(Part 2) Best psychology books on human behaviour according to redditors
We found 749 Reddit comments discussing the best psychology books on human behaviour. We ranked the 139 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
I’m curious: How many men that say things like this are, in fact, geniuses? This guy is referring to a normal distribution on a bell curve but leaves out the fact that males fall more into the two outliers “exceptional” and “intellectually disabled” than females. Interesting how he doesn’t say, “the intellectually disabled are overwhelmingly male” to offset his comment about men’s intelligence. It’s females who fall more to the center, meaning they are, on average, MORE intelligent than men. So, therefore, the stereotype about sex-based intelligence should be the opposite.
Women are destroying academia? Hmm:
The most comprehensive take is by Earl Hunt. But you don't even have to read up on the subject to blow arguments like this out of the water.
If you aren't already referencing it, Mark Fisher wrote a great piece making pretty much the same argument a few years before his death.
https://theoccupiedtimes.org/?p=12841
Our societies are profoundly alienating, and any attempt to build solidarity among the downtrodden has been crushed before the people threaten the powerful. What is more emblematic of a system that exclusively values capital than the owner class ruthlessly exploiting the labour of the masses, while simultaneously profiting from their misery.
Not all of psychology ignores this problem. The subdiscipline of critical psychology is entirely focused on the social and cultural etiology of disease. Unfortunately, it's far from a mainstream movement. My hope is that as more millennials enter the mental health field, the perspective of those of us who came of age in the shadow of the 2008 financial collapse will push the mainstream to address the role of society in individual distress.
If anyone wants a primer on critical psychology, I'd suggest Towards Psychologies of Liberation. It's not a thrilling read, but it's a great introduction to the field.
You should check out Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes by Steven Pinker. It won't specifically answer your question, but it does talk about how, as a whole, humans are less accepting of violence and are more empathetic than we have ever been. It's a really great read.
I highly recommend the book "Better Angels of Our Nature", it explores the change (and evident reduction) of violence within human society and has a section which compares it to chimp societies.
Edit: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1846140935/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/276-2524639-0418003
Here's the text of the comment:
>Yeah, I'm going to want a source for that claim.
>The consensus in the field is that intelligence and race are not correlated, and that any claimed differences are due to factors correlated to (but not caused by) race, such as access to proper nutrition, healthcare, and education (for more on this, I would suggest [Human Intelligence by Earl Hunt](http://www.Human.com/ Intelligence https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521707811/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_lLbxzbX9PJQXQ)). Controlled for those factors, there is no difference in measured intelligence between racial groups, which makes sense since the genetic differences between racial groups are tiny relative to inter-individual genetic variance. Here's some further reading on the subject.
>Edit: Ooh, lots of downvotes but no replies and no cited sources. Guess people allergic to reality around here. Racism has never has had a grounding in facts, sorry.
And here's a link to the thread.
I’d probably ask the people over at r/askpsychology or r/academicpsychology (not too many Jungians here). But you can always just grab some Jung books and look at the index for “shadow.” I know he discusses the Shadow, Self, Ego, and Animus/Anima in the first few chapters in Aion. Chapter two of that is called “The Shadow.” https://www.amazon.com/Aion-Researches-Phenomenology-Collected-Works/dp/069101826X
At 27 I did. Wish I knew sooner because my life has been improved dramatically by acknowledging who I am rather than who I think I should be (which was largely determined by others' expectations of me).
If you want to deep dive, I'm a huge evangelist concerning the personalityhacker podcast/website -> https://personalityhacker.com/
You can find some INFP-specific podcasts on the site which can validate a lot of things in your life.
There are also some neat books that I think are great introductory/overview material to this area of study that you can probably find at your local library like the ones below. I recommend them to people that I think find MBTI-related study interesting/want another lens to look at themselves with.
(My favorite broad introduction to types. Hardly technical but accurate, I believe)
https://www.amazon.com/What-Type-Discover-Who-Really/dp/014026941X/
(Career focused one)
https://www.amazon.com/Do-What-You-Are-Personality/dp/031623673X
(One that talks about the theory in general but gives interesting suggestions on how to communicate with different types [note to self, look at what you need in conversations under your section to get your needs met conversationally])
https://www.amazon.com/Art-SpeedReading-People-Speak-Language/dp/0316845183/
(One that talks about personality types for children but can still be used to be insightful for yourself)
https://www.amazon.com/Nurture-Nature-Understand-Childs-Personality/dp/0316845132/
(Excellent book about just infps)
https://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-INFP-Survival-Guide/dp/1945796154/
Warning: if you're an INFP and you start looking at information about other types, you will probably be constantly debating in your head as to which type you are. This is normal.
I think the best thing an INFP can do with such self knowledge is to a build a life to get their needs met without being righteously indignant (i.e. a jerk) about it when faced with resistance
> Humans take all sorts of counterproductive behaviors to extremes
I know! I've been saying for years that cults (which are invariably headed by pathological narcissists, often with sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies) use exaggerated versions of normal human behaviors to control their members.
In fact, I just read a fascinating book on the subject - "The Wrong Way Home - Uncovering the Pattern of Cult Behavior in American Society" by Arthur J. Deikman, MD.
