mother’s health declining and both of her children going through a divorce. She had also never asked for royalties on the thousands of tests ETS was selling. It was the mid 60’s when the writing on the wall became clear and ETS had to move on from Isabel and the MBTI. They had invested too much money in the validation and sales were below expectation. But Isabel was hard to shake; she had one last year with ETS. She turned her attention to the nursing field and went out west.
 
In 1968, Katharine died in Philadelphia at the age of 93. Her death, spurred 70-year-old Isabel into action. She spent the next 12 years hoping to preserve the family creation. That year she met Mary Hawley McCaulley, a psychologist at the University of Florida. Mary wanted a test to administer to multiple people that could be scored quickly. She discovered the MBTI in an ETS catalog and sent for a copy. She was skeptical at first, but soon recognized how much her patients reacted to their results. Mary met Isabel and quickly earned her trust. Isabel offered her the scoring key and made copies of the special keys. When Mary returned to Florida, she was determined to start a research center for type. Isabel would often travel to see Mary and help her sort the data. They called the joint venture the “typology laboratory” and would attend conferences together. Over the next decade they gathered 30,000 answer sheets from couples and families. Their hope was to one day create guidelines for couples of all type combinations. By the mid 70s their lab had become a leading center for marriage counseling in the state.
 
When Isabel was 75-years- old, she discovered her daughter dead on the bathroom floor after a surgery. She had lost her mother a few years earlier. It was then that her cancer came back. It was first in her lymph nodes when she was 56, but now it was in her right arm and elbow. Soon it spread to every organ and she was given a year to live. ETS had dismissed her as a consultant in the 60’s, but now they were ending publishing the test altogether. After her daughter’s death, it was Mary’s dedication to type that pushed Isabel. Since she was not an authentic psychologist, she feared the MTBI would die with her. She made it her final mission to find another publisher for her indicator.
 
It was Mary that reached out to Consulting Psychologist Press (CPP) as a last resort. The owners were businessmen and agreed under several conditions. First, the test had to be shortened to be more manageable. Second, Isabel must edit her type descriptions to be more friendly. Finally, she had to give them full aesthetic control. They wanted to make the test more attractive and easier to read. In 1975, Isabel agreed and signed control of the MBTI over to CPP. Soon CPP introduced a self-scoring form G. Her impending death gave up her control, but it also made the test shorter and more appealing to meet the masses.
 
Isabel died on May 5th, 1980 surrounded by her family. The story goes that one of her grandchildren misquoted a favorite line of poetry, to which Isabel drew a breath and corrected him before dying. Later she was cremated and her husband spread her and her daughter’s ashes in the wind. The Center for Applications of Psychological Type (CAPT), a nonprofit research center Isabel and Mary co-founded just before she died is where Isabel’s letters, diaries, and forms A-M are stored. The staff is very protective of her image. In order to receive access to materials, the author had to go through a re-education program for $2,000 and a four-day accreditation session. There were three rules needed to speak type fluently. First, you had to memorize the history of type. Second, you must not refer to the type indicator as a test.  There were no better or worse types. Each of the 16 types were equal and had strengths and weaknesses.  Third, you had to think of personality as innate and fixed. The MBTI became the most popular personality inventory in the world. For those born since the 80s you have probably been introduced to the MBTI at some point: applying to college, applying for a job, office furniture, or even through the American Bar Association. Many assumed that it was two male psychologists that created the indictor. Few know that it was really a mother-daughter team, not trained in psychology that changed the field of personality psychology.
 
Other Related Resources
Author’s Websitehttps://www.merveemre.com/paraliterary
Psychological Concepts and Figures
Anna Freud
Carl Gustav Jung
Charles Darwin
Emil Kraepelin 
Erik Erikson
Gordon Allport
Henry Murray
Ivan Pavlov
John B Watson
Philip Zimbardo 
Sigmund Freud
Stanley Milgram
William James
 
American Psychological Association 
Barnum effect
Behaviorist theories
Bimodality 
Confounding variables 
Creativity 
Cross-sectional research
Culture
Depression
Dream analysis
Empirical approach
Ethical concerns
Eugenics
Experimental design
Genius
Happiness and well-being
Hypnosis
Identity 
Industrial psychology
Innate
IQ 
Laissez-faire parenting
Libido
Longitudinal research 
Natural selection
Nature vs nurture
Obedience 
Percentile ranking
Persona
Personality assessment
Projection
Psychoanalysis
Psychometrics
Reliability
Rorschach inkblot
Schema
Scientific method
Self-actualization
Self-discovery
Self-report
Statistical significance, p values
Stereotypes 
T tests
Tabula rasa
Temperaments
Test-retest reliability 
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) 
Transference 
Type theory
Unconscious 
Validity 

