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The Age of Agility: Building Learning Agile Leaders and Organizations focuses on learning agility, one of the most important trends in the business world during the past decade. Some surveys have found it was the most frequently used criterion to measure leadership potential. Despite this popularity, there are fundamental questions that need to be answered, such as (a) What specifically is learning agility? (b) How many facets or dimensions does it have? (c) How do we measure it? and (d) Can it be developed? It appears that much of what is known about the construct of learning agility has been gleaned from its application by practitioners. While this knowledge is an extremely useful place to begin, there is an urgent need to undergird this understanding with science. The purpose of this edited book is to systematically examine the construct through a more scholarly lens. Over 50 authors—both academic researchers and talent management practitioners—have contributed to the contents. The goal is to enhance knowledge of learning agility, distilling, and synthesizing scientific evidence with best practices.

Body schema refers to the system of sensory-motor functions that enables control of the position of body parts in space, without conscious awareness of those parts. Body image refers to a conscious representation of the way the body appears—a set of conscious perceptions, affective attitudes, and beliefs pertaining to one’s own bodily image. In 2005, Shaun Gallagher published an influential book entitled ‘How the Body Shapes the Mind’. This book not only defined both body schema (BS) and body image (BI), but also explored the complicated relationship between the two. The book also established the idea that there is a double dissociation, whereby body schema and body image refer to two different, but closely related, systems. Given that many kinds of pathological cases can be described in terms of body schema and body image (phantom limbs, asomatognosia, apraxia, schizophrenia, anorexia, depersonalization, and body dysmorphic disorder, among others), we might expect to find a growing consensus about these concepts and the relevant neural activities connected to these systems. Instead, an examination of the scientific literature reveals continued ambiguity and disagreement. This volume brings together leading experts from the fields of philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry in a lively and productive dialogue. It explores fundamental questions about the relationship between body schema and body image, and addresses ongoing debates about the role of the brain and the role of social and cultural factors in our understanding of embodiment.

The book is the culmination of 50 years of intensive research by the author, who is broadly acknowledged to be the most important pioneer and current research leader who models how brains give rise to minds, notably how neural circuits in multiple brain regions interact together to generate psychological functions. The book provides a unified understanding of how, where, and why our brains can consciously see, hear, feel, and know about the world, and effectively plan and act within it. It hereby embodies a revolutionary Principia of Mind that clarifies how autonomous adaptive intelligence is achieved, thereby providing mechanistic explanations of multiple mental disorders, biological bases of morality, religion, and the human condition, as well as solutions to large-scale problems in machine learning, technology, and Artificial Intelligence. Because brains embody a universal developmental code, unifying insights also emerge about all living cellular tissues and about how mental laws reflect laws of the physical world.

The political context producing the Donald Trump presidency put into stark relief the confusion, feelings of victimization, and rage of some constituencies that voted for him. Enraged, Rattled, and Wronged: Entitlement’s Response to Social Progress explores the role of entitlement in fostering inequality in the United States. Scholars and activists in recent decades have correctly incorporated the topic of privilege into discussions of prejudice and discrimination. White privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege, and class privilege exemplify the unearned advantages given to socially preferred groups—advantages not enjoyed by marginalized groups. As a result, activists and scholars of prejudice integrate an examination of discrimination against target groups, alongside the corresponding benefits that come to those viewed as the societal norm and ideal (e.g., Whites, heterosexuals, and men). Enraged, Rattled, and Wronged examines psychological entitlement as an overlooked but essential feature of persistent inequality. Psychological entitlement refers to one’s sense of deservingness. In understanding resistance to social progress we must understand how members of advantaged groups come to understand their belief in their own worthiness relative to those in disadvantaged groups. The task of this project is an urgent inquiry given our current political context: What happens to entitled people when they feel pushed aside? What are they willing to tear down as they scramble to keep their grip on relative status and power? This book explores the predictable and unpredictable ways in which entitlement preserves and perpetuates inequality.