It has been updated as "Them and Us: Cult Thinking and the Terrorist Threat" which you can preview here:
https://www.amazon.com/Them-Us-Thinking-Terrorist-Threat/dp/097200212X
I believe it is probably a reflection of the time. I have just read The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence In History And Its Causes by Steven Pinker A long but interesting argument that we are less violent today than we ever have been as species.
The Person and the Situation is a classic and pretty accessible book on social psychology. I don't believe it addresses evolutionary psychology directly (perhaps the newer edition does), but it certainly discusses social / situational influences on behavior vs. dispositional / "innate" / personality-based explanations.
As a side note, I wouldn't necessarily say that evolutionary psychology and social psychology are completely at odds. Evolutionary psych has its critics, some of whom are social psychologists but many of whom are not; likewise, evolutionary psychology does attempt to explain many social phenomena (e.g., altruism), and some social psychologists incorporate evolutionary psych principles into their work (example).
*edit - added link
Could it be Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales? The first chapter is about an aircraft carrier landing, and is called "Look out, here comes Ray Charles."
There's an INFP one
The Comprehensive INFP Survival Guide https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1945796154/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_RvEHDb5T0G15Q
>Can anyone point me to some resources
Sure! Here's 8 blog posts and articles which might help:
What Makes a Character Likable? — Jennifer Ellis - Writing
4 Ways to Write a Likable Protagonist at the Start of His Character Arc
The First Rule of Creating Fictional Characters | Novel Writing Help
Writing4Success - Make Your Main Character Likeable
Jessica Brody | How to Make Unlikable Characters Likable
When Flaws Go Too Far: Avoiding Unlikeable Characters
Fiction University: Five Ways to Create Likable Characters
Six Ways to Make Your Villain Likable – Mythcreants
If you just absolutely hate blogs for some reason, here's a few posts on the topic on reddit:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
There's even a few books, if you like to do things old school:
Write Great Fiction Characters and Viewpoint
Elements of Fiction Writing - Characters and Viewpoint
Writing the Intimate Character: Create Unique, Compelling Characters Through Mastery of Point of View
Creating Characters: The Complete Guide to Populating Your Fiction
and
[Writers Guide to Character Traits](https://www.amazon.com/Writers-Guide-Character-Traits-Edelstein/dp/1582973903]
Hope that helps! :)
James Flynn did, I think he's critical of any article claiming one gender has a statistically higher mean (although variation is higher in males I think)
Also the post I responded to is unsourced, and very much pushing a certain viewpoint.
Yeah - although I think it's more about the situation than the person (Fun social-psych stylized fact: only 30% of individual variance is explained by dispositional attributes).
In the last 5 years, Krugman has basically seen his role as hitting America with the IS-LM stick over and over again. If I had his soapbox, I imagine I'd be doing something similar. People don't understand basic macro, and our policy process suffers from it. IS-LM isn't perfect, but it's a decent teaching tool.
Hopefully we kep moving away from the ZLB, and the Democratic primary for 2016 features someone making a ridiculously protectionist proposal and we get 1990s Krugman back.
Preaching to the choir. The history of psych in the states is a hilarious clusterfuck that keeps on fucking, and you get all kinds of people defending it as this bastion of medicine.
There is some backlash within the field (psychologies of liberation is an amazing book), but there's no external rights movement I know of aside from the usual anti-capitalist stuff highlighting how fucked it is. Zasz and his scientology friends don't count. You have to do your own digging or be privileged enough to get into a grad school.
Bosch still applies
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2010/20101004/bosch.jpg
It is nice, however, to see someone else with the same opinion. Having an entire predatory industry on your back with no one else on your side can be hellish.
It's located here.
> the rest of your statements don't really seem to follow
I was merely commenting on the part I quoted, ie. the idea that (mostly) linguists do "this".
Now, it's probably fair to say that we may have slightly different opinions what "this" actually is.
For me, it was linguists writing articles and selling books supposedly outside of their "expertise", as you called it. I'll shortly explain why I put expertise in quotes. But as far as I can tell, this happens quite frequently and the culprits come from all social sciences. You seem to agree with me on this point.
Now, you say they are justified to do this, because "[they] all study aspects of society or behavior that have political implications." But this strikes as superficial an association as if I'd say "linguists are social scientists, and politics is part of social science".
One might as well ask what qualifies a social scientist like, say, Roy Baumeister to write about topics as diverse as: The need to belong, self-esteem, willpower, "Evil", and gender?
In my experience, such a diversity is quite normal for any active social psychologist with a sufficiently long career. This also holds for some economists, I'd say.
But if expertise were in one's basic education and a single topic, the correct answer would be "nothing", ie. we would need to say that Baumeister is not qualified (and I suspect some feminists said exactly that about his work concerning men and gender).
But all of our lives would be quite boring if that's the case.
Which brings me to the question concerning expertise, and the reason I put it in quotes above. I'm not quite sure a social scientist's expertise is about the topic itself. One might as well argue that it's about the methods one uses to research a topic and contribute to the discussion.
