This Is America

The case for progress

Glenn C. Altschuler Ph.D.

Taking Stock of Psychology

A survey of breakthroughs that enhance our understanding of cooperation, a behavior that distinguishes human beings from other species.

In Hot Pursuit of Happiness

Although they are in hot pursuit of happiness, psychologists and neuroscientists do not always clarify the degree to which happiness is primarily a cultural or scientific concept.

Cultivating Caring Kids

Being kind makes others happy. It's hard wired in human beings. A "helper's high" activates the brain, stimulating joy. Caring also enhances emotional and physical health.

Group (Die)namics: The Perils of Identity Politics

Despite its benefits, identity politics can—and has—subdivided, stigmatized, and excluded people, with lethal consequences. Tribalism threatens democracy at home and abroad.

Hire Education

As we assess the role of education from kindergarten to college, how much weight should be given to the direct, measurable impact of courses and majors in enhancing job skills?

Working on How You Work

How to enhance job performance including shedding tasks, redesigning work, matching passion and purpose, challenging colleagues, and engaging in discipline collaboration.

Cultural Group Selection

In addition to genetic differences and individual learning, a process called cultural group selection may help explain the ecological success of human beings.

Making Better Bureaucrats

Often deemed rule-obsessed, callous, petty, power-trippers, bureaucrats strive to satisfy the impossible expectations we have of them. They deserve our respect.

When Life is No Longer an Endless Upward Slope

Although there may be no clear and compelling solutions to midlife crises, there are ways in which we can sort through some of the apprehensions and angst of adulthood.

Rich People’s Problems

As they address their lifestyles, affluent urban folks emphasize traditional values. They deal with discomfort about privilege by managing influential affect and not inequality.

The Reign of Error

Driven by the imperative to publish in prestigious journals, psychologists, all too often, are producing studies with weak data, faulty methodologies, and questionable conclusions.

The Perils of Popularity

Likability is conducive to the establishment of satisfying relationships, personal and professional fulfillment, and good health. But popularity grounded in status can be harmful.

Required Summer Reading

In a landmark study of why human beings believe what they believe and do what they do, Robert Sapolsky demonstrates that brains and cultures evolve; genes don't determine anything.

Guilty, With an Explanation

The increasing use of neuroscience in behalf of criminal defendants with "defective" brains raises a perennial question: how do we define responsibility and free will?

Superfandom and Its Contents

A phenomenon fueled by social media, superfandom is exploding. Its implications, however, on individuals and American society, is by no means clear.

Behavioral Addiction

There is little doubt that the Internet is resulting in problematic behavior. But should we treat that behavior as an addiction—and can we define behavioral addiction?

Getting Inside the Heads of Consumers

Why does any product break out of the pack and keep on selling? What is the psychology of hits and the role of social networks through which markets can be reached?

Efficacious Acts of Mind

Humanistic insights can help create an environment that facilitates a person's ability to change his sense of possibilities, change the possibilities, and thereby change himself.

Hubbub in the Brain

The paradigmatic disease of the Age of Discovery, scurvy can teach us a lot about deluded and vivid imaginations, the precision of science, and the structure of meaning.

Monsters

Monsters, real and imagined, take shape from the interplay between the inherent fears of human nature and a specific historical context.

Freud: Conservative Revolutionary

Sigmund Freud was a product of his time. In a new biography, Élisabeth Roudinesco assesses Freud's ideas about rationality, sexuality, and the unconscious.

Why We Obey and Disobey the Law

Responses to law are shaped by rewards and punishments, peer group influence, and internal motivation. They vary by time, place, and culture, and how information is communicated.

Evolutionary Adaptations and Male Mortality

The most social of the sciences, evolutionary biology draws on anthropology, endocrinology, and genetics to understand male aging, including the gender gap in mortality rates.

Being Dead

Professor Andrew Stark searches for ways for those who do not believe in an afterlife to accept mortality. But in the end, he is unable to escape stark psychological realities.

Do Good Fences Make Good Neighbors?

Shaped significantly by American traditions, interactions between neighbors, marked by reciprocity, speaking out, and live and let live, reflect the democracy of everyday life.

Mid 21st Century Birthers

By 2050 more than 50% of pregnancies in the US may well start in laboratories rather than in bedrooms or the back seats of cars. A new book addresses the implications.

Why Rainy Days and Mondays Always Get You Down

Economist Heather Boushey demonstrates that paid sick days, family and medical leave, and child care can empower and support workers - and are also good for the American economy.

Recognizing a Good Psychological Evaluation

Emphasizing that psychological evaluations are not "the last word," Dr. Betsy Grigoriu demonstrates that if they are well done, they can provide guidance about treatment options.

The Journey of Grief

Although grief can be painful physically and emotionally, it can also be beneficial. As we live with loss, we can grow through grief.

A Hard Science

In On Being Human, Jerome Kagan, a pioneer in the field of developmental psychology, demonstrates that researchers err when they attribute more power to genes than to culture.

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