Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.
Daniel Goleman is an author, psychologist, and science journalist. For twelve years, he wrote for The New York Times, reporting on the brain and behavioral sciences. His 1995 book Emotional Intelligence was on The New York Times Best Seller list for a year and a half, a bestseller in many countries, and is in print worldwide in 40 languages. Apart from his books on emotional intelligence, Goleman has written books on topics including self-deception, creativity, transparency, meditation, social and emotional learning, ecoliteracy and the ecological crisis, and the Dalai Lama’s vision for the future.
In psychology, cognitivism is a theoretical framework for understanding the mind that gained credence in the 1950s. The movement was a response to behaviorism, which cognitivists said neglected to explain cognition. Cognitive psychology derived its name from the Latin cognoscere, referring to knowing and information, thus cognitive psychology is an information-processing psychology derived in part from earlier traditions of the investigation of thought and problem solving.
The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why and how humans have qualia or phenomenal experiences. This is in contrast to the "easy problems" of explaining the physical systems that give us and other animals the ability to discriminate, integrate information, and so forth. These problems are seen as relatively easy because all that is required for their solution is to specify the mechanisms that perform such functions. Philosopher David Chalmers writes that even once we have solved all such problems about the brain and experience, the hard problem will still persist.
How the Mind Works is a 1997 book by the Canadian-American cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, in which the author attempts to explain some of the human mind's poorly understood functions and quirks in evolutionary terms. Drawing heavily on the paradigm of evolutionary psychology articulated by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, Pinker covers subjects such as vision, emotion, feminism, and "the meaning of life". He argues for both a computational theory of mind and a neo-Darwinist, adaptationist approach to evolution, all of which he sees as the central components of evolutionary psychology. He criticizes difference feminism because he believes scientific research has shown that women and men differ little or not at all in their moral reasoning. The book was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist.
Rolf Dobelli born in Luzern, Switzerland, is a Swiss author and entrepreneur. Dobelli is the author of The Art of Thinking Clearly (2013). Dobelli is a member of Edge Foundation, Inc., PEN International and the Royal Society of Arts. He is the founder of the World Minds foundation.
Daniel Joseph Levitin, FRSC is an American-Canadian cognitive psychologist, neuroscientist, writer, musician, and record producer. He is the author of four New York Times best-selling books.
Daniel H. Pink is an American author. He has written seven books, five of them New York Times bestsellers. He was a host and a co-executive producer of the 2014 National Geographic Channel social science TV series Crowd Control. From 1995 to 1997, he was the chief speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore.
Gary F. Marcus is an American scientist, author, and entrepreneur who is a professor in the Department of Psychology at New York University and was founder and CEO of Geometric Intelligence, a machine learning company later acquired by Uber.
Ironic process theory, ironic rebound, or the white bear problem refers to the psychological process whereby deliberate attempts to suppress certain thoughts make them more likely to surface. An example is how when someone is actively trying not to think of a white bear they may actually be more likely to imagine one.
"Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, 1863
Some of the research that is conducted in the field of psychology is more "fundamental" than the research conducted in the applied psychological disciplines, and does not necessarily have a direct application. The subdisciplines within psychology that can be thought to reflect a basic-science orientation include biological psychology, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and so on. Research in these subdisciplines is characterized by methodological rigor. The concern of psychology as a basic science is in understanding the laws and processes that underlie behavior, cognition, and emotion. Psychology as a basic science provides a foundation for applied psychology. Applied psychology, by contrast, involves the application of psychological principles and theories yielded up by the basic psychological sciences; these applications are aimed at overcoming problems or promoting well-being in areas such as mental and physical health and education.
This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession is a popular science book written by the McGill University neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin, and first published by Dutton Penguin in the U.S. and Canada in 2006, and updated and released in paperback by Plume/Penguin in 2007. It has been translated into 18 languages and spent more than a year on The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, and other bestseller lists, and sold more than one million copies.
Thinking, Fast and Slow is a 2011 book by psychologist Daniel Kahneman.
Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn is a book by CUNY Graduate Center professor Cathy Davidson published by Viking Press on August 19, 2011.
Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are (2012) is a book by Sebastian Seung. It introduces basic concepts in neuroscience and then elaborates on the field of connectomics, i.e., how to scan, decode, compare, and understand patterns in brain connectivity. The book concludes with musings on cryonics and mind uploading. It was selected by The Wall Street Journal as Top Ten Nonfiction of 2012.
The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature is a popular science book written by the McGill University neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin, and first published by Dutton Penguin in the U.S. and Canada in 2008, and updated and released in paperback by Plume in 2009, and translated into six languages. Levitin’s second New York Times bestseller, following the publication of This Is Your Brain on Music, received praise from a wide variety of readers including Sir George Martin, Sting, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Adam Gopnik. The Los Angeles Times called it "masterful". The New York Times wrote: "A lively, ambitious new book whose combined elements can induce feelings of enlightenment and euphoria. Will leave you awestruck." The Times wrote "Levitin is such an enthusiastic anthropologist, such an exuberant song and dance man, such a natural-born associative thinker, that you gotta love the guy." It was named one of the best books of 2008 by the Boston Herald and by Seed Magazine.
Jamie Smart is a British author and speaker. He is most known for writing CLARITY: Clear Mind, Better Performance, Bigger Results, a book about achieving mental clarity. In 2015, he published his second book, titled Little Book of Clarity: A Quick Guide to Focus and Declutter Your Mind.
Chris Bailey is a Canadian writer and productivity consultant, and the author of The Productivity Project (2016) and Hyperfocus (2018).
A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age is a bestselling book written by Daniel J. Levitin and originally published in 2016 by Dutton. It was published in 2017 in paperback with a revised introduction under the new title Weaponized Lies: How to Think Critically in the Post-truth Era; a new edition was published in 2019 under the title A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking With Statistics and the Scientific Method.
How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence is a 2018 book by Michael Pollan. It became a No. 1 New York Times best-seller.