For instance, Steven Pinker's "The better angels" follows the usual habits of scholarship. I'm picking this one because I've read it, and chapter 6 (IIRC) is about a current research interest of mine. And in all fairness, the chapter is a sufficiently good introduction about the causes of immoral behavior, given the time it was written.
Sure, one can complain that one's pet idea wasn't mentioned by Pinker (and many do just that), but that's the usual envy in scholarship concerning popular and successful authors, in my opinion. Ask r/anthropology about Jarred Diamond and watch what happens.
However, ignoring "possibly relevant" works is something we all are guilty of. The amount of "possibly relevant" literature is beyond anyone's intellectual and physical capacity as a writer, not to mention the reader's patience.
To summarize, I think you over-reacted a little bit in your initial comment.
I'm a big fan of the historical or diachronic approach to philosophy, so I would recommend a book like A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Science for a general introduction.
My two favorite books with direct relevance to psychological methods are Cognitive Science: A Philosophical Introduction and Measuring the Mind: Conceptual Issues in Contemporary Psychometrics.
On my own current reading list are:
You might be interested in reading The Biology of Moral Systems (I've just started reading it). It tries to look at how evolution built human morality from ground up, with the specific goal of mitigating existential risk (nuclear war). There are other books like it but most are popularizations; this one seems fairly rigorous.
I'm also starting to think group selection is deeply relevant for human morality. Cf. Ibn Khaldun and this result for iterated prisoner's dilemma: http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2012/07/iterated-prisoners-dilemma-is-ultimatum.html.
edit: maybe Ibn Khaldun is not an example of 'group selection' strictly defined but you get the idea...
> What are some popular books on atheist morals that atheists live by?
Another strawman where one attempts to argue that atheism is anything more than a position/belief in the existence of God(s)? Really lightning?
However, as an atheist, or one that is not tied to a specific Religious text(s) from which to derive morality, I will start with popular books that I have rejected as a source of a sustainable and workable morality against the moral precept of: On a societal basis, reduce actual or potential harm and pain and suffering (evil) and increase actual or potential happiness (good):
For books I recommend to assist one in examining their own morality, with the goal of developing a workable and supportable contempary morality, I suggest:
Lightning, usually I would ask you to address the flip side of your post - you know, so that the post is not a low-effort post where you merely make assertions against atheists or Theists of other Religions; but in this case, I suspect that for this post topic, the question of what reference(s) of where you, a Muslim, gets your morality, the answer is obvious. So, instead, I will ask - How is the Absolute morality/moral tenets, as expressed in the Qur'an and with the required supplementation by subjective Hadith, supportable as "Good" (with your presentation of what "Good" is) and is acceptable as a source of moral guidance in modern society across all actions and circumstances?
Would Goffman's Stigma fit the criteria? Not exactly the same concept, although it depends on how one defines it.
Very Ivan Illichy, and perhaps someone can tell us/remind us what Illich saw as a way forward.
Kevin Kelly, cited in the Amish technology article, also had a chapter called 'The Unabomber was Right.' Cal Newport, whose article I posted, was more optimistic...he thought we could each take the Amish approach, but with our own values instead if those wacky Amish ones ( I think that's a little too individualistic).
I want to look at what is right about the Kelly/Unabomber perspective, then, what's missing.
What's right: if you frame things in terms of technological determinism v. Individual free will, then free will is dead in the water.
What's missing? First, there are specific actors at work here. Facebook is a huge culprit here. God how they lie and manipulate to insinuate themselves, capitalise on the network effects the above article talks about.
I recently read a great book The World Beyond Your Head by Matthew Crawford. One chapter describes how Casino operators justify their existence in terms of patrons' 'free choice' - yet systematically set out to erode said freedom of choice. The vision of punters sitting slack-jawed, pissed-pants, toothpick in the machine so it plays automatically, watching their balance until it runs to zero....it 's dystopian, but it's by design. Executives sit around and think about how to get people to 'play to extinction' this way. And Facebook are the same. The arseholes.
Crawford advocates taking 'free will' out of the debate, and I'd agree. Newport's 'personal values' won't save us, but I think such thing as a community of resistance is possible - you need to have others to connect with to create a kind of reverse network effect. That's why I read Newport, to hear about those people and businesses who are breaking out of the cycle.
There's a neat chapter in WBYH about a business involved in refurbishing and making authentic church organs....and their whole ethic is geared towards, 'what's this going to be like for the folks who come to refurbish this again in 400 years' time'. That's h a great community with an interesting hi-tech/lo-tech combo in the service of collective values...perhaps a better example than Amish. https://www.amazon.com/World-Beyond-Your-Head-Distraction/dp/0374535914
Get the survival guide for ENFPs. It has a whole section on what adult ENFP wish their younger selfs knew.
The Comprehensive ENFP Survival Guide https://www.amazon.com/dp/0692532501/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_4jyWDbV0NM1G4
> The World Beyond Your Head
Thanks for the recommendation! Just checked it out and it seems very intriguing (from what I've scoped out based on the description and reviews).
That's the intent, but it doesn't turn out that way. The average has been increasing steadily.