The 57 Bus
Author:  Dashka Slater
ISBN:  9780374303259
 
APA Style Citation
Slater, D.  (2017).  The 57 bus. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/57-Bus-Story-Teenagers-Changed/dp/0374303231
​

​Book Description
Sasha and Richard were teenagers from Oakland, California trying to find themselves in the complicated world of identity, sexuality, friendships, school pressures, and family life.  This book is based on interviews conducted by author Dashka Slater with the individuals involved in an event that would change the lives of Sasha and Richard, their families and friends, and random strangers on the 57 bus that day forever.
 
Sasha was a quirky teenager who loved languages, communism, self-created games, ska-pop-punk bands, and public transport. Sasha was a brilliant academic who attended a small private high school in Oakland. Sasha had recently come out as agender and used the pronouns, they, them, and their. They wore a daily uniform of vest and skirts, bow ties and often top hats, enjoying this gender mash-up.  While Sasha's parents worried about whether they would be accepted, Sasha had a tight-knit group of friends at school and excelled in their classes.
 
Richard attended Oakland High School, which had a diverse population from the many different ethnic neighborhoods in the area. Richard sometimes left school in the middle of the day but maintained a good relationship with the school's truancy officer, Kaprice Wilson. The latter served as a surrogate mother to many of the school's toughest students. Richard asked to be on her caseload and wanted to meet her expectations, and often spent passing periods with other students in her office. Richard's mother was loving but often worked long hours to make ends meet and had not had a chance to finish high school after becoming pregnant at 14. In addition, Richard spent time in a juvenile detention center after he and some of his friends got into a fight on a trip to the beach.  Oakland was a dangerous city, and Richard knew many people who were sent to prison or shot due to the violence in the city.  
 
Both Sasha and Richard rode the 57 bus home after school on a regular basis. Even though Sasha had to make two transfers, they did not care because they were fascinated with public transport.  Sasha often read or did homework during the trip.  One afternoon they had dozed off while reading. Richard and his cousin Jamal were riding the same bus that day.  Jamal handed Richard a lighter after noticing Sasha sleeping and commented saying, "Look at this dude." Sasha was in their usual gear with a gauzy skirt, and Richard, as a prank, held the lighter to the bottom of the skirt. Much to his surprise, the skirt ignited and burst into flames. Richard and Jamal jumped from the bus at the next stop, and some other riders were able to extinguish the flames, but Sasha's legs were badly burned. They had to spend weeks in a burn unit, enduring multiple painful surgeries to graft skin back onto their injured legs. 
 
In his interview with police Richard, stated, "I wouldn't say that I hate gay people, but I am very homophobic." With that statement, Richard was charged with a hate crime and charged as an adult. There was an outpouring of support for Sasha at her school and in the community, and those who were close to Richard were confused as this did not seem to be the actions of the person they knew. Richard went first to the Alameda County Juvenile Hall and seemed to do well there with a lack of distraction and strict schedules. Richard was a 16- year-old junior in high school but was tried as an adult because of his prior record, the identification of this act as a hate crime, and what some saw as a lack of remorse. Richard had written a letter of apology to Sasha and her parents, but they did not receive the letter until years later because of ongoing litigation with the case. Many also believe that race played a role in the harsh sentence applied to Richard's crime.  Each year 250,000 juveniles are tried as adults and lose the privilege of anonymity or the ability to serve their time in a juvenile detention center. Despite Sasha's parents' plea to treat Richard as a minor, they were unsuccessful. However, they did reach out to Richard's mother, who they knew was struggling just as they were. 
 
Eventually, Sasha was back in school and thriving. They were accepted to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  Richard was ultimately sentenced to five years in state prison. Those who knew Richard contend that this was not a hate crime, but a prank gone horribly wrong.  This tragic event speaks not only to the pain and suffering Sasha endured due to the terrible burns on their legs but about the everyday challenges that nonbinary individuals face.  It also speaks to the justice system's flaws that send juveniles into adult prisons rather than juvenile detention centers, often creating individuals who come of age not in a place geared toward rehabilitation but towards punishment. 
 
