11 ms·

Must-read psychology books

164 points by durmonski 5y ago

luffapi 5y ago
At its very best and most rigorous, psychology is pseudoscience. The books listed aren’t even that, they’re pop-pseudoscience. If you read any of these books, treat them as fiction. Your time is better spent elsewhere. You could probably even glean more insight into the human mind by reading some decent literature.
- whalesalad 5y ago
  This is such an anti-hacker mindset I don't really know where to begin. When did HN become like this?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- puddingforears 5y ago
  I’m still here as a direct product of treatment by induced seizures by electroshock. After finishing treatment, it’s as if the toxic narrator of my life has vanished from my life and I’m suddenly just here, myself. But it’s just pseudoscience and I would have done better to read some decent literature.
  - luffapi 5y ago
    1. Neuroscience is not psychology. 2. Electroshock “therapy” is not neuroscience.
    - rusk 5y ago
      1. Yes it is, or at least was. It’s a branch of psychology that developed into a science its own right. Just as physics was once “natural philosophy”. Epistemologically however neuroscience does still fall under the umbrella term of psychology.
      - luffapi 5y ago
        That’s like saying alchemy is science because chemistry developed from it. If it has no reproducibility, it’s not science it’s speculation.
        rusk 5y ago
        No it’s not and this comparison is facetious. Nobody practices alchemy as a mainstream science in 2021. There are plenty of people doing astrology for instance but in a clinical setting? In funded university programs? Producing papers that can be openly challenged? I don’t think so. Again facetious.
        luffapi 5y ago
        That’s not a meaningful metric. Plenty of people doing astrology in 2021. That doesn’t make it real.
    - caddemon 5y ago
      ECT was certainly way over applied back in the day, but it's made a bit of a comeback in recent years for treating severe depression. In the sense that clinical trials are science, it's definitely science. It's true we don't really understand why it works, but you could say the same thing about a number of drugs for treating psychiatric disease, and I doubt you would say those are not science. Here is a FAQ about ECT from Hopkins: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psychiatry/specialty_areas/brain_stimulation/ect/faq_ect.html https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psychiatry/specialty_areas/b...
    - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
      Can you provide a definition of psychology then please? I'm hesitant to try my skills at one that doesn't map somewhere to neuroscience.
      - luffapi 5y ago
        It’s the study of the “mind” (not brain). It’s very basis is the study of a pseudo-religious phenomenon. Neuroscience is real science because it studies the brain not the artificial and archaic concept of the mind. There can be personal value in studying psychology. It’s just not science, it’s fictional.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        dash2 5y ago
        How does this critique apply, e.g. to Jonathan Haidt's work on moral foundations? Or, if you want something more rigorous, to prospect theory and other decision theorists' attempts to build simple tractable models of decision-making?
        disgruntledphd2 5y ago
        > It’s the study of the “mind” (not brain). It’s very basis is the study of a pseudo-religious phenomenon So you don't believe in the existence of qualia? That's a pretty strong philosophical position.
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    My girlfriend has had EMDR therapy that resolved her responses to triggers (similar to panic attacks? I'm not sure how to describe it) from C-PTSD, but it's just pseudoscience and she would have done better to read some decent literature.
  - staticman2 5y ago
    I don't think a single book on that list discusses electroshock therapy. I think it could be both true that electroshock therapy works and psychology can be a pseudoscience.
- capnorange 5y ago
  Psychology is probabilistic science, that's the best we can do given the complexities of the mind. If you want to get a taste of rigor in psychology I suggest you read some of the works by Carl Jung. Agreed, most people looking to understand the psyche would be better off reading literature / art.
  - luffapi 5y ago
    Carl Jung while interesting is anything but rigorous science. Like I said, treat this stuff like fiction. Some can even be insightful! > Psychology is probabilistic science It’s not science if it doesn’t include reproducibility.
    - rusk 5y ago
      Carl Jung is psychotherapy, which is studied under psychology because it has therapeutic value. But at least as I understand it, it is not in and of itself “psychology”. It’s a popular misconception but if that’s your criticism of psychology you don’t know what you’re talking about.
      - luffapi 5y ago
        I was responding to the parent who used Carl Jung as an example.
    - evilsetg 5y ago
      If the probabilities are reproducible it is still science I would say. Take quantum mechanics for example. It can not predict what exactly is going to happen, only how likely each outcome would be.
      - C-x_C-f 5y ago
        > It can not predict what exactly is going to happen, only how likely each outcome would be. Yeah but the key difference is that QM is a mathematically solid theory starting from a couple basic laws to yield predictions with p-values of 0 (for all intents and purposes anyway). Also note that there are non-probabilistic measurements in QM, be they measurements of aggregate behavior or just pure states [1]. In that respect, QM and most physical sciences really are miles ahead of psychology (though I don't think that's reason to discredit the latter, as it has obvious empirical merit). If I may be a bit bolder still, I'd argue that it's not merely a quantitative difference. As pointed out by many other comments, psychology completely lacks any sort of unifying framework, except perhaps for small clusters of thematically similar phenomena. A collection of empirical facts does not a scientific theory make, or--taken to the cheeky extreme--"All science is either physics or stamp collecting" [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_state#Pure_states https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_state#Pure_states [2] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Rutherford#Quotes https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Rutherford#Quotes