Generation Disaster: Coming of Age Post-9/11 is an in-depth examination of the multiple stressors that shaped the developmental environment for today’s emerging adults in their youth and as they now take on adult responsibilities in an unprecedentedly complex world. Those stressors include all of the societal changes that occurred in the United States after the attacks of September 11, 2001, as well as other threats like the increase in school shootings and other human-caused disasters, worsening natural disasters and concerns about the future due to climate change, and the global pandemic. The omnipresence of social media amplifies these issues and heightens political divisiveness, while the difficult job market, growing wealth gap between rich and poor, and burden of student debt make many emerging adults doubt they’ll ever find a satisfying career, be able to start a family, or buy a home. As a result, many are stressed out and pessimistic about their futures, yet others are flourishing despite all of the challenges they face. Generation Disaster provides a detailed look into the many forces that are shaping this cohort of emerging adults, drawing on quantitative and qualitative research and including extensive quotations that allow its members to speak for themselves to counter the negative stereotypes older people often perpetuate about them.

Companies that can hire and retain military veterans will have a strong competitive advantage over their competitors that lack this capability. This book will help business leaders obtain that advantage. The chapters in this book draw from the research and findings from Industrial/Organizational (I/O) psychology and Human Resources (HR) research to describe how to find, communicate with, recruit, develop, lead, and retain military veterans and their family members as civilian employees. Unlike other books on this topic that lack evidence-based content, this book draws upon science, research, and best practices to provide guidance organizations can implement to drive their success. Topics in this book include sourcing, communications, and recruiting military veterans and their spouses; reviewing résumés to extract cross-corporate competencies; branding your organization to successfully appeal to this population; understanding and challenging your misconceptions of the military and doing the same with veterans’ misperceptions of civilian employment; addressing culture mismatches between civilian and military cultures and improving cultural communication and understanding; improving person-job-organization fit for veterans and military family members to retain them in their jobs; providing culturally sensitive mentoring and leadership; understanding the training veterans receive and their personality traits and culture—and how these can benefit your organization; hiring and retaining wounded warriors and veterans with disabilities; creating and utilizing veteran mentoring programs and affinity groups; providing effective supervision for veteran employees; supporting National Guardsmen and Reservists working as civilian employees, and retaining these employees to gain a further competitive advantage for your organization.

This book draws on the latest research on the human brain to show how it differs strikingly from those of other animals in its structure and function at molecular and cellular level. It argues that this ‘shift’, enlarging the brain, giving it greater flexibility and enabling higher functions such as imagination, was driven by tool use, but especially by the development of one remarkable tool—language. The complex social interaction brought by language opened up the possibility of shared conceptual worlds, enriched with rhythmic sounds and images that could be drawn on cave walls. This transformation enabled modern humans to generate an exceptional human consciousness, a sense of self that arises as a product of our brain biology and the social interactions we experience. Linking early work by the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky to the findings of modern neuroscience, the book also explores how language, culture, and society mediate brain function, and what this view of the human mind may bring to our understanding and treatment of mental illness.

Why do we enjoy popular movies? This book explores perceptual, cognitive, and emotional reasons for our engagement. It considers effects of camera lenses and the layout of images. It outlines the types of transitions between shots, and it traces their historical functions and changes. It classifies different kinds of shots and the changes in them across a century. It explains the arcs of scenes and how they fit into the larger structure of sequences, and then it explores scene- and sequence-like units that have become increasingly prevalent in recent years. It then breaks movies into larger, roughly half-hour parts and provides psychological evidence for them. Finally, it explores the rhythms of whole movies, first observing the flow of physical changes—shot durations, luminance, motion, and clutter—as it has developed over time, and then how cinematic polyrhythms have come to match aspects of those in the human body. Overall, this book focuses on how the narration, the manner in which the story is told, has come to reinforce the structure of the narrative, the story proper. It uses several hundred popular movies released over a century and embeds its exploration in discussions of evolution, culture, and technological change. The changes in movies have contributed to viewers’ engagement by sustaining attention, promoting understanding of the narrative, heightening emotional commitment, and fostering their felt presence in the story. Examples of cinematic effects in particular movies are given at every turn.