Other Related Resources
 
Dashka Slater: Author's website
https://www.dashkaslater.com
 
Transgender Resources GLADD
https://www.glaad.org/transgender/resources
 
Online transgender support groups
https://www.verywellmind.com/best-online-transgender-support-groups-4800840
 
The Trevor Project: Organization to support LGBTQ youth
https://www.thetrevorproject.org
 
Live Out Loud: LGBT Youth  Organizations
https://www.liveoutloud.info/resources/lgbt-youth-organizations/
 
IGLYO: Creating LGBTQ youth advocates
https://www.liveoutloud.info/resources/lgbt-youth-organizations/
 
ACLU Factsheet on minors in the legal system
https://www.verywellmind.com/best-online-transgender-support-groups-4800840
 
The Juvenile Justice System
https://www.nap.edu/read/9747/chapter/7
 
Psychological Concepts and Figures
Agender
Cisgender
Discrimination
Gender fluid
Stereotyping
Transgender
 

Personality Isn’t Permanent: Break Free From Self-Limiting Beliefs and Rewrite Your Story
Author: Benjamin Hardy
ISBN: 9780593083314
Bottom of Form
​
APA Style Citation
Hardy, B. (2020). Personality isn’t permanent: Break free from self-limiting beliefs and rewrite your story. New York, NY: Portfolio/Penguin.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Personality-Isnt-Permanent-Self-Limiting-Beliefs-ebook/dp/B07N5H5C4N
 

​Book Description
Who do you want to be? Is your personality determined for you or do you have a choice? Personality Isn’t Permanent: Break Free From Self-Limiting Beliefs and Rewrite Your Story takes you on a journey of self-discovery. The mainstream perspective is that personality is innate and fixed. You are born the person you are and cannot change that. However, many people are at least partially dissatisfied with their personality. Why do so many of us think personality is fixed? We rely on causal determinism, where everything is caused by the past. However, you can make choices, and your social and cultural environments help guide you. Your personality isn’t permanent and you are not bound by your past.
 
The field of personality is filled with myths. One myth includes personality can be split into “types.” The mother-daughter team of Katherine Briggs and Isabel Myers created personality types to help individuals feel comfortable with who they are, but type-based personality tests are unscientific. Instead, leading research focuses on five factors that describe traits along a continuum that also allows for change. Research has supported that personality can be changed with personal effort and goal-setting. Intentional change is challenging, but possible. Another myth is that personality is innate and fixed, stemming from your past. Longitudinal studies have found that personality changes. You will not be the same person as you are now in ten years. Who you want to be is more important that who you are now, so make decisions based on your future rather than present desires. As you grow and develop, your past changes with you. The personal narrative changes with each retelling and new experience. Your present context changes everything, including your memories. Another myth is one must discover their personality. Individuals are often encouraged to find their passion, but perhaps they should focus on finding a need that needs to be filled. Dr. Hardy talks about how passion and motivation should be viewed as effects rather than causes. Passion is the prize, but you will have to invest first. Personality is the same, it is the consequence of your life decisions. Purpose feeds personality and purpose isn’t something you discover, but rather something you choose. Finally, finding your personality will help you find your “authentic” self. This belief allows individuals to only do what is natural or easy to them and take a fixed approach to personality. Instead, your authentic self should be who you want to become.
 
It is your goals that shape your personality. What are your goals? Goals have three sources: exposure, desire, and confidence. Knowledge helps build your goals. Find sources of inspiration, read biographies of those who wish to emulate, pursue your desires, be courageous, and build your confidence. Peak desires happen not by random chance, but with intention. Who is your future self? Build your identity based on who you want to become. Dr. Hardy encourages individuals to set one goal. According to him, “One goal creates focus. Focus creates momentum. Momentum and confidence spill into all other areas of your life.” In order to stay motivated, you need a clear goal, a path to achieve that goal, and the confidence that you can succeed. Commitment to that goal should be 100%! Each decision should be based on helping you achieve that goal and individuals should measure their performance towards that goal. Dr. Hardy believes success at night and in the morning are important to your success. If your willpower is weak at night, then just go to bed. Going to bed after you search social media or watched some Netflix, gets you no closer to your goal. However, an extra hour of sleep does wonders. Get up early and seize the day! The positive effects of gratitude journals have been well documented. Daily journaling can also keep you on track to achieve your goals.
 