- rusk 5y ago
  “I don’t understand it” = “not a science” It doesn’t have the rigour of say physics for sure … but physics is specifically the science of what can be measured. I wouldn’t write it off as a science though. You may write off some of its practitioners for sure but you can do that with anything.
  - luffapi 5y ago
    No reproducibility = not a science
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - rusk 5y ago
      There’s plenty of reproducibility and falsifiability and all those other essential ingredients. The very fact that there is a “reproducibility crisis” at all shows that as a field it’s open to this kind of cross examination. Psych makes plenty of fairly reliable predictions around social behaviour, childhood development and human machine interaction. Only somebody who didn’t understand psychology would say it produces no reproducible results. It’s not physics. You can’t do it in a lab. But it can explain and predict within bounds of certainty. DSM is often wielded as a criticism but this is strictly speaking a psychiatric i.e “medical” tool which strictly speaking should be used as a basis for making diagnosis not for diagnosis itself. It’s limitations are well understood in the field of psychology and again somebody who understood the field would know this.
      - luffapi 5y ago
        > But it can explain and predict within bounds of certainty. Can you provide an example of a prediction that can accurately be made with psychology? > Only somebody who didn’t understand psychology would say it produces no reproducible results. I’m well versed enough with psychology. I even remember when people took the DSMIV seriously!
        5y ago
- hawthornio 5y ago
  I can understand why you feel this way about popular Psychology literature, but I would encourage you to read some introductory textbooks on Psychology, like _Basic Vision: An Introduction to Visual Perception_.
- jacobrussell 5y ago
  Take no. 6 for example: Behave by Robert M. Sapolsky. Dr. Sapolsky is a professor at Stanford with nearly 300 publications [0] and has been teaching biology and neurology for years. I'm curious, why do you think this book is pop-pseudoscience? Have you read it? Are there certain things you disagree with or think aren't based on research or reproducibility? [0] https://profiles.stanford.edu/robert-sapolsky?tab=publications https://profiles.stanford.edu/robert-sapolsky?tab=publicatio...
  - myWindoonn 5y ago
    Minds aren't scientific, so psychology isn't scientific. It's that simple; you've fooled yourself into thinking that you have "a mind", a supposedly-measurable durable part of your personality which persists beyond the mere meat of your brain and neurons, not unlike a soul.
    - Delk 5y ago
      How are you going to fool yourself, qualitatively and subjectively, that you have a mind if you don't have something capable of qualia in the first place? I'm not trying to argue for some kind of an immaterial soul, or claiming that all of psychology is scientific (many theories, at least as it appears to a layman, aren't). And sure, a durable personality and various other mental models we have might be illusions to varying degrees. But if the lower-level immediate experiences are treated as a real (if emergent and somewhat culturally dependent) thing, I don't see why higher-level mental phenomena such as the common need for a durable sense of self couldn't be treated as real as well.
    - jhgb 5y ago
      > Minds aren't scientific What does that even mean? I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.
    - jacobrussell 5y ago
      I’m not a psychologist, but I don’t think psychology is entirely comprised of studying “the mind” or the super ego/sense of self that you are referring. Specifically with human behavioral biology, it is concerned with what happens with synaptic responses influencing an action, hormonal responses influencing synapses, biological inputs (senses) triggering hormonal responses, environmental stimulus influencing the senses, and so on and so forth. It is very much rooted in evolutionary biology, and doesn’t touch on whatever is “beyond the meat.” That being said what do you have to say about certain personality categorizations like the big five which were determined based off of statistical clustering [0]? Is this not science for some reason because it includes personality? [0] http://socpers.psihologietm.ro/PDFs/Sava%20&%20Popa%20(2011).pdf http://socpers.psihologietm.ro/PDFs/Sava%20&%20Popa%20(2011)...
- C-x_C-f 5y ago
  I too don't consider psychology to be a science, but I also realize that my operational definition of science is quite restrictive (from your other comments it appears that so is yours). As a result, I think that there are plenty of disciplines that fall outside of the realm of science but still end up being rather insightful, like medicine--I sure don't think doctors work according to the "scientific method" (whatever that is), but I certainly wouldn't discount a good book written by a doctor as being on the same level as fiction. tl;dr: it not being science doesn't make it fiction
- webmobdev 5y ago