Parenting Made Complicated: What Science Really Knows About the Greatest Debates in Early Childhood addresses many of the long-standing parenting controversies that new mothers and fathers face. These include topics related to screens, daycare, praise, sleep training, spanking, time-outs, helicopter versus “old school” parenting, and others. Each chapter is devoted to a different parenting controversy, and a synthesis of what is known scientifically about each topic is presented, written in a nontechnical and conversational style. Parenting Made Complicated, however, doesn’t assume that the “correct” answer for each parenting dilemma is the same for each child and instead provides a roadmap for how the best approach may vary according to a child’s temperament or other important factors. Many case vignettes and boxed practical suggestions are provided. Accounts are also given regarding how scientific information on a particular topic is applied and sometimes manipulated toward political aims. The book is written by child psychiatrist David Rettew, an expert in child temperament who has conducted research in child development and worked clinically with families for over 20 years.

This is a book about the psychology of environmental law. Psychology can affect environmental legal doctrine and institutions by affecting how people perceive, respond to, value, and make decisions about the environment. Where environmental law fails to incorporate insights from psychology, it risks misunderstanding and mispredicting human behaviors that injure and affect the environment, and misprescribing legal tools to shape those behaviors. Yet there is no robust tradition of psychological analysis within environmental law. This book is intended to help change that, by sparking and supporting discussion about how psychology can inform, explain, and improve how environmental law operates. It begins by identifying what is distinctively psychological about environmental law, arguing that many of the characteristics that make environmental injury distinctive also implicate distinctive psychological phenomena, and understanding those phenomena can help in crafting, enforcing, and understanding the impact of laws that seek to manage environmental injury. In particular, it suggests that the distinctively diffuse, complex, and nonhuman character of environmental injury has psychological as well as legal implications. The book then explores the payoff of applying a psychological analysis to environmental law, exploring the policy, practical, and doctrinal implications of psychology in pollution control, ecosystem management, and climate change law and policy.

This book provides insights on psychological processes involved in the production, delivery, and consumption of news. At a time when the role and function of news journalism are under intense public scrutiny, this book takes a media psychological approach to explore the role of subjectivity in the construction and meaning-making of news. In particular, the book highlights a process involving the coordinated subjectivities of journalists and audience alike in constructing an account of how research in key areas of psychology (e.g., attention, knowledge, emotions, norms, values, social dynamics, culture, and verbal and nonverbal communication) can contribute to gaining a better understanding of journalism and current affairs.

The book sets out Fergus Craik’s view of human memory as a dynamic activity of mind and brain. In this account, remembering is understood as a system of active cognitive processes, similar to the processes underlying attending, perceiving, and thinking. The book therefore extends and elaborates the concept of “levels of processing” proposed by Craik and Lockhart (1972). Thus, encoding processes are essentially the mental activities involved in perceiving and understanding, and retrieval is described as the partial reactivation of these same processes. It is further suggested that “memory traces” are represented by a hierarchically organized system of analyzers, modified, sharpened, and differentiated by encounters with successive events. This account proposes that episodic and semantic memory should be thought of as levels in a continuum of specificity rather than as separate systems of memory. The book also covers Craik’s views on working memory and on changes in memory as a function of aging. In the latter case the losses are attributed largely to a difficulty with the self-initiation of appropriate encoding and retrieval operations, compensated by support from the external environment. There is a short chapter on the cognitive neuroscience of human memory, and a final chapter bringing the ideas together. The book covers the development of these ideas, illustrated substantially by experiments from Craik’s own laboratory, and also by empirical and theoretical contributions from other researchers. The final product is a broad account of current ideas and findings in contemporary memory research but viewed from Craik’s personal theoretical standpoint.