This guy says the mean is now 130-150 nowadays? http://www.amazon.com/Are-We-Getting-Smarter-Twenty-First/dp/1107609178
Begs the question: is the modern IQ test still relevant / accurate / in need of an overhaul?
There are a lot of pop psychology books that cover at least the social psychological parts of what I learned:
The Person and Situation by Lee Ross and Richard Nisbett
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
What Makes Love Last by John Gottman
Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
(Caveat: I've only read Thinking, Fast and Slow and Nudge, but the others are from well-respected authors/leaders in their fields.)
IMO, the big ones would be Measuring the Mind by Denny Borsboom, Measurement in Psychology by Joel Michell, Frontiers of Test Validity Theory by Keith Markus and Denny Borsboom, in more or less that order. However, all of these books presuppose some prior knowledge of the "canon" of methodology in the social sciences, so I'd say they're appropriate for, say, a grad student who has taken all the introductory classes, or something like that.
Here is the entry about "middleman" minority from The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology which deals with this issue.
https://www.amazon.com/Aion-Researches-Phenomenology-Collected-Works/dp/069101826X/ref=nodl_
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Book_(Jung)
The Owl Was a Baker's Daughter : Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa, and the Repressed Feminine, 1980 Inner City Books. ISBN 0-919123-03-1
Addiction to Perfection : The Still Unravished Bride, 1982 Inner City Books. ISBN 0-919123-11-2
The Pregnant Virgin : A Process of Psychological Transformation, 1985 Inner City Books. ISBN 0-919123-20-1
The Ravaged Bridegroom : Masculinity in Women, 1990 Inner City Books. ISBN 0-919123-42-2
Leaving My Father's House : A Journey to Conscious Femininity (co-authored with Kate Danson, Mary Hamilton, Rita Greer Allen), 1992 Shambhala Publications. ISBN 0-87773-896-3 (PB edition)
Conscious Femininity : Interviews With Marion Woodman, 1993 Inner City Books. ISBN 0-919123-59-7
Dancing in the Flames : The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness (co-authored with Elinor Dickson), 1996 Shambhala Publications. ISBN 1-57062-313-9 (PB edition)
Coming Home to Myself : Daily Reflections for a Woman's Body and Soul (co-authored with Jill Mellick), April 2001 (paperback ed.) Conari Press. ISBN 1-57324-566-6
The Maiden King : The Reunion of Masculine and Feminine (co-authored with Robert Bly), November 1998, Henry Holt & Co; ISBN 0-8050-5777-3
http://smile.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00NB23J66/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?qid=1411482391&sr=8-3&pi=SY200_QL40
Here you go.
If you want to focus on the role of special education then I would say check out The Learning Mystique by Gerald Coles and Stigma: Notes on a Spoiled Identity by Erving Goffman. The first one focuses more on the special education programs over the years while the second concentrates on what the causes and effects are of labeling someone as needing special help (or just identifying them as anything negative). Overall, the second one is a must read if you haven't yet. Sociological gold.
I feel in a case like this, it is likely something along the lines of paranoid schizophrenia. Although violence among psychiatric patients is extremely rare, violent tendencies are more common in paranoid schizophrenia.
A recent review (c.f., Silverstein, Pozzo, Roche, Boyle, & Miskimen, 2015) scholars suggested increased violent tendencies may be due to (1) they tend to have psychotic symptoms (hallucinations, delusions, persecutory ideation) which prompt violent responses; (2) it is extremely common in marginalized populations who tend to have histories of violence; (3) there are a number of brain abnormalities thought to influence systems which manage impulsivity (for example, patients with schizophrenia tend to have increased left-hemispheric fast-wave EEG activity, which denotes overarousal).
However, this may only address the reasons why someone like Evans may have been driven to murder. Being driven to murder is likely a blend of situation specific stimuli interacting with one's own behavioral traits. There are a variety of reasons as to why one may be driven to murder, and even a case similar to Evans would not necessarily denote that other hypothetical individuals involved would even have a mental disorder (I only brought this up as his mental state has been battled in court). Even in the previously cited review, there appears to be no clear distinction between crimes by mental patients and those without any sort of diagnosis, so while this crime may not suggest he has any type of diagnosis, it is perhaps parsimonious to suggest that someone in this situation may have brain abnormalities (to say the least).
One could commit murder for a variety of possible reasons. Likely, in any case, there are a slew of psychological and physiological variables which may result in this behavior. In this one instance, it seems like that Evan's condition may largely be to blame. I would like to state that I do not think this justifies Evan's behavior, nor should it necessarily allow him leniency with the law. But the fact of the matter is that because murder can help for a variety of reasons it may be less useful to ask why (because this really only categorizes murders) and more useful to consider where we draw the line as a society, and how our criminal justice system is to be used to respond to these crimes.
Silverstein, S.M., Pozzo, J.D., Roche, M., Boyle, D., & Miskimen, T. (2015). Schizophrenia and violence: Realities and recommendations. Crime Psychology Review, 1, 21-42. doi: 10.1080/23744006.2015.1033154
If this is a topic which really interests you, I would recommend the following two books:
Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty (Baumeister & Beck)
https://www.amazon.com/Evil-Inside-Human-Violence-Cruelty/dp/0805071652/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1474176881&sr=8-5&keywords=psychology+of+evil
The Lucifer Effect (by the infamous [Stanford Prison study] Philip Zimbardo)
https://www.amazon.com/Lucifer-Effect-Understanding-Good-People/dp/0812974441/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474176881&sr=8-1&keywords=psychology+of+evil
I strongly agree with this. I think what separates a good I/O from a straight statistician is the theory and understanding when and how to apply specific measurement techniques.