  At its very best and most rigorous, psychology is pseudoscience. Perhaps that is true with the old literature (Freud, Jung, etc), even if parts of it also offer some insight on human behaviour. But from what I have read, the turning point was when Albert Ellis and Aaron T Beck developed the idea of Cognitive Therapy, which started the whole evidence based therapy movement (they diverged a bit with Ellis calling his talk therapy "Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy"). Aaron T Beck perhaps laid the foundation by testing out his research theories with actual clinical studies (like pharma companies do, for e.g. conducting studies like treating one group with anti-depressants, another group with a placebo, and treating a different group of patients with his talk therapy and proving that Cognitive Therapy was just as effective as anti-depressants in alleviating anxiety and depression, and in many cases better than anti-depressants for the long-term). Since then, there have been a lot of similar studies done on the efficacy of such therapies for treating Schizophrenia and various personality disorders. (Interestingly, Aaron T Beck actually believed in Freudian psychology and practiced it as a psychoanalyst and one of his earlier studies was to prove that it was effective. But his study proved him wrong and thus he went on to develop CT, along with Ellis' and Buddhist ideas.) So it is no longer fair to call psychology as a pseudo-science anymore, in my opinion. (For those who like to use capitalism as some kind of yardstick / indicator of the efficacy of some new technology / science, it is interesting to note that most insurance companies now cover and push for such evidence based therapies.) But yes, a lot of self-help books are indeed based on pseudo-science or pop-psychology.
- dang 5y ago
  This cliché comment and the subthread it spawned are an example of the direction we don't want threads to go on HN. That's why we have guidelines like the following, all of which you broke rather egregiously. Can you please not do that on this site in the future? If you don't find articles about psychology books interesting there are countless other things to read here. "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3." "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - luffapi 5y ago
    I was unaware that we’re not allowed to critique posts. My comment was highly upvoted before you flagged it, so clearly the community was fine with it. I didn’t call anyone names, and this isn’t a “flamebait” topic, so I don’t know what you mean by “egregious” violation.
    - dang 5y ago
      Thoughtful critique is fine; this is about comment quality. I'm afraid the sort of generic dismissal you posted, repeating what has become a cliché while adding no new information, does not clear the quality bar. "The community was fine with it" is unfortunately not dispositive—indignant repetition of clichés routinely attracts upvotes. This is a failure mode of the upvoting system (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22upvotes%20alone%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). Re calling names, it isn't that you called anyone names personally, it's that words like "pseudoscience" and "fiction" count as name-calling in the way you used them, since you didn't actually make an argument. Actually if one removes name-calling in this sense, there's almost nothing left of your comment, except perhaps the last sentence, and even that seems more an expression of disdain than a substantive contribution.
      - luffapi 5y ago
m1117 5y ago
"Everyone should read". Debatable.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  Can you explain or are you just doing a drive-by post to show your disdain?
- asteroidbelt 5y ago
  I don’t trust “must” lists which contain round number of items. If something must be done, the list may contain 4, 9 or 13 items. It is possible that accidentally the item count is 10, but more likely author just picked top 10 and called them “must”.
- RuleOfBirds 5y ago
  The author literally gives an individual reason why about half the books should be read by everyone and the other half by many based on their interests. What are your objections?
  - SubiculumCode 5y ago
    Because a lot of those books are complete shit. Fuck Freud. edit: Why? An example: Goodbye Sigmund Freud: The case for exorcising the ghost of Freud from the field of psychology https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10911359.2019.1673869?casa_token=sby3TrdHOgcAAAAA%3A4gwzKGbeujXNyGTi1IdK3PRfBvGBcZyfPEBfpsxIZAME2MpterOtvskYQhfFIGtSEFKdpFLb50bCXg https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10911359.2019.1...
Pamar 5y ago
Personally I think that at least one book is missing: "Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes" by Paul Watzlawick (1) On the other hand it could very well be the case that the two main points of the book(2) are discussed also in one or more of the 10 listed in the OP. 1) https://www.goodreads.com/it/book/show/89200.Pragmatics_of_Human_Communication https://www.goodreads.com/it/book/show/89200.Pragmatics_of_H... 2) The two points being: - What Communication and Meta-communication are, what purpose they serve and how these are a uniquely human trait. - The role of the therapist in treating dysfunctional families.
- karmakaze 5y ago
  TIL Meta-communication: > It is based on the idea that the same message accompanied by different meta-communication can mean something entirely different, including its opposite, as in irony. It's the real message, communication via a false message rather than about it.
  - Pamar 5y ago
    Watzlawick's take on meta-communication is this, basically: Your cat can communicate to you that he wants some more milk. This is communication. Your cat CANNOT communicate about its own communication, i.e. cannot "say" something like: "hey, you bastard, I meowed for milk 4 times already, are you deaf or just too lazy to pour some for me?". This would be meta-communication, and no animal species can do it. It is like adding a whole extra dimension to it. (The cat example is straight out of the book, as much as I can recall it, at least).
    - karmakaze 5y ago
      Not literally, but is that really true? Your cat could meow in a very different way, gesturing to the milk, then looking at you and scratching. It's not referencing the past communication but obviously the communication has escalated, and this could be due to the first dismissal and not that the cat is that much more hungry. It's not about the milk anymore--what's the difference?
nofinator 5y ago