This book is about positive youth development (PYD) in Roma ethnic minority youth. Its main distinguishing features are (1) the focus on a large and underrepresented ethnic minority group and (2) a strength-based conception of adolescence (i.e., PYD) that sees all youth as having resources. The book stands apart from current edited books on PYD by focusing on the Roma ethnic minority (one of the most marginalized and oppressed minority groups in Europe) and on strengths and resources for optimal well-being. The international, multidisciplinary, and multisectorial expert contributors to this book address the complexities of Roma life in a variety of cultural settings and explore how key developmental processes and person–context interactions can contribute to optimal and successful adaptation. The conclusions clarify how the PYD of ethnic minority children and youth may be fostered based on the empirical findings reported in this volume. The book draws on core theoretical models of PYD and theories of normative development from the perspective of developmental science to highlight the applicability of these frameworks to Roma groups and nuanced cultural variations in how optimal developmental outcomes maybe come to pass in adolescence. A special focus is on cultural, contextual, and socioeconomic characteristics of Roma to provide a better understanding of what does and what does not contribute to the success of youth particularly in oppressed minority groups.

How do individuals decide whether to accept human causes of climate change, vaccinate their children against childhood diseases, or practice social distancing during a pandemic? Democracies depend on educated citizens who can make informed decisions for the benefit of their health and well-being, as well as their communities, nations, and planet. Understanding key psychological explanations for science denial and doubt can help provide a means for improving scientific literacy and understanding—critically important at a time when denial has become deadly. In Science Denial: Why It Happens and What to Do About It, the authors identify the problem and why it matters and offer tools for addressing it. This book explains both the importance of science education and its limitations, shows how science communicators may inadvertently contribute to the problem, and explains how the internet and social media foster misinformation and disinformation. The authors focus on key psychological constructs such as reasoning biases, social identity, epistemic cognition, and emotions and attitudes that limit or facilitate public understanding of science, and describe solutions for individuals, educators, science communicators, and policy makers. If you have ever wondered why science denial exists, want to know how to understand your own biases and those of others, and would like to address the problem, this book will provide the insights you are seeking.

This book provides an in-depth examination of an important domain of development during emerging adulthood—sexuality. Emerging adulthood, which is a complex and dynamic developmental period, uniquely affords individuals a variety of choices with regard to sexuality; this volume addresses these various facets of sexuality to provide a comprehensive overview of the state of the field. The first section of the volume offers conceptualizations and foundational perspectives on sexuality in emerging adulthood, with topics including theory, developmental considerations, sexual behavior, sexual beliefs and attitudes, associations with romance, casual sex, and sexual orientation. The second section systematically examines contexts and socializing agents of sexual development, including parents, peers, media, and religion. The third section narrows in on the overarching theme of the series by addressing factors leading to flourishing and floundering in the area of sexuality during emerging adulthood, such as effects of early adversity, sexual health, sexual well-being, sexuality and mental health, and sexual assault. Accompanying seven of the chapters are brief scientific reports offering novel related research. The volume also contains four method tutorials that discuss topics in sex research such as ethical considerations, recruitment and incentive strategies, and identity-affirming methods. Concluding the volume is a chapter presenting innovative new perspectives on integration of sexual health promotion and sexual violence prevention.

Disability is a part of diversity, yet there are few resources for instructors, students, and professionals to use to learn about disability. In this practical book, Teaching Disability as Part of Diversity, 34 activities are provided. Activities can be done in class, as homework, as group activities, or independently. The activities, which comprise the majority of the book, are graduated from beginning level through more advanced levels. For each activity, there are learning objectives, a list of materials needed, an estimate of the time frame to complete the activity, possible outcomes and talking points, a grading rubric, any needed handouts, and suggested additional reading. Written by an insider to the disability community, there is a nonpathology focus on disability as part of diversity rather than a deficit. Many activities are designed to highlight barriers and psychosocial impediments that hamper people with disabilities. The first chapter helps instructors who are new to teaching disability. The second chapter discusses research on changing extrinsic and intrinsic bias toward people with disabilities and is provided as a background for the activities. No simulation activities are included, as is the explanation for why these are omitted. A final chapter includes six measures to assess knowledge and skills.