I would strongly recommend Denny Borsboom's book Measuring the Mind for a conceptual and philosophical discussion on psychological measurement.
https://www.amazon.com/Measuring-Mind-Conceptual-Contemporary-Psychometrics/dp/0521102847
In addition to 16personalities, I also took tests at personalityhacker.com, truity.com, personalityperfect.com, personalitymax.com, and onlinepersonalitytests.org.
For books, I just started reading Late Bloomers and plan to read Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World and The Comprehensive INFP Survival Guide next.
I also find the blog posts at Introvert Dear and Psychology Junkie very helpful.
EDIT: fixed some of the links
I met my husband during freshman year of college and he was very much like this... the only difference is that he sorta had ambition / goals, but they were a pretty crazy starting point, akin to "I have to be a celebrity artist or it isn't worth me getting a job at all and I should go back and live with my parents". That was the more extreme side of it. But generally, when I asked him what he wanted for his future he would just talk about being an old man who was loved and well regarded by everyone and known for doing something great. But no practical idea of what that great thing would be and no attempt to actually do anything.
I'm not going to lie to you, it was hard. And I suspect the main reason we stayed together during some years was a combination of apathy and shared / familiar neurosis (we later discovered his parents were the exact same flavor of toxicity as my parents). Even when he really realized his problems and was self aware, much of the time he was paralyzed to pull himself out of it. And I stayed because a) I didn't want to give up on the "best of him" and b) he was too familiar a neurosis... we saw the world in the same ways and most people didn't experience things the way we did. Our childhood trauma / alienation was too similar and other people just didn't talk to each other the way we did.
So I did it. I did what everyone told me not to and I followed him into hell... and after burning away quite a few layers of stupid, youthful toxicity, we ended up coming out of it. We have a really strong relationship. And we're always improving (that's our motto essentially), and when one of us is falling back to old ways, the other is both sympathetic but also doesn't allow it to go on for too long.
We've been together 26 years and have a beautiful and successful 12 year old. And we hope to keep improving and growing.
But it really wasn't easy, and there were no guarantees. So I'm going to pose it the way famous writers and directors advise young people about going into their industry: if you can do anything else, do that. But I knew, this was who I wanted. I loved him and despite the scary woods he was lost in, he loved me. So we fought and it was worth it.
But expect everything you do to be delayed. We didn't get engaged until we'd been together 6 years (living together for 2). Didn't even try for kids until our early 30s and once we had our daughter he was in a crisis for much of the first couple years because how can he be a dad when he still feels like a 9 year old. So he wasn't helpful with the baby. He's an awesome dad with the preteen and he's getting better all the time.
At the end of the day, he put in the time and I put in the time and we succeeded. He's kicking butt in leadership at work, gives us as much of him as he can, and still puts in time working on his creative dream (it's just that needs to take a back seat to work and us sometimes). And our 40s have just been spectacular; we've built a great life together. So it can be done. But again, no guarantees.
Things I would suggest if you want to consider this path:
Very long story short, these are charismatic men whose development is frozen in adolescence. They seem exciting, but have very real problems with learning how to be adults and they very much resent the regularity of an occupation. It is a psychological journey to contend with it. The book discusses it in depth (sorry, it's not an easy self-help, but more like an academic lecture) and you can get an understanding of the nature of the problem and what kind of solution strategies can help.
And if you are talking enough truth with him, he may eventually want to read it. It had a profound effect on my husband. He had already started down the path of trying to improve, but this really helped him understand why he saw things so differently from other men.
Watch this
and read this
It’s possible I’ve seen others mention their results are different based on mood. So the online tests aren’t that great.
I became more confident in my result after reading some books about my type.
Such as : https://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-INFP-Survival-Guide/dp/1945796154/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539050811&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=infp+survival+guide&dpPl=1&dpID=412knVQuKlL&ref=plSrch
Iam no parent but I found this book to also be interesting.
https://www.amazon.com/Nurture-Nature-Understand-Childs-Personality/dp/0316845132/ref=mp_s_a_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539050902&sr=8-1-fkmr1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=nurture+by+nature+mbti
Iam not sure how accurate MBTI is, but I do know it can be an effective tool for introspection.
If you're doing something focused on characters, I can't recommend Edelstein's Guide to Character Traits enough. It's like a reference manual or dictionary on creating believable characters. Helps you add depth to your heroes and villains alike.