According to Dr. Hardy, there are four “personality levers” that shape your future self. These levers include: trauma, identity narrative, subconscious, and environment. Once you understand how they work, you can change your personality. Transform your trauma. The author talks of having an empathetic witness to help transform the trauma into growth. Painful experiences need to be faced rather than avoided. Shift your story and make your identity narrative about what you can attain in the future. Meaning is used to understand our life. You can control the meaning of your experiences by controlling your emotions. You have to get better at identifying and labeling your emotions, and finally letting the negative emotions go. Recognize that memories change. A horrible experience can be turned into a learning experience, and you can choose the story to remember. Dr. Hardy said, “The past is just raw material to work with. It’s entirely malleable and flexible. You get to take the pieces and choose which one’s to discard and how you’re going to frame them.” Be more aware of your subconscious. Emotions and memories are physical. Our body becomes addicted to the repetitive behaviors we do. Some individuals become addicted to stress. When not feeling stressed, they become uneasy. Dig deep and find out what you are hiding within. Some suggestions offered by the author include fasting (i.e., food or technology) and making charitable donations.  Both are connected to happiness and techniques to enhance your subconscious. Finally, pay attention to your environment. Putting yourself in a new environment (i.e., people, places, roles) is a quick way to change your personality. As we age, we tend to stop having “first experiences.” We also tend to stop trying new environments and stick with what is comfortable, which helps strengthen the belief that personality is fixed and stable over time. Your personality is shaped by the culture that surrounds you and the peer group you choose. Learn to control your environment, by picking one that reminds you of your future self. A culture wall, consisting of illustrations representing your beliefs and aspirations, can be used as a visual reminder of who you want to become. Change your computer password to a phrase that is consistent with your future self. Reorganize your surroundings, even your closet, to match your goals. Be selectively ignorant of anything that gets you off track of finding your future self. As Dr. Hardy stated, “Your input shapes your identity, biology, and personality. When you change your inputs, all of these change.” Sometimes it is necessary to have a forcing function, which is a situation that forces you to take action and produce a result. They are designed to force individuals in the direction of growth. Sometimes they can be financial investments, such as paying for a gym membership to inspire positive health habits. Get to know your environment and the impact it has on you, then be strategic about picking an environment that steers your future.
 
Personality isn’t fixed, it is a choice. Your personality isn’t permanent and you are not bound by your past. Instead, the future helps change your past. Dr. Hardy believes, “Your past isn’t happening to you. Your past is happening for you.” It is purpose that drives your personality. Many people put stock in their personality test results, but personality tests are usually self-reported and therefore constantly changing based on current circumstances. Personality tests can provide different scores at different times and even different settings. Personality is so much more than the results on a simple test. You have the power to pick your future personality, it is not permanent. Make it a good one!
 
Other Related Resources
Author’s Website
https://benjaminhardy.com/
 
Author’s YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC07WXGmXVbNrv3VMOp5DvDw
 
Benjamin Hardy, Medium’s Most Popular Write, Shares the Three Keys to Writing Great Non-Fiction
https://www.writingroutines.com/benjamin-hardy/
 
Psychological Concepts and Figures
Abraham Maslow
Carol Dweck
Daniel Gilbert
William James
 
Altruism
Authenticity
Big Five personality traits
Causal determinism
Confidence
Context
Cortisol
Culture
Decision fatigue
Dopamine
Ego
Emotional regulation
Empathetic witness
Enhance imagination
Enneagram
Environment
Fight-or-flight
Fixed mindset
Flow
fMRI
Gratitude
Homeostasis
Ideal self
Identity
Inkblots
Innate
Instant gratification
Labels
Longitudinal
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
NEO Personality Inventory
Peak experiences
Personality
Primary and secondary emotions
Refractory period
Reliable
Selective attention
Selective ignorance
Self-actualization
Self-esteem
Self-report tests
Subconscious
Traits
Trauma
Type A personality
Valid
 

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
Author:  Isabel Wilkerson
ISBN-13:  978-0-593-23025-1
 
APA Style Citation
Wilkerson, I. (2020). Caste: The origins of our discontents. New York, NY: Random House.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Caste-Origins-Discontents-Isabel-Wilkerson/dp/0593230256
​

​Book Description
Isabel Wilkerson's follow-up to her epic first book, The Warmth of Other Suns about the migration of American blacks out of the South, tackles the long history of race in America. It is clear from the title that Wilkerson contends that race in America is comparable to the longstanding caste system in India.  Wilkerson defines caste as "the granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt, and human kindness to someone based on their perceived rank or standing in the hierarchy of order and a justification for the classification of people." Wilkerson describes the eight pillars of a caste system, which provide a sense of entitlement and ingrains this into people's subconscious so that the system perpetuates itself generation after generation.  While the untouchables in India still face discrimination and oppression despite the official eradication of the caste system, so do blacks in America despite many laws and court cases that propose all people are treated equally.  
 