Everyone wants a good life. Some try to create a good life by cultivating personal growth. They have a transformative self. This book explains how people form a transformative self, primarily in their evolving life stories, to help cultivate growth toward a life of happiness, love, and wisdom for the self and others. It introduces an innovative framework of values and personhood to strengthen and integrate three main areas of study: narrative identity, the good life, and personal growth. The result is a unique model of humane growth and human flourishing. Each chapter builds on that framework to explore topics central to the transformative self, such as how cultural beliefs of a good life shape our narrative identity; how narrative thinking shapes cultural and personal beliefs of a good life; how cultural master narratives shape our ideals for personal growth; how growth differs from gain, recovery, and other positive changes in the life story; how happiness, love, wisdom, and growth serve as superordinate goods in life; how the hard and soft margins of society thwart and facilitate personal growth; the dark side of growth; and the lengthy development of authenticity and self-actualizing. This book synthesizes scholarship from scientific research across several subfields of psychology to philosophy, literature, history, and cultural studies. It offers a creative and scientifically grounded framework for exploring three of life’s perennial questions: How do we make sense of our lives? What is a good life? and How do we create one?

The primate prefrontal cortex sits at the top of the sensory, motor, and outcome processing hierarchies of the neocortex. It transforms sensory inputs into motor outputs, determining the response that is appropriate given the current context and desired outcome. This transformation involves conditional rules. The dorsal prefrontal cortex supports the learning of behavioural sequences, where the next action is conditional on the previous one. The ventral prefrontal cortex supports associations between objects, where the choice of one object is conditional on the presence of another object. However, because hierarchical processing supports the extraction of abstract representations, the primate prefrontal cortex is able to represent conditional rules that are abstract, meaning that they apply irrespective of the specific inputs. The selective advantage is that by learning these rules, primates can solve new problems rapidly when they have the same conditional logic as prior problems. The human prefrontal cortex has the same fundamental organization as in other primates. The dorsal prefrontal cortex supports the understanding of sequences and the ventral prefrontal cortex supports the ability to learn semantic associations. Thus the human prefrontal cortex has co-opted and elaborated mechanisms that were present in ancestral primates. These mechanisms can be used for new ends. For example, words have been associated with objects so as to communicate with others. This means that to understand human intelligence it is necessary to take into account the fact that the abstract rules are transmitted verbally from one generation to another.

This book provides an advanced and contemporary understanding about personality at work, with a particular focus on the change perspective of personality. Thus far, the majority of research focusing on personality at work takes a more static perspective, assuming that personality is fixed and stable. However, an increasingly prominent research line over recent years have started to indicate that personality is not fixed, and that personality can be changed by work and vocational experiences, such as employment status, career roles, and job characteristics, and deliberate training and interventions. This perspective is in line with various studies on personality in the general life domain, which reinforces the changing nature of personality. This book extends from this line of research, with a particular focus on personality change in the work context. By reviewing latest research evidence in this area and also drawing on research in the broader personality and social psychology domain, this book provides a conceptual development on how personality can be changed via work, by societal, organisational, and job-related factors, as well as how individuals can take an active approach in changing their personality at work.

School-to-work (STW) pathways and transitions are key developmental processes in young adulthood. During this time, young adults face multiple choices and challenges. Young Adult Development at the School-to-Work Transition describes pathways for students to successfully transition to the work environment. The book examines social, economic, cultural, familial, contextual, and personal factors that shape the processes involved in the school-to-work transition. Internationally renowned scholars in the fields of developmental psychology, applied psychology, counseling, and sociology have contributed chapters focusing on theory, research, and application related to school-to-work and educational transitions. The book also gives attention to groups who have particular transition needs, including young adults with disabilities and special needs, cultural minorities, international students, and migrants.