I'm still tempted to read Emotional Intelligence. It's hard to believe it was published over 25 years ago. It's topic has been integrated a lot into work and home culture (including me), though there's still a ways to go (including for me). Is it still a good read? Is there another book like it that hackers recommend?
- karmicthreat 5y ago
  I don’t think it’s necessarily the best book ever. But for me it was useful for thinking deeper about how I and other people perceive things.
- qntty 5y ago
  It wasn't a bad book but it could have been an essay. I really liked another book also by Goleman called The Meditative Mind.
- dkarl 5y ago
  I think it's still worthwhile. I first read it as a teenager, not long after it was published. It had a big impact, and I feel that since I read it, I've seen a lot in the culture that has referred to it, taken it for granted, regurgitated it, addressed individual topics from it, etc., but I'm not aware of anything that has replaced it as an overall introduction to the concept, which I think is due to quality of the writing. Even as a teenager I found easy and engaging. The book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 is a different book by a different author. Read the Daniel Goleman book instead, or at least first.
- joshxyz 5y ago
  Yep, still a good read. Great in cultivating some empathy and social acuity. Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss is also worth checking out.
gnarbarian 5y ago
Thinking fast and slow has profoundly changed how I view the world and continually provides me with tools I use to better myself and the organizations I'm a part of. I now regularly revisit my prior assumptions and attempt to reason from first principles and I am better at recognizing when to encourage it in others. I've also read influence. It's Great but it didn't have near as much impact on me. but it does really drive home how people rationalize prior assumptions rather than logically arriving at conclusions.
qwerty456127 5y ago
Is "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman really worth reading the whole book? I feel like I understand the phenomenon it describes (and I believe a page or two is more than enough to explain it), I'm glad somebody described it popularly and attracted attention of wide audience raising their awareness. But reading a 500 pages book is a huge investment of time and mental energy. What's there one might find worth it?
- gnarbarian 5y ago
  I thought it was great. You might want to try the audiobook.
  - qwerty456127 5y ago
    I have no doubt it is great. And my life is not enough to read all the great books I want to, even if I were not ADHD, slow reader and generally overwhelmed. Why should I pick this one if I know what it is about already (and have in fact already started reading it once)? What will I find there that will make me feel glad I've actually read it? Can you come up with a curious quote from there perhaps? I mean a quote which a person understanding the concept can still find interesting.
    - gnarbarian 5y ago
      I also have ADD. (it took me 16 years to graduate college medicated.) This book is profoundly interesting and will give you many fun thought experiments and examples. This book sunk its teeth into me and I could not put it down. It's so much more than the basic concept You may already understand.
    - bloak 5y ago
      I read about a quarter of it and regret the time I wasted. It's interesting to look at the Amazon reviews: most of the reviews give 5 stars, but if you look at the 1-star reviews you'll see that there is a significant minority of reviewers with opinions like this one, for example: "It's an overrated book that is unnecessarily long. It will suffice to read the book blurb as the rest is repetitive explanation of the same topic with endless examples." To me it is an interesting psychological phenomenon that people find the book worth reading. Perhaps someone should write a book about that ...
skumar88023 5y ago
Nice book.
AzzieElbab 5y ago
Interesting, I never considered "Thinking Fast and Slow" and " "Persuasion" to be psychology books or I would not have read them
- tome 5y ago
  Where are you seeing "Persuasion"?
  - heymijo 5y ago
    #2 on the list by Robert Cialdini. Durmonski omitted the full title from the list, which it is well known for. The full title is: Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion
mikasa7 5y ago
omg
voisin 5y ago
The Body Keeps Score is one of the most impactful books I’ve read in the last few years. The thesis is that trauma resides not only in the brain as an experience, but in the body (the central nervous system) as a reaction to that experience, and so resolution of trauma must be more than “talk therapy”, and indeed the research shows that all manner of physical action helps to resolve trauma. There are many components that are needed, and I can confirm with my own n=1 study of the effectiveness of many of the techniques. I hope to continue with the things I am doing and try more of the things he talks about. Highly recommended! Also, pair with “Widen the Window”
- binaryorganic 5y ago
  Same! I was so glad to see it’s inclusion in the list. It’s had a huge impact on me. Will check out Widen the Window.
jamesgreenleaf 5y ago
I'm surprised none of Robert Greene's books are on this list. Maybe they wouldn't be strictly categorized as psychology. The Laws of Human Nature delves into some psychology and personality types though, and is worth reading.
SubiculumCode 5y ago
Flagged. Freud? Are you kidding me? Pop Psychology books? -signed, A disgruntled psychologist scientist who is tired of having his field maligned with bullshit.
- dash2 5y ago
  Here is how you could be more persuasive: use your expertise to explain why modern psychological science has moved on from Freud, how it's different from pop psychology, and to give some examples of solid, reproducible, insightful work in the field.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - SubiculumCode 5y ago
    Goodbye Sigmund Freud: The case for exorcising the ghost of Freud from the field of psychology https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10911359.2019.1673869?casa_token=sby3TrdHOgcAAAAA%3A4gwzKGbeujXNyGTi1IdK3PRfBvGBcZyfPEBfpsxIZAME2MpterOtvskYQhfFIGtSEFKdpFLb50bCXg https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10911359.2019.1...