Wilkerson traces the origins of the American caste system back to colonial times in which America invented this system to benefit the dominant caste and then created laws and customs to ensure that the system remained intact. Wilkerson describes that Europeans were initially considered Italian or German, etc. Africans were Igbo or Yoruba, etc. It was not until all of these individuals came to America that they were considered "white" or "black."  Wilkerson describes how Paul Broca tried to use thirty-four shades of skin color to delineate the races but could make no conclusion because of the many variations in skin tones within a given culture. Even the name Caucasian is a socially constructed term.  German medical professor Johann Friedrich studied human skulls. He deemed the skull from the Caucasus Mountains of Russia to be the most beautiful, thereby associating "better" characteristics to white skulls and associating the name far more broadly than it was initially intended. Jane Elliott explains how an arbitrary division can create a sense of superiority or inferiority as she did in her famous Brown-Eyes, Blue-Eyes study.  She first told her class that all of those with brown eyes were lazy and not smart, and within hours they were ostracized by their classmates. 
 
Black bodies became dehumanized, deemed as property in the courts, and inspected as if cattle at slave auctions.  Even the father of gynecology came to his discoveries by conducting unnecessary surgeries on enslaved women without the use of anesthetic. Psychological research from Stanley Milgram to Philip Zimbardo tells us that dehumanization makes violence more likely. Many in the dominant caste even convinced themselves that what they were doing was righteous and "noble." Even after the Civil War, in which enslaved people were free by law, the caste system, as well as a series of Jim Crow laws, made the caste system as strong as ever for African-Americans. This system of subordination was passed through many generations, and those in the dominant caste consoled themselves by placing child-like qualities on African-Americans and believed the system they had created was somehow "just." 
 
Acts that were intended to protect Americans mistreatment at work and provide for a secure retirement with the Wagner and Social Security Acts often excluded black workers who were in the 1930’s still often farm laborers and domestics based on the jobs available to their caste. Even as some African-Americans came to be well-known, certain careers were deemed acceptable such as athletes or entertainers.  Many well-known African-Americans today still fit this profile. These separate worlds created an implicit bias demonstrated by the association of "good" with white dolls and "bad" with black dolls demonstrated by psychology professors Kenneth and Mamie Clark.  This work was used as part of the 1954 Supreme Court case of Brown vs. Board of Education, which demonstrated that separate educational facilities for black and white children were inherently unequal. 
 
Wilkerson sets out to understand how the hierarchy of class continues to oppress African-Americans today. She recounts one instance in which she arrives at a shop to interview the owner as a journalist for the New York Times. He is running late, and Wilkerson looks around the shop until he arrives. When she approaches him, he indicates that he cannot talk because he is late for an interview with the New York Times.  Wilkerson indicates that she is the journalist, but the man cannot seem to understand that a black woman could be the journalist, and he demands to see her credentials. She leaves without the interview but with a clear message that he believes her to be an imposter in her own career.  
 
Wilkerson explains the health implications that come with keeping one's head constantly on a swivel and dealing with the daily slight or blindness that comes with one's placement: the stewardess's expectation that you are sitting in coach, the person who grasps their purse as you pass by, the interview you do not get because of your African sounding name, the low expectations that teachers may place on you because of skin color.  While Wilkerson does provide examples of moving beyond this system to find common ground with those who may hold stereotypes, she provides ample evidence that we are not living in a post-racial America and that the acceptance and understanding of this is a step towards compassion and understanding.
 