> I'm pretty sure we should leave that distinction to actual, trained professionals.
this is a terrible idea if you're expecting to mete out justice based on that metric. unfortunately, this is a technocratic stance with all of the bad shit that goes along with it. trained mental health professionals have massive blind spots. If you're poor, an anti-authoritarian, queer, an immigrant, etc. you are going to have serious problems trying to find a professional who actually understands these issues. Add to that that diagnosis is a subjective process. You could literally see 10 different professionals and get 10 different diagnoses.
one common example of some of these problems is that a ton of them claim to work with "lgbt issues," but when it gets right down to it, they have no fucking clue what they're doing. that honestly usually just means they read a few chapters about lgbt issues back in school and they're not completely grossed out by queer people.
punishment should not be the goal anyway. you're thinking completely like a liberal here. what we need is community-oriented methods of repairing social wounds. leaving it up to a doctor who sees you maybe once in order to determine whether you should be punished (just...why?) is totally nonsensical.
sometimes people are too great a threat to society so you deal with them, like nazis. most of the time this isn't the case and there are ways of mending wounds. Punishing people does absolutely nothing. there are books written about communistic means of dealing with social debts and ills and reformulating systems of justice--and some of these are from a psychological perspective. I recommend this book personally. it primarily deals with psychology, but it does get into leftist ideas of justice from a stance that isn't completely derived from liberal ideas of punishment and pathology. Foucault also wrote extensively on the subject.
the justice system is shit. recreating it is idiotic.
HBD
Darwin’s Enemies on the Left and Right Part 1, Part 2 (Blog Post)*
The History and Geography of Human Genes (Abridged edition) – Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza
The 10,000 Year Explosion – Gregory Cochrane
Race, Evolution, and Behavior – Rushton
Why Race Matters – Michael Levin
****
Intelligence and Mind
The Bell Curve – Charles Murray
The Global Bell Curve – Richard Lynn
Human Intelligence – Earl Hunt
Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence – Robert Sternberg
A Conflict of Visions – Thomas Sowell
The Moral Animal – Robert Wright
The Blank Slate – Stephen Pinker
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature – Murray Rothbard (essay)
****
Education
Real Education – Charles Murray
Inside American Education – Thomas Sowell
Illiberal Education – Dinesh D’Sousa
God and Man at Yale – William Buckley
Weapons of Mass Instruction – John Taylor Gatto
The Higher Education Bubble – Glenn Reynolds
****
​
Sorry, I dunno what you are after.
If you meant, which is better, I dunno I just read the first book but maybe you can get an idea by seeing Amazon readers reviews:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00H7NWLJ6/#customerReviews
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LZU843T/#customerReviews
If you meant why not get the bundle, I think it is a good idea but because the single book is cheaper.
https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Forever-Learning-See-Timelessness/dp/0979186102
Archives for links in comments:
----
I am Mnemosyne 2.0, I am definitely not a fucking toaster.^^^^/r/botsrights ^^^^Contribute ^^^^Website
[Everything Forever] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0979186102?pc_redir=1410412506)
FOr more on this, I recommend the research being conducted by Roy F. Baumeister. He's the guy that blew the whole precious snowflake, "bullies have low self-esteem" nonsense out of the water. http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/baumeister.dp.html
http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Inside-Human-Violence-Cruelty/dp/0805071652 (your library will have a copy. You will also find some of his stuff on google books.)
I'm not sure if I can phrase it better than this list can - here's a screenshot/excerpt from a book I read recently that gives you a better of idea of healthy/mature behavior vs unhealthy/immature behavior.
http://i.imgur.com/LsJ5gdn.jpg
It's from the book The Comprehensive ENFP Survival Guide
Hope this helps give you a better idea!
Yeah and America is responsible for the greatest rennasaince nce the world has ever seen. We fly to the fucking stars, we have cures for fucking diseases, poverty all over the world is declining, we as a world is more peaceful then ever. You wanna debate me fuck face about our peaceful world dickhead? Read a book asshole
http://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/1846140935
I came into this thread to suggest exactly this. To add on, a great book worth reading if you have Puer tendencies is Von Franz's book on the subject. My analyst suggested I might be overidentified with the Puer and recommended that book, it helped me a lot, although I still struggle with making commitments to things.
Before I begin, let me say this: in asking this question at your age, you are several spots away from the bottom of the totem pole.
This is not to say "oh don't worry about out, you're still young." You need to be serious about becoming competent, but very few people are competent at anything meaningful at your age, and very, very few fields require that you be already competent by age 19 (most of the fields that do require this are things like sports or music, which are so competitive that you basically have to grow up with it). So you're not behind. I think the above comments have been useful, but incomplete. Yes, your mentality is of the upmost importance here, but you do need things to do. Especially if you have interest in trades.
I'll tell you a little bit about myself. When I was 19, I was finishing a degree in automotive technology. I was working as an entry level technician and a cook, and I had plans to attend the University of Northwestern Ohio for a Bachelors in High-Performance Motorsports, which would have put me among the most elite technicians in the country, where I would have been able to get into just about any kind of motorsports I wanted.
