Most Popular Books by Richard E. Nisbett

When Richard Nisbett showed an animated underwater scene to his American students, they zeroed in on a big fish swimming among smaller fish. Japanese subjects, on the other hand, made observations about the background environment...and the different "seeings" are a clue to profound underlying cognitive differences between Westerners and East Asians. As Professor Nisbett shows in The Geography of Thought people actually think - and even see - the world differently, because of differing ecologies, social structures, philosophies, and educational systems that date back to ancient Greece and China, and that have survived into the modern world. As a result, East Asian thought is "holistic" - drawn to the perceptual field as a whole, and to relations among objects and events within that field. By comparison to Western modes of reasoning, East Asian thought relies far less on categories, or on formal logic; it is fundamentally dialectic, seeking a "middle way" between opposing thoughts. By contrast, Westerners focus on salient objects or people, use attributes to assign them to categories, and apply rules of formal logic to understand their behaviour.

“[Nisbett] weighs in forcefully and articulately . . . [using] a thoroughly appealing style to engage . . . throughout.”—Publishers Weekly Who are smarter, Asians or Westerners? Are there genetic explanations for group differences in test scores? From the damning research of The Bell Curve to the more recent controversy surrounding geneticist James Watson’s statements, one factor has been consistently left out of the equation: culture. In the tradition of Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man, world-class social psychologist Richard E. Nisbett takes on the idea of intelligence as biologically determined and impervious to culture with vast implications for the role of education as it relates to social and economic development. Intelligence and How to Get It asserts that intellect is not primarily genetic but is principally determined by societal influences.

A critical thinking approach emphasizing science and applications An award-winning author team challenges students to think critically about the concepts, controversies, and applications of social psychology using abundant tools, both in text and online. (NEW) infographics examine important topics like social class, social media effects, and research methodology. InQuizitive online assessment reinforces fundamental concepts, and PowerPoints, test questions, and (NEW) Concept Videos, will help you create the best course materials in the shortest amount of time. Please note that this version of the ebook does not include access to any media or print supplements that are sold packaged with the printed book.

In the United States, the homicide rate in the South is consistently higher than the rate in the North. In this brilliantly argued book, Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen use this fact as a starting point for an exploration of the underlying reasons for violence.According to Nisbett and Cohen, the increased tendency of white southerners to commit certa

An accessible guide to essential tools of reasoning that can help you make better decisions in your daily life. Scientific and philosophical concepts can change the way we solve problems by helping us to think more effectively about our behavior and our world. Surprisingly, despite their utility, many of these tools remain unknown to most of us. In Mindware, the world-renowned psychologist Richard E. Nisbett presents these ideas in clear and accessible detail. Nisbett has made a distinguished career of studying and teaching such powerful problem-solving concepts as the law of large numbers, statistical regression, cost-benefit analysis, sunk costs and opportunity costs, and causation and correlation, probing the best methods for teaching others how to use them effectively in their daily lives. In this groundbreaking book, Nisbett shows us how to frame common problems in such a way that these scientific and statistical principles can be applied to them. The result is an enlightening and practical guide to the most essential tools of reasoning ever developed—tools that can easily be used to make better professional, business, and personal decisions. Praise for Mindware “Compelling . . . With clear explanations of relevant principles from statistics, formal logic, economics, and psychology, Nisbett does indeed assemble a powerful toolkit for examining the validity of claims made by marketers, politicians, and scientists. Just as important, he encourages us to turn these tools inward and test the legitimacy of our own easily swayed opinions and beliefs.” —The Boston Globe “[Mindware] is friendly and practical and aimed squarely at the lay reader. [Nisbett] sees his book as rather like a crash course in making better decisions and learning what scientifically proven theory to apply to which problem, enabling the reader to “perceive the world more accurately and behave more sensibly.”“—The Sunday Times (UK)

A critical thinking approach emphasizing science and applications An award-winning author team challenges students to think critically about the concepts, controversies, and applications of social psychology using abundant tools, both in text and online. (NEW) infographics examine important topics like social class, social media effects, and research methodology. InQuizitive online assessment reinforces fundamental concepts, and PowerPoints, test questions, and (NEW) Concept Videos, will help you create the best course materials in the shortest amount of time. Please note that this version of the ebook does not include access to any media or print supplements that are sold packaged with the printed book.

Recently there has been growing awareness and acceptance of the proposition that people do not exist in a world of physically defined forces and events, but in a world defined by their own perceptions, cognitions, conclusions, and imaginations. We respond and react not to some objectively defined set of stimuli, but to our own apperceptions of stimuli that we define subjectively. The original essays in this volume center on one aspect of this process of attribution: The extent to which the perception of events and causes results in the determination, modification, or alteration of emotions, feelings, and affective states.This book is divided into five sections, each of which elucidates and extends these theoretical conceptions. Part 1 provides a historical background and analytical framework for the rest of the book. Part 2 presents chapters dealing with the sorts of internal cues which may give rise to a feeling state. Part 3 presents a chapter discussing the evaluative needs aroused by the internal cues. Part 4 is concerned with the process of explanation triggered by the evaluative needs. Part 5 deals with various external cues and how they are used to label the internal feeling state. There is a concluding discussion of the cognitive alteration of feeling states.The authors deal with aggression, boredom, obesity, the control of pain, and delusional systems. This volume is of continuing importance to clinical and experimental psychologists as well as social psychologists. Each of the authors takes the theoretical concept of cognition and relates it to research in biofeedback, physiology, social psychology, altered states of consciousness, etc. Thus, the book bridges the gap between cognitive theory and the use of that theory in applied research.

Thinking: A Memoir is both a personal history and an intellectual autobiography describing how people reason and make inferences about the world, why errors in reasoning occur and how much you can improve reasoning.