Other Related Resources
Authors website
https://www.isabelwilkerson.com
 
Isabel Wilkerson interview with NPR
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/898574852
 
Muck Rack: Articles by Isabel Wilkerson
https://muckrack.com/isabel-wilkerson/articles
 
Armchair Expert: Dax Shepard podcast with Isabel Wilkerson
https://armchairexpertpod.com/pods/isabel-wilkerson
 
Psychological Concepts and Figures
Paul Broca
Kenneth and Mamie Clark
Jane Elliott
Stanley Milgram
Philip Zimbardo
 
Dehumanization
Discrimination
Heritability
Implicit bias
In-group
Narcissism
Out-group
Out-group homogeneity
Prejudice
Scapegoat theory
Stereotype
Stereotype threat
Stockholm syndrome

So You Want To Talk About Race
Author: Ijeoma Oluo
ISBN:  978-1-58005-882-7
 
APA Style Citation
Oluo, I. (2019).  So you want to talk about race. Hachette Book Group, New York, N.Y.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QBQF4GS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
​

Book Description
Given the racial tensions that came to a head after the killing of George Floyd this past summer, demonstrations by many white supremacy groups, and the increasing diversity in the United States, a better understanding of how to discuss the issue in a way that promotes greater understanding is essential.  Ijeoma Oluo provides these tools in So You Want To Talk About Race.  As a social activist, Ijeoma often fielded questions about conversations regarding race that did not go well or addressed questions about how to bring up issues of race with family members, co-workers, or others who have behaved in a racially insensitive way.  Oluo describes her intention to write this book as a toolkit that people can go back to as different issues regarding race come up in their own lives.  
 
Oluo does not suggest that moving towards racial equality will be easy or comfortable. The intention of the book is to find constructive ways to engage in the conversation. Starting the conversation means accepting some facts about racial disparities in the United States:  Someone with a black sounding  (Jamal) name is less likely to be called back for a job interview than someone with a white sounding (Peter) name even when the credentials are equivalent. Living in a "black neighborhood" means that the value of a house will be less than a house in a "white neighborhood," and the person who owns the house is more likely to be paying a higher interest rate on the house's loan. One in three African-American men will spend some time in prison despite committing crimes at the same rate as Caucasian men. Black boys and girls are more likely to face more severe disciplinary actions at school (i.e., referrals, suspensions, expulsion) than their white counterparts for the same infractions. 
 
Oluo makes a clear distinction between race as a social construct and dismisses the idea that social class rather than race is the primary factor in the oppression of African-Americans. A mistake that many will make in conversations about race is that intention drives offense. The first guideline Oluo provides is that if a person of color thinks it's about race-its about race.  The second rule is that it is about race if it disproportionately or differently affects people of color. While there are many acts of overt racism (but not all), it is the daily slights that Oluo says add up to anger and frustration on the part of African-Americans.  She describes being black in the United States as being in an abusive relationship with the world. To her, each time a person assumes she was promoted because of her race, told she is "too loud," or asked if someone can touch her hair is a cut that eventually leads to a huge wound.  
 
Oluo is clear that these conversations are likely to go poorly, at least some of the time, but they are still important to have and continue having. We have to recognize that we might screw it up and have to work on doing things better in the future.  She shares a conversation she had with her own mother (who is white) and assumed that she could understand her children's day-to-day life.  Even though her mother had good intentions, as a white woman she could not understand what it was like to live as a black person.  While Oluo provides many recommendations for engaging in these conversations, a few need particular attention. 

1. Don't make your anti-racism argument oppressive against other groups.
2. When you start to feel defensive, stop and ask yourself why.
3. If you are white, watch how many times you say "I" and "me".
4. Ask yourself, "Am I trying to be right, or am I trying to do better?"
5. Do not force people of color into discussions of race.

 
Oluo goes on to explain privilege and provides some questions for reflection regarding your own privilege. She recognizes her own privilege and challenges and encourages those who want to engage in meaningful discussions to address the advantages they may have experienced because of their gender, race, socioeconomic status, educational background, marital status, etc. 
 
Oluo discusses intersectionality, which addresses the interconnectedness of many social categorizations.  All of us have numerous identities, and each of these contribute to our interactions with the world.  We cannot just look at an individual's race as their only defining factor.  This makes fighting racism more complicated because elements of race are interwoven with other elements of a person. For example, a single black mother is more likely to live in poverty than a white single mother.
 
The book serves as a workbook for tackling tough conversations and provides a space for self-reflection about how each of us can contribute to changing racism one conversation at a time, it also dispels many myths and assumptions about discussions of race but does not shy away from the challenges ahead.  
 
