psychology

Experience on demand: What virtual reality is, how it works, and what it can do

Experience on demand: What virtual reality is, how it works, and what it can do / Jeremy Bailenson
New York: Norton, 2018. 290 p.

 

Virtual reality is able to effectively blur the line between reality and illusion, pushing the limits of our imagination and granting us access to any experience imaginable. With well-crafted simulations, these experiences, which are so immersive that the brain believes they’re real, are already widely available with a VR headset and will only become more accessible and commonplace. But how does this new medium affect its users, and does it have a future beyond fantasy and escapism? In Experience on Demand, Jeremy Bailenson draws on two decades spent researching the psychological effects of VR and other mass media to help readers understand this powerful new tool. He offers expert guidelines for interacting with VR and describes the profound ways this technology can be put to use - not to distance ourselves from reality, but to enrich our lives and influence us to treat others, the environment, and even ourselves better. In the world of VR, a football quarterback plays a game against a competing team hundreds of times before even stepping onto the field; members of the United Nations embody a young girl in a refugee camp going through her day-to-day life; and veterans once again walk through the streets where they had experienced trauma. There are dangers and many unknowns in using VR, but it also can help us hone our performance, recover from trauma, improve our learning and communication abilities, and enhance our empathic and imaginative capacities. Like any new technology, its most incredible uses might be waiting just around the corner. Experience on Demand is the definitive look at the risks and potential of VR - a must-read for navigating both the virtual and the physical worlds ahead.

 

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Experience on demand: What virtual reality is, how it works, and what it can do

Experience on demand: What virtual reality is, how it works, and what it can do / Jeremy Bailenson
New York: Norton, 2018. 290 p.

Virtual reality is able to effectively blur the line between reality and illusion, pushing the limits of our imagination and granting us access to any experience imaginable. With well-crafted simulations, these experiences, which are so immersive that the brain believes they’re real, are already widely available with a VR headset and will only become more accessible and commonplace. But how does this new medium affect its users, and does it have a future beyond fantasy and escapism?
In Experience on Demand, Jeremy Bailenson draws on two decades spent researching the psychological effects of VR and other mass media to help readers understand this powerful new tool. He offers expert guidelines for interacting with VR and describes the profound ways this technology can be put to use - not to distance ourselves from reality, but to enrich our lives and influence us to treat others, the environment, and even ourselves better. In the world of VR, a football quarterback plays a game against a competing team hundreds of times before even stepping onto the field; members of the United Nations embody a young girl in a refugee camp going through her day-to-day life; and veterans once again walk through the streets where they had experienced trauma.
There are dangers and many unknowns in using VR, but it also can help us hone our performance, recover from trauma, improve our learning and communication abilities, and enhance our empathic and imaginative capacities. Like any new technology, its most incredible uses might be waiting just around the corner. Experience on Demand is the definitive look at the risks and potential of VR - a must-read for navigating both the virtual and the physical worlds ahead.
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Creating great choices: A leader's guide to integrative thinking

Creating great choices: A leader's guide to integrative thinking / Jennifer Riel, Roger L. Martin.
Boston, US.: Harvard Business Review Press, 2017. 242 p.

 

Move Beyond Trade-Off Thinking. When it comes to our hardest choices, it can seem as though making trade-offs is inevitable. But what about those crucial times when accepting the obvious trade-off just isn't good enough? What do we do when the choices in front of us don't get us what we need? In those cases, rather than choosing the least worst option, we can use the models in front of us to create a new and superior answer. This is integrative thinking. First introduced by world-renowned strategic thinker Roger Martin in "The Opposable Mind," integrative thinking is an approach to problem solving that uses opposing ideas as the basis for innovation. Now, in "Creating Great Choices," Martin and his longtime thinking partner Jennifer Riel vividly illustrate how integrative thinking works, and how to do it. The book includes fresh stories of successful integrative thinkers that will demystify the process of creative problem solving, as well as practical tools and exercises to help readers engage with the ideas. And it lays out the authors' four-step methodology for creating great choices, which can be applied in virtually any context. The result is a replicable, thoughtful approach to finding a "third and better way" to make important choices in the face of unacceptable trade‐offs. Insightful and instructive, "Creating Great Choices" blends storytelling, theory, and hands-on advice to help any leader or manager facing a tough choice.

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The happiness riddle and the quest for a good life

The happiness riddle and the quest for a good life / Mark Cieslik
London, GB: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 235 p.

This book examines the meaning of happiness in Britain today, and observes that although we face challenges such as austerity, climate change and disenchantment with politics, we continue to be interested in happiness and living well. The author illustrates how happiness is a far more contested, social process than is often portrayed by economists and psychologists, and takes issue with sociologists who often regard wellbeing and the happiness industry with suspicion, whilst neglecting one of the key features of being human – the quest for a good life. Exploring themes that question what it means to be happy and live a good life in Britain today, such as the challenges young people face making their way through education and into their first jobs; work life-balance; mid-life crises; and old age, the book presents nineteen life stories that call for a far more critical and ambitious approach to happiness research that marries the radicalism of sociology, with recent advances in psychology and economics.

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Deep work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world

Deep work: Rules for focused success in a distracted world / Cal Newport
New York: Grand Central, 2016. 295 p.

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way.
In DEEP WORK, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules," for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.

A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, DEEP WORK takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories -- from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air -- and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored.

 

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Reclaiming conversation: The power of talk in a digital age

Reclaiming conversation: The power of talk in a digital age / Sherry Turkle
New York: Penguin, 2015. 436 p.