    - leucineleprec0n 5y ago
      Nice, thanks for this, I've no papers on the matter of course but this was always my issue with his drivel on an instinctive level before I was able to elucidate it - namely the lack of even vague attempts at grounding his Uber-mystic theories with empirical foundations, tests. What may be more amazing is that scrolling through these threads treating K*hneman or others seriously. Invariably if cognitive psych or physiology make the rounds here I feel a serious case of guilty Gell-Mann Amnesia. I mean, is it too much to ask the constituents of this forum to keep the pace ahead of "Ah, Thinking Fast and Slow was really intellectually stimulating" in 2021, or... ever?.
- panosfilianos 5y ago
  Provide an alternative list then for us who are interested.
billfruit 5y ago
The list seems very pop-psychology heavy to me. I would put William James, Principles of Psychology in the top spot. In general William James writing seems full of profound ideas.
navait 5y ago
Have any of the books in this list hit problems with replication, or later finding out the science isn't so good?
- wodenokoto 5y ago
  Yes. The Sigmund Freud book.
psysharp 5y ago
"How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain" by Lisa Feldman Barrett should be considered for this list.
- durmonski 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing. Never heard of this book. I will check it out.
  - jhap 5y ago
    I second the recommendation. I thought it was great.
- alok-g 5y ago
  The very first review I see at Amazon (Kimberly) is saying "Book's main premise is an erratic, non-peer reviewed assertion". The said review is detailed and has cited multiple references. I don't know what to conclude. Advice would help. https://www.amazon.com/How-Emotions-Are-Made-Secret/dp/1509837523/ https://www.amazon.com/How-Emotions-Are-Made-Secret/dp/15098...
  - rramadass 5y ago
    You should not let one review stop you from reading Barrett's book. The subject is highly fascinating and important since much of our lives are ruled by emotions and feelings. I note that the review is from one "emotion researcher" who might be focusing on finer nuances which might not be relevant for a initial broad understanding of the topic for a general audience. Also the reviewer quotes Paul Ekman (i got introduced to this subject through his book Emotions Revealed) who has had his own research questioned - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ekman#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ekman#Criticisms. Nothing is set in stone here; marrying Social Psychology to concrete Neuroscience is a very difficult endeavour so an exposure to all viewpoints should be sought out.
    - alok-g 5y ago
nazgulnarsil 5y ago
It's a bad list
briefcomment 5y ago
Relevant: "Reversals in Psychology" [1] [2] [1] https://www.gleech.org/psych https://www.gleech.org/psych [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27709266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27709266
- crazygringo 5y ago
  I disagree, that's not relevant at all. These are books that synthesize huge amounts of data. They're incredibly valuable and have plenty of third-party reviews you can read to further learn what their strengths and weaknesses are. They're not perfect, but nothing in science is. On the other hand, the post you're linking to is a bunch of tiny hand-picked studies that haven't had replication succeed -- as would be trivial to assemble such a list in any field. Those studies don't form the main underpinning of any of these books, so they don't have anything to do with it.
imbnwa 5y ago
I'd recommend Three Essays on Sexuality over Interpretation of Dreams.
Rzor 5y ago
The little I understood about Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart was really interesting. It's about the effectiveness of simple heuristics sometimes outshining sophisticated methods and really thriving in the unknown. Also, it's a bit weird that Gerd Gigerenzer doesn't usually appear in the same circles as Kahnemann does. His Wikipedia page alone would tell you this and his research really adds a nice counter-weight to the argument of irrationality of human minds.
andrei_says_ 5y ago
Come as you are. It is sold as a book about sex but it’s a (pop-) psychology book. Compassionate, practical, empowering. Punished by rewards by Alfie Kohn. The amount of research showing that incentivizing people kills internal motivation is… staggering.
aristofun 5y ago
The irony is that at least half of these books has almost nothing to do with psychology (as a theoretical or practical science).
rramadass 5y ago
Has anybody here read Watson and Tharp's Self-Directed Behavior: Self-Modification for Personal Adjustment ? Any review/insight/recommendation would be much appreciated.
- bordercases 5y ago
  The full book is worth reading if and only if you want to have an entire theory of reinforcement psychology in your head. Else, the first four chapters and the last few are good enough. What it teaches you is that, behavior is situational, not innate. As it is situational you ought to enumerate and decompose your current behavior into its antecedents, its content, and its consequences; describing your behavior's whole context. From there, you ought to apply tactics onto these ABCs to increase or decrease your target behavior accordingly. You should track your progress for relapse, and then have plans to adjust your behavior if and when relapse occurs. The book describes these tactics and gives hints on how to achieve all of the above. It is an excellent book. If BJ Fogg's "Tiny Habits" felt like they lacked substance, then pick up "Self-Directed Behavior".
ajdude 5y ago
When I was in undergrad, my psychology professor gave me a list of books[0] to read; “if you read these books, you’ll be one of the smartest people in the world.” I actually noticed one of the books on that list! [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20100527123450/http://www.gbc.edu/~toothmaj/readings.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20100527123450/http://www.gbc.ed...