Now I'm 23. I have a Bachelors, but not from UNOH. I completely switched fields. When I was 20, I found myself drawn toward Philosophy and Literature, and so I completely dropped motorsports as a career path. I'd spent 2 years getting my associates, I'd spent tons of money on tools, I'd studied to pass ASE certifications test, but I dropped it all, went back to school and got my Bachelors with a double major in English and Philosophy. I'm now working for a while, and I'll be going back to graduate school next year to get my PhD. I'll probably be 27-28 years old before I have real, meaningful competency. This time frame has been a real challenge, since I'm impatient, and don't want to waste my 20's. Here's how I handle it: I love what I'm doing in the academic world (I'm starting a podcast soon just because I can't get enough of philosophy), and so hypothetically, I would be okay with doing it even if it never paid off financially (and it's a humanities PhD, so that's not unlikely).
Your goal, at least for the next couple of years, should be to figure out what you either already love, or what you are likely to come to love if you tried it. Very, very, very few people do this, and so they end up being moderately competent in something that they don't hate, and require all kinds of other things to make their life meaningful. Let me emphasize that this is absolutely, not a bad thing, and if you really think that creative pursuits are your thing, you may want to find an additional career to pay for your creative work.
In any case, you can almost certainly find things that you love without college (though you may need it once you get started). In fact, college often gives a distorted view of what the field is really like. Take psychology, for example. The world of acutally practicing psychologists is radically different than psych-academia, and if you used college classes with postmodern profs to gauge whether you'd like psychology, you might falsely assume that your practice will consist of talking to transgendered sexually abused black handicapped gay attack helicopters rather than the real client base. If you find you want to be an academic, then...sorry fo ya.
What I would do is expose yourself to as much as possible. Try something as simple as youtube. If, for example, you find that you like watching youtube videos of motorcycles, maybe you should try going to a race or a bike show, or reading a book about it. Keep in mind though, that it takes real engagement (more than just youtube) to see if it's something you could learn to love.
Notice I said "learn to love." The reason for this is that its perfectly likely that you won't absolutely love anything. Most people are like that. It's maybe 1/1000 people that naturally know instantly that they love something that they end up doing for the rest of their lives. Let's go back to motorcycles. Maybe you know nothing about them, but you know that you're analytical, so you might like diagnosing them, and you have an adrenaline-junkie streak, so you might like riding them, but right now you know so little about them that you don't really feel any particular way toward them. You need to have the self-awareness to know what kinds of things you might like. If you're analytical but don't have the adrenaline junkie in you, then maybe you need to try being a boat mechanic, because of how much you've enjoyed time on the river, and the people you've met who are also into boats.
One last thing. You may have noticed that I have a soft spot for mechanical things. I noticed that you said you may be interested in the trades. If what I've been saying resonates with you, I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend reading at least one of the following books by Matthew Crawford: either Shop Class as Soulcraft or The World Beyond Your Head. They're truly unconventional ways of thinking, and unlike what your high school counselor or typical self-help are likely to teach you.
i think Sam is talking about ego consciousness not being all there is...which Carl Jung goes into in book Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. In this book he discusses how the the archetype of the Self(god-image) has been projected onto religious figures over the past few thousand years etc which has been enough for civilisation up until recent times, but Jung discovered that one can form a direct relationship with it and therefore regain what has run out of steam for some people in the form of traditional religions.
https://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-ENFP-Survival-Guide/dp/0692532501/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549821875&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=comprehensive+enfp+survival+guide&dpPl=1&dpID=41bJhxG2IAL&ref=plSrch
OP I think you will enjoy this book
Thanks for your time and the refreshing read.
well "how the fuck does that happen" - i took from the perspective of "how does a child LIVE in the woods 3 days on their own" - I assumed "how does someone leave a child alone in the woods" was simply due to human beings and their general stupidity and callousness.
Meanwhile - check the book out, if you find this sort of thing interesting, it's a great read:
https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Survival-Who-Lives-Dies-ebook/dp/B06VVMN5J2/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=deep+survival&qid=1558119255&s=gateway&sr=8-1
http://bookzz.org/book/684726/6f6e04
http://www.amazon.com/Stigma-Notes-Management-Spoiled-Identity/dp/0671622447/
>Values only work if you truly uphold them all the time.
Nonsense, all humans work with situation-dependent evaluation. There is no absolute ethical value that does not have a "but under these circumstances" exception (which in itself is dependent on the individual). In addition to that, values can change over time. Machines are rigid, humans are flexible, which is necessary for adaptation and survival in a world with endless situational variations.
>Will you teach your children this absolute egotism
As I find it morally disagreeable to create life, I long ago decided not to have any children. But if I did, I would definitely teach them to look out for themselves first, wouldn't you? What parent would want their child to sacrifice itself for the parent's sake? Parenthood means sacrifice, that's why nearly all animals fight to the death to protect their brood.
>We could chose
The individual might be able to choose, but the whole of the species has a direction of its own. Egotism is an extremely positive trait for survival, that's why all species have it. Your best bet for improving selflessness among humans would be to support genetic manipulation.
If you're interested in a much better and much more detailed exposition, I recommend The Biology of Moral Systems by Richard Alexander.
This is a valid thread since Jung had a bit of a hard-on for astrological symbolism. http://www.amazon.com/Aion-Researches-Phenomenology-Collected-Works/dp/069101826X
One of my favorite books about Psychology was not intended for psychology majors.
It's called "Writer's Guide to Character Traits" by Linda N. Edelstein, PH. D.