We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection.
Preeminent author and researcher Sherry Turkle has been studying digital culture for over thirty years. Long an enthusiast for its possibilities, here she investigates a troubling consequence: at work, at home, in politics, and in love, we find ways around conversation, tempted by the possibilities of a text or an email in which we don’t have to look, listen, or reveal ourselves.
We develop a taste for what mere connection offers. The dinner table falls silent as children compete with phones for their parents’ attention. Friends learn strategies to keep conversations going when only a few people are looking up from their phones. At work, we retreat to our screens although it is conversation at the water cooler that increases not only productivity but commitment to work. Online, we only want to share opinions that our followers will agree with – a politics that shies away from the real conflicts and solutions of the public square.
The case for conversation begins with the necessary conversations of solitude and self-reflection. They are endangered: these days, always connected, we see loneliness as a problem that technology should solve. Afraid of being alone, we rely on other people to give us a sense of ourselves, and our capacity for empathy and relationship suffers. We see the costs of the flight from conversation everywhere: conversation is the cornerstone for democracy and in business it is good for the bottom line. In the private sphere, it builds empathy, friendship, love, learning, and productivity.
But there is good news: we are resilient. Conversation cures.
Based on five years of research and interviews in homes, schools, and the workplace, Turkle argues that we have come to a better understanding of where our technology can and cannot take us and that the time is right to reclaim conversation. The most human—and humanizing—thing that we do.
The virtues of person-to-person conversation are timeless, and our most basic technology, talk, responds to our modern challenges. We have everything we need to start, we have each other.

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Moral disengagement

Moral disengagement  / Albert Bandura
New York: Worth, 2016. 542 p.

How do otherwise considerate human beings do cruel things and still live in peace with themselves? Drawing on his agentic theory, Dr. Bandura provides a definitive exposition of the psychosocial mechanism by which people selectively disengage their moral self-sanctions from their harmful conduct. They do so by sanctifying their harmful behavior as serving worthy causes; they absolve themselves of blame for the harm they cause by displacement and diffusion of responsibility; they minimize or deny the harmful effects of their actions; and they dehumanize those they maltreat and blame them for bringing the suffering on themselves. Dr. Bandura’s theory of moral disengagement is uniquely broad in scope. Theories of morality focus almost exclusively at the individual level. He insightfully extends the disengagement of morality to the social-system level through which wide-spread inhumanities are perpetrated. In so doing, he offers enlightening new perspectives on some of the most provocative issues of our time, addressing:

Moral disengagement in all aspects of the death penalty—from public policy debates, to jury decisions, to the processes of execution

The social and moral justifications of major industries—including gun manufacturers, the entertainment industry, tobacco companies, and the world of "too big to fail" finance Moral disengagement in terrorism, and how terrorists rationalize the use of violence as a means of social change

Climate change denial, and the strenuous efforts by some to dispute the overwhelming scientific consensus affirming theimpact of human behavior on the environment.

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The organized mind

The organized mind : Thinking straight in the age of information overload / Daniel J. Levitin
New York: Plume Book, 2015. 496 p.

New York Times bestselling author and neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin shifts his keen insights from your brain on music to your brain in a sea of details.

The information age is drowning us with an unprecedented deluge of data. At the same time, we’re expected to make more - and faster - decisions about our lives than ever before. No wonder, then, that the average American reports frequently losing car keys or reading glasses, missing appointments, and feeling worn out by the effort required just to keep up.

But somehow some people become quite accomplished at managing information flow. In The Organized Mind, Daniel J. Levitin, PhD, uses the latest brain science to demonstrate how those people excel—and how readers can use their methods to regain a sense of mastery over the way they organize their homes, workplaces, and time.

With lively, entertaining chapters on everything from the kitchen junk drawer to health care to executive office workflow, Levitin reveals how new research into the cognitive neuroscience of attention and memory can be applied to the challenges of our daily lives. This Is Your Brain on Music showed how to better play and appreciate music through an understanding of how the brain works. The Organized Mind shows how to navigate the churning flood of information in the twenty-first century with the same neuroscientific perspective.

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Willful blindness

The economic socialisation of young peopleWillful blindness: Why we ignore the obvious at our peril / Margaret Heffernan
New York: Walker, 2011. 294 p.

The surprising reasons we turn a blind eye to problems - and how to see more clearly to prevent pitfalls and disasters in our personal, professional, and civic lives.
How could the Catholic Church not see its abusing priests? How could economists miss the housing bubble? Why do spouses think their adultery won't hurt anyone? How could mortgagees take on so much debt? The answer to all these questions is the same: willful blindness. The biggest threats and dangers we face aren't secret or hidden. They're the ones we choose to overlook.
Distinguished businesswoman and writer Margaret Heffernan examines the phenomenon of willful blindness, tracing its imprint in our social lives, love lives, and working lives. What is it that makes us prefer ignorance? Why, after every major accident and blunder, do we look back and say, How could we have been so blind? Why do some people see more than others? And how can we change? Drawing on studies by psychologists and neuroscientists, and interviews with business leaders, whistleblowers, and white collar criminals, Heffernan explores the mechanisms that render individuals and groups blind to personal tragedies, corporate collapses, engineering failures - even crimes against humanity. Human beings turn a blind eye in order to feel safe, avoid conflict, reduce anxiety, and protect prestige. Financial concerns, oppressive workloads, and information overload also make it hard to see (or to admit to ourselves or our colleagues) the issues and problems in plain sight.
By understanding the many psychological, social, and organizational reasons we are blind, we may begin to take practical steps to see more clearly. We can challenge our biases, encourage debate, discourage conformity, and not back away from difficult or complicated problems. Only when we confront facts and fears can we achieve real power and unleash our capacity for change.

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