Other Related Resources
Google Talks: Ijeoma Oluo
Discussion with Ijeoma Oluo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnybJZRWipg
 
Author's Website
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnybJZRWipg
 
NPR: Want to have better conversations with your parents about racism? Here's how
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/09/873054935/want-to-have-better-conversations-about-racism-with-your-parents-heres-how
 
The Cavalier Daily: So you want to talk about race
A toolkit for starting tough conversations
https://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2020/07/so-you-want-to-talk-about-race
 
Interview with Ijeoma Oluo
https://www.vox.com/2020/6/9/21285062/ijeoma-oluo-interview-talk-race-book-george-floyd-protests
 
Psychological Concepts and Figures
Discrimination
In-group
Microaggressions
Out-group homogeneity
Prejudice
Stereotyping
 

​Talking to Strangers  
Author:  Malcolm Gladwell
ISBN-13:  978-0-316-53562-5
 
APA Style Citation
Gladwell, M. (2019). Talking to Strangers. Little Brown and Company, Hachette Book Group, New York, N.Y.
 
Buy this Book 
https://www.amazon.com/Talking-Strangers-Should-about-People/dp/0316478520
 
 

​Book Description
Malcolm Gladwell’s latest foray into the investigation of human behavior explores how implicit biases can lead us astray when evaluating someone’s intentions and behaviors. Most of the stories that Gladwell features are those in which something went wrong, and someone was misjudged because of their charisma, work ethic or skin color. Gladwell opens with the story of Sandra Bland, who was pulled over for a simple traffic stop in Houston, Texas in 2015 and in a series of misjudgments and misunderstandings wound up dead in a Texas jail.  Gladwell addresses how Adolf Hitler was able to convince Neville Chamberlin and other world leaders in the 1930s that he was simply trying to unify German speakers who were split apart after WWI, not take over all of Europe. Gladwell addresses judges doling out sentences or determining who will be “high risk” when setting bail. He contends that we often think that we can “see into the hearts of others based on the flimsiest of clues.”
            In most cases, people will default to truth, when we are unsure about others intentions, we assume they are being truthful. When we know a little bit about someone else and especially when that little bit is good, “they went to Harvard,” “they are a hard worker,” we tend to demonstrate the halo effect. When this happens, we assume that people with one positive characteristic also have other positive characteristics. This phenomenon allowed Ana Montes to rise through the ranks of the CIA to become known as, “The Queen of Cuba.”  Montes was hard-working, attractive, and articulate.  When questioned about an American plane that was shot down over Cuba, Montes had answers at the ready, and the CIA agent who interviewed her was satisfied she had nothing to do with the event despite a number of unusual coincidences between her connections in Cuba and the events surrounding the plane incident. As psychological researchers have long known, people are generally terrible at spotting a liar. We are also far more likely to believe that people are telling the truth rather than lying. Tim Levine of the University of Alabama labels this the Truth-Default Theory (TDT).  Ana Montes was a spy for the Cubans and had a direct connection to Fidel Castro, but she fooled her co-workers, siblings, and boyfriend (all of whom were in the intelligence community) for years.  Once people found out that Montes had been secretly funneling information to Cuba for years, they demonstrated hindsight bias and began to question her earlier behavior, but nobody raised questions at the time. As intelligence officers, they felt guilt about not being able to detect a spy in their ranks, and tried to reflect back on events in which they had suspicions about Montes’ behavior.  This rationalization likely helped to alleviate the cognitive dissonance of those who knew and worked with Montes, but Gladwell suggests that we are still likely to default to the truth and believe people even when we should not.
In other examples, Bernie Madoff embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars in a Ponzi scheme, which went on for years undetected despite multiple people raising questions about his returns and the amount of market share he supposedly managed. Jerry Sandusky took advantage of his high-profile status as a football coach to abuse young boys who were in his care.  In other cases, we can assume that someone is lying when, in fact, they are telling the truth. Amanda Knox was accused of killing her roommate in a strange sex triangle gone wrong because she did not act “how a grieving roommate should” in her interactions with police and others after the crime occurred. She spent seven years in an Italian prison until it was demonstrated that a drifter with a record was the true perpetrator. Even then, some Italian officials claimed that Knox was the killer because they had become convinced that she committed the crime, and their belief perseverance would not let them change their mind.
 
One might think that this default to truth is a dangerous way to live as we can be duped into believing people who are lying to us. Levine suggests otherwise, he indicates that in general lies are fairly rare and told by a small subset of people. As such, our default to truth might serve a purpose of social connection because if we questioned everyone’s intentions all of the time, we would often accuse people of lying when they were telling the truth and we would ostracize ourselves for the accusation. We overestimate our ability to judge others behaviors, but according to Gladwell, we may be wrong more often than we think.
 