164 points by durmonski 5y ago

At its very best and most rigorous, psychology is pseudoscience. The books listed aren’t even that, they’re pop-pseudoscience. If you read any of these books, treat them as fiction. Your time is better spent elsewhere. You could probably even glean more insight into the human mind by reading some decent literature.

whalesalad 5y ago
This is such an anti-hacker mindset I don't really know where to begin. When did HN become like this?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
puddingforears 5y ago
I’m still here as a direct product of treatment by induced seizures by electroshock. After finishing treatment, it’s as if the toxic narrator of my life has vanished from my life and I’m suddenly just here, myself. But it’s just pseudoscience and I would have done better to read some decent literature.
- luffapi 5y ago
  1. Neuroscience is not psychology. 2. Electroshock “therapy” is not neuroscience.
  - rusk 5y ago
    1. Yes it is, or at least was. It’s a branch of psychology that developed into a science its own right. Just as physics was once “natural philosophy”. Epistemologically however neuroscience does still fall under the umbrella term of psychology.
    - luffapi 5y ago
      That’s like saying alchemy is science because chemistry developed from it. If it has no reproducibility, it’s not science it’s speculation.
      - rusk 5y ago
        No it’s not and this comparison is facetious. Nobody practices alchemy as a mainstream science in 2021. There are plenty of people doing astrology for instance but in a clinical setting? In funded university programs? Producing papers that can be openly challenged? I don’t think so. Again facetious.
        luffapi 5y ago
        That’s not a meaningful metric. Plenty of people doing astrology in 2021. That doesn’t make it real.
  - caddemon 5y ago
    ECT was certainly way over applied back in the day, but it's made a bit of a comeback in recent years for treating severe depression. In the sense that clinical trials are science, it's definitely science. It's true we don't really understand why it works, but you could say the same thing about a number of drugs for treating psychiatric disease, and I doubt you would say those are not science. Here is a FAQ about ECT from Hopkins: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psychiatry/specialty_areas/brain_stimulation/ect/faq_ect.html https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psychiatry/specialty_areas/b...
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    Can you provide a definition of psychology then please? I'm hesitant to try my skills at one that doesn't map somewhere to neuroscience.
    - luffapi 5y ago
      It’s the study of the “mind” (not brain). It’s very basis is the study of a pseudo-religious phenomenon. Neuroscience is real science because it studies the brain not the artificial and archaic concept of the mind. There can be personal value in studying psychology. It’s just not science, it’s fictional.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - dash2 5y ago
        How does this critique apply, e.g. to Jonathan Haidt's work on moral foundations? Or, if you want something more rigorous, to prospect theory and other decision theorists' attempts to build simple tractable models of decision-making?
        disgruntledphd2 5y ago
        > It’s the study of the “mind” (not brain). It’s very basis is the study of a pseudo-religious phenomenon So you don't believe in the existence of qualia? That's a pretty strong philosophical position.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  My girlfriend has had EMDR therapy that resolved her responses to triggers (similar to panic attacks? I'm not sure how to describe it) from C-PTSD, but it's just pseudoscience and she would have done better to read some decent literature.
- staticman2 5y ago
  I don't think a single book on that list discusses electroshock therapy. I think it could be both true that electroshock therapy works and psychology can be a pseudoscience.
capnorange 5y ago
Psychology is probabilistic science, that's the best we can do given the complexities of the mind. If you want to get a taste of rigor in psychology I suggest you read some of the works by Carl Jung. Agreed, most people looking to understand the psyche would be better off reading literature / art.
- luffapi 5y ago
  Carl Jung while interesting is anything but rigorous science. Like I said, treat this stuff like fiction. Some can even be insightful! > Psychology is probabilistic science It’s not science if it doesn’t include reproducibility.
  - rusk 5y ago
    Carl Jung is psychotherapy, which is studied under psychology because it has therapeutic value. But at least as I understand it, it is not in and of itself “psychology”. It’s a popular misconception but if that’s your criticism of psychology you don’t know what you’re talking about.
    - luffapi 5y ago
      I was responding to the parent who used Carl Jung as an example.
  - evilsetg 5y ago
    If the probabilities are reproducible it is still science I would say. Take quantum mechanics for example. It can not predict what exactly is going to happen, only how likely each outcome would be.
    - C-x_C-f 5y ago
      > It can not predict what exactly is going to happen, only how likely each outcome would be. Yeah but the key difference is that QM is a mathematically solid theory starting from a couple basic laws to yield predictions with p-values of 0 (for all intents and purposes anyway). Also note that there are non-probabilistic measurements in QM, be they measurements of aggregate behavior or just pure states [1]. In that respect, QM and most physical sciences really are miles ahead of psychology (though I don't think that's reason to discredit the latter, as it has obvious empirical merit). If I may be a bit bolder still, I'd argue that it's not merely a quantitative difference. As pointed out by many other comments, psychology completely lacks any sort of unifying framework, except perhaps for small clusters of thematically similar phenomena. A collection of empirical facts does not a scientific theory make, or--taken to the cheeky extreme--"All science is either physics or stamp collecting" [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_state#Pure_states https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_state#Pure_states [2] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Rutherford#Quotes https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Rutherford#Quotes
rusk 5y ago
“I don’t understand it” = “not a science” It doesn’t have the rigour of say physics for sure … but physics is specifically the science of what can be measured. I wouldn’t write it off as a science though. You may write off some of its practitioners for sure but you can do that with anything.
- luffapi 5y ago
  No reproducibility = not a science
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - rusk 5y ago
    There’s plenty of reproducibility and falsifiability and all those other essential ingredients. The very fact that there is a “reproducibility crisis” at all shows that as a field it’s open to this kind of cross examination. Psych makes plenty of fairly reliable predictions around social behaviour, childhood development and human machine interaction. Only somebody who didn’t understand psychology would say it produces no reproducible results. It’s not physics. You can’t do it in a lab. But it can explain and predict within bounds of certainty. DSM is often wielded as a criticism but this is strictly speaking a psychiatric i.e “medical” tool which strictly speaking should be used as a basis for making diagnosis not for diagnosis itself. It’s limitations are well understood in the field of psychology and again somebody who understood the field would know this.