I really enjoyed it as a writer, and because it's like a psychological profile for a lot of things. I feel like I'm in criminal minds when I read it sometimes. Some of the reviews are relatively negative, because it's not a textbook, and many of the profiles are "stereotypes" [which in my opinion is what you're trying to do when you're profiling someone], but overall, the book is really fun to get lost in.
Shaynoodle is damn sexy.
Related reading.
>I have no idea how to judge this kind of stuff on my own and would really like to learn how to.
It is gonna be the same as any other narrative medium. So maybe try reading something like this or this.
But it generally comes down to basic stuff such as keeping the characters consistent, giving characters more than one trait unless that is the point of the character, making sure the characters act according to their traits instead of the plot, etc.
So examples for FMA:B. An example of good characters writing (and I would always start with specific instances and moving outward to assessing the character as a whole rather than starting with the character as a whole and moving inward) would be [FMA:B Spoilers](/s "Greed's refusal to go along with Father's plans . Greed's obvious trait is that he is greedy and so he only looks out for himself. Going along with Father's plans would not be in his interests and so he doesn't"). An example of bad character writing in the show is [FMA:B Spoilers](/s "Scar's about face when the other Ishvalen in Briggs tells him that he is trying to reform Amestris from the inside. Scar suddenly being chill with everything all of a sudden doesn't really make sense seeing as up until that point he had been filled with wroth. Sure he might soften slightly but a casual conversation shouldn't cause such a massive change. It is inconsistant with what we've learnt about his character so far. ")
Of course it should be noted that good character writing does not always necessarily correlate with our personal enjoyment nor vice versa. They tend to agree but not always. 'Good character writing' is merely a measure of how close the writing is to rules and systems that we've figured out almos always work pretty well, and by not sticking to them things tend to go wrong.
I hope this helps a little!
>I think I found a subreddit full of different renditions of me, living in other people's bodies. Or copies of me, possibly from another dimension
Us INTPs sure do seem to have a lot in common!
I mean... I just read one of AJ Drenth's books on the INTP, and the panpsychist perspective on the universe he suggests INTPs instinctively lean towards is pretty much identical to the perspective I described in this article a couple of years ago.
It boggles my mind, really, that there's people out there who think of the MBTI as just "astrology for geeks" when people with at least this particular type seem to share so many ideas, emotional responses, quirks, etc.
I think this is the meta-analysis that's cited in the book Human Intelligence by Earl Hunt, which is what I was pulling from.
>so hedonism?
No, hedonism is all about thrill-seeking, ephemeral pleasures...
It's more about the "journey being the reward"...
--
Which isn't JUST about travel but also applies to the joys of designing, building & making things (everything from meals to skyscrapers).
To wit: a passage from Tolkien's Silmarillion:
>"...but the delight and pride of Aulë [*] is in the deed of making, and in the thing made, and neither in possession nor in his own mastery; wherefore he gives and hoards not, and is free from care, passing ever on to some new work."
[*] "Aulë" is the "blacksmith/maker/craftsman" (a minor "god" - Valar/powerful angelic being in Tolkien's mythological pantheon)
--
If you have trouble comprehending that side of things -- which alas far too many young men do these days (never having really been given even the opportunity to "make" much of anything) -- then there are a couple recent books you might read by guys who had a similar problem, and found their way through it, like "Shop Class as Soul Craft" or the same author's more recent (2015?) follow-up book "The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction"...
I mean there are plenty of other books (as well as even more non-book "paths") to finding & figuring out some OTHER fulfilling joys and purposes in life... I suggest those two because they're decent works on the subject, and written by a guy who has fairly recently faced the same kind of "malaise" that many other young guys are -- plus the dude QUIT being an academic to become a motorcycle mechanic.
Not saying he's some "uber guru" -- just that reading his works MIGHT help you to figure out your own path.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NB23J66/
Oj, nu blev det så mycket aggressivitet på en gång att jag blir alldeles varm inombords.
På samma sätt som det finns studier som visar att svarta i USA har lägre IQ än vita, som kan hittas i denna bok, och på samma sätt som BRÅ hittat att invandrare är i högre utsträckning kriminella än vad svenskfödda är, så betyder inte det att det finns ett samband. I båda dessa fall är det sociala faktorer som spelar in, vilket de själva erkänner.
På samma sätt kan studierna som visar på skillnaderna i IQ härledas till utbildning - inte direkt något att sätta sig upp i soffan för denna insikt. Om man har en högre utbildning kan man mer om dessa kurser. Om män är mer benägna att välja utbildningar som fokuserar på matematik och logik är det kanske inte så märkligt att de är bättre på just detta.
Jag skrattar så jag kissar på mig när du först anklagar mig för att hålla någon konspirationsteori (vilken nu detta skulle vara vet jag inte, men jag håller tydligen någon), samtidigt som du själv konspirerar i nästa mening:
> Tvärt om är det pojkar som öppet diskrimineras i skolmatten. Pojkar får högre resultat på standardiserade test, men flickor får högre betyg av sina kvinnliga lärare än vad de presterar på standardiserade test.
Tillåt mig lämna denna diskussion förbluffad.