 
Other Related Resources
Malcolm Gladwell website
https://www.gladwellbooks.com
 
Malcolm Gladwell Revisionist History podcast 
http://revisionisthistory.com
 
Malcolm Gladwell on Taking to Strangers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is8_0cJx82w
 
Malcolm Gladwell on C-Span
https://www.c-span.org/video/?464128-1/qa-malcolm-gladwell
 
 
 
Psychological Figures and Concepts
Charles Darwin
Paul Ekman
Tim Levine
Stanley Milgram
Claude Steele
 
Actor-observer effect
Amygdala
Availability heuristic
Belief perseverance
Cerebellum
Cognitive dissonance
Discrimination
Displacement
Duchenne smile
Frontal lobe
Fundamental attribution error
Halo effect
Hindsight bias
Implicit bias
Just world phenomenon
Overconfidence
Prefrontal cortex
Prejudice
Self-serving bias
Stereotypes
 
 
 

Smoke and Mirrors: An Experience of China
Author: Pallavi Aiyar
ISBN-13: 978-8172238469
ISBN-10: 8172238460
 
APA Style Citation
Aiyar, P. (2008). Smoke and mirrors: An experience of China. India: HarperCollins Publishers.
 
Buy This Book
https://www.amazon.com/Smoke-Mirrors-Experience-Pallavi-Aiyar/dp/8172238460
​

​Book Description
How much do you know about two of the most populated countries in the world? Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in another country? Pallavi Aiyar, author of Smoke and Mirrors: An Experience of China, provided her personal account of being Indian and living in China from 2002-2007. During her stay in China, she taught English at a public university and reported for an Indian newspaper. For five years, she traveled and asked questions to learn more about the history and culture of China. Her story is one that quickly draws in the reader and explores various stereotypes about two of the most populated countries in the world.
 
Aiyar’s story is much more than a travel journal, she shared her observations about politics and culture for both China and India. While comparing the two countries she addressed topics such as language, education, social etiquette, diet, SARS coronavirus, economic partnerships and growth, poverty, infrastructure, technological feats, gender, the elderly, religion, Tibet, and population growth to name a few. She looked at China under the leadership of Mao and the country’s preparation of the 2008 Olympics held in Beijing.
 
While living in Beijing, Aiyar was drawn to the hutong neighborhoods, many of which were being destroyed in preparation for the Olympics. Hutongs are narrow streets hidden between Siheyuans, a traditional building in China with central courtyards and filled with Chinese history and culture. The houses are connected, and people quickly build relationships with one another simply due to the close proximity in which they live. She talked of how the hutongs were a “celebration of the collective over the individual.” Residents also shared a communal toilet, where quite a few impromptu gatherings occurred. The densely packed housing forced people outside to come together in the cold, share gossip, play games, and exercise. Even in the winter, individuals would wake up early and participate in group exercises or dances.
 
After her experience in China, Pallavi is often asked the questions of “Which country is better?” and “If I could choose, would I rather be born Indian or Chinese?” Not an easy question to answer, it becomes even more complicated by the fact the countries mirror each other’s failures and achievements. To understand a little more about the politics and culture of two of the most populated countries in the world, check out Smoke and Mirrors: An Experience of China.
 
Other Related Resources
Book website
https://pallaviaiyar.com/books/smoke-and-mirrors/
 
NYT Book Review: Smoke and Mirrors
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/16/arts/16iht-bookwed.html
 
Beijing Hutong
https://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/beijing/hutong/
https://www.chinahighlights.com/beijing/hutong/
https://theculturetrip.com/asia/china/articles/a-comprehensive-guide-to-beijings-hutongs/
 
Morning Exercises
https://qz.com/996047/the-song-and-exercise-morning-routines-of-modern-chinese-offices-have-revolutionary-roots/
 
Hotel Team Building Exercise
https://observers.france24.com/en/20130118-video-chinese-company-team-building-exercise-youku
 
Mandatory Exercise
https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/08/11/beijing-reintroduces-mandatory-exercises/
 
Psychological Concepts and Figures
Categorize
Collectivism
Homonyms
Identity
Optimism
Phonemes
Stereotypes
Suicide
Well-being