    - luffapi 5y ago
      > But it can explain and predict within bounds of certainty. Can you provide an example of a prediction that can accurately be made with psychology? > Only somebody who didn’t understand psychology would say it produces no reproducible results. I’m well versed enough with psychology. I even remember when people took the DSMIV seriously!
      - 5y ago
hawthornio 5y ago
I can understand why you feel this way about popular Psychology literature, but I would encourage you to read some introductory textbooks on Psychology, like _Basic Vision: An Introduction to Visual Perception_.
jacobrussell 5y ago
Take no. 6 for example: Behave by Robert M. Sapolsky. Dr. Sapolsky is a professor at Stanford with nearly 300 publications [0] and has been teaching biology and neurology for years. I'm curious, why do you think this book is pop-pseudoscience? Have you read it? Are there certain things you disagree with or think aren't based on research or reproducibility? [0] https://profiles.stanford.edu/robert-sapolsky?tab=publications https://profiles.stanford.edu/robert-sapolsky?tab=publicatio...
- myWindoonn 5y ago
  Minds aren't scientific, so psychology isn't scientific. It's that simple; you've fooled yourself into thinking that you have "a mind", a supposedly-measurable durable part of your personality which persists beyond the mere meat of your brain and neurons, not unlike a soul.
  - Delk 5y ago
    How are you going to fool yourself, qualitatively and subjectively, that you have a mind if you don't have something capable of qualia in the first place? I'm not trying to argue for some kind of an immaterial soul, or claiming that all of psychology is scientific (many theories, at least as it appears to a layman, aren't). And sure, a durable personality and various other mental models we have might be illusions to varying degrees. But if the lower-level immediate experiences are treated as a real (if emergent and somewhat culturally dependent) thing, I don't see why higher-level mental phenomena such as the common need for a durable sense of self couldn't be treated as real as well.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    > Minds aren't scientific What does that even mean? I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.
  - jacobrussell 5y ago
    I’m not a psychologist, but I don’t think psychology is entirely comprised of studying “the mind” or the super ego/sense of self that you are referring. Specifically with human behavioral biology, it is concerned with what happens with synaptic responses influencing an action, hormonal responses influencing synapses, biological inputs (senses) triggering hormonal responses, environmental stimulus influencing the senses, and so on and so forth. It is very much rooted in evolutionary biology, and doesn’t touch on whatever is “beyond the meat.” That being said what do you have to say about certain personality categorizations like the big five which were determined based off of statistical clustering [0]? Is this not science for some reason because it includes personality? [0] http://socpers.psihologietm.ro/PDFs/Sava%20&%20Popa%20(2011).pdf http://socpers.psihologietm.ro/PDFs/Sava%20&%20Popa%20(2011)...
C-x_C-f 5y ago
I too don't consider psychology to be a science, but I also realize that my operational definition of science is quite restrictive (from your other comments it appears that so is yours). As a result, I think that there are plenty of disciplines that fall outside of the realm of science but still end up being rather insightful, like medicine--I sure don't think doctors work according to the "scientific method" (whatever that is), but I certainly wouldn't discount a good book written by a doctor as being on the same level as fiction. tl;dr: it not being science doesn't make it fiction
webmobdev 5y ago
At its very best and most rigorous, psychology is pseudoscience. Perhaps that is true with the old literature (Freud, Jung, etc), even if parts of it also offer some insight on human behaviour. But from what I have read, the turning point was when Albert Ellis and Aaron T Beck developed the idea of Cognitive Therapy, which started the whole evidence based therapy movement (they diverged a bit with Ellis calling his talk therapy "Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy"). Aaron T Beck perhaps laid the foundation by testing out his research theories with actual clinical studies (like pharma companies do, for e.g. conducting studies like treating one group with anti-depressants, another group with a placebo, and treating a different group of patients with his talk therapy and proving that Cognitive Therapy was just as effective as anti-depressants in alleviating anxiety and depression, and in many cases better than anti-depressants for the long-term). Since then, there have been a lot of similar studies done on the efficacy of such therapies for treating Schizophrenia and various personality disorders. (Interestingly, Aaron T Beck actually believed in Freudian psychology and practiced it as a psychoanalyst and one of his earlier studies was to prove that it was effective. But his study proved him wrong and thus he went on to develop CT, along with Ellis' and Buddhist ideas.) So it is no longer fair to call psychology as a pseudo-science anymore, in my opinion. (For those who like to use capitalism as some kind of yardstick / indicator of the efficacy of some new technology / science, it is interesting to note that most insurance companies now cover and push for such evidence based therapies.) But yes, a lot of self-help books are indeed based on pseudo-science or pop-psychology.
dang 5y ago
This cliché comment and the subthread it spawned are an example of the direction we don't want threads to go on HN. That's why we have guidelines like the following, all of which you broke rather egregiously. Can you please not do that on this site in the future? If you don't find articles about psychology books interesting there are countless other things to read here. "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3." "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- luffapi 5y ago
  I was unaware that we’re not allowed to critique posts. My comment was highly upvoted before you flagged it, so clearly the community was fine with it. I didn’t call anyone names, and this isn’t a “flamebait” topic, so I don’t know what you mean by “egregious” violation.
  - dang 5y ago
    Thoughtful critique is fine; this is about comment quality. I'm afraid the sort of generic dismissal you posted, repeating what has become a cliché while adding no new information, does not clear the quality bar. "The community was fine with it" is unfortunately not dispositive—indignant repetition of clichés routinely attracts upvotes. This is a failure mode of the upvoting system (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22upvotes%20alone%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). Re calling names, it isn't that you called anyone names personally, it's that words like "pseudoscience" and "fiction" count as name-calling in the way you used them, since you didn't actually make an argument. Actually if one removes name-calling in this sense, there's almost nothing left of your comment, except perhaps the last sentence, and even that seems more an expression of disdain than a substantive contribution.
    - luffapi 5y ago

m1117 5y ago

"Everyone should read". Debatable.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Can you explain or are you just doing a drive-by post to show your disdain?
asteroidbelt 5y ago
I don’t trust “must” lists which contain round number of items. If something must be done, the list may contain 4, 9 or 13 items. It is possible that accidentally the item count is 10, but more likely author just picked top 10 and called them “must”.
RuleOfBirds 5y ago
The author literally gives an individual reason why about half the books should be read by everyone and the other half by many based on their interests. What are your objections?
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  Because a lot of those books are complete shit. Fuck Freud. edit: Why? An example: Goodbye Sigmund Freud: The case for exorcising the ghost of Freud from the field of psychology https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10911359.2019.1673869?casa_token=sby3TrdHOgcAAAAA%3A4gwzKGbeujXNyGTi1IdK3PRfBvGBcZyfPEBfpsxIZAME2MpterOtvskYQhfFIGtSEFKdpFLb50bCXg https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10911359.2019.1...

Pamar 5y ago

Personally I think that at least one book is missing: "Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes" by Paul Watzlawick (1) On the other hand it could very well be the case that the two main points of the book(2) are discussed also in one or more of the 10 listed in the OP. 1) https://www.goodreads.com/it/book/show/89200.Pragmatics_of_Human_Communication https://www.goodreads.com/it/book/show/89200.Pragmatics_of_H... 2) The two points being: - What Communication and Meta-communication are, what purpose they serve and how these are a uniquely human trait. - The role of the therapist in treating dysfunctional families.

karmakaze 5y ago
TIL Meta-communication: > It is based on the idea that the same message accompanied by different meta-communication can mean something entirely different, including its opposite, as in irony. It's the real message, communication via a false message rather than about it.
- Pamar 5y ago
  Watzlawick's take on meta-communication is this, basically: Your cat can communicate to you that he wants some more milk. This is communication. Your cat CANNOT communicate about its own communication, i.e. cannot "say" something like: "hey, you bastard, I meowed for milk 4 times already, are you deaf or just too lazy to pour some for me?". This would be meta-communication, and no animal species can do it. It is like adding a whole extra dimension to it. (The cat example is straight out of the book, as much as I can recall it, at least).
  - karmakaze 5y ago
    Not literally, but is that really true? Your cat could meow in a very different way, gesturing to the milk, then looking at you and scratching. It's not referencing the past communication but obviously the communication has escalated, and this could be due to the first dismissal and not that the cat is that much more hungry. It's not about the milk anymore--what's the difference?

nofinator 5y ago

I'm still tempted to read Emotional Intelligence. It's hard to believe it was published over 25 years ago. It's topic has been integrated a lot into work and home culture (including me), though there's still a ways to go (including for me). Is it still a good read? Is there another book like it that hackers recommend?

karmicthreat 5y ago
I don’t think it’s necessarily the best book ever. But for me it was useful for thinking deeper about how I and other people perceive things.
qntty 5y ago
It wasn't a bad book but it could have been an essay. I really liked another book also by Goleman called The Meditative Mind.
dkarl 5y ago
I think it's still worthwhile. I first read it as a teenager, not long after it was published. It had a big impact, and I feel that since I read it, I've seen a lot in the culture that has referred to it, taken it for granted, regurgitated it, addressed individual topics from it, etc., but I'm not aware of anything that has replaced it as an overall introduction to the concept, which I think is due to quality of the writing. Even as a teenager I found easy and engaging. The book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 is a different book by a different author. Read the Daniel Goleman book instead, or at least first.
joshxyz 5y ago
Yep, still a good read. Great in cultivating some empathy and social acuity. Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss is also worth checking out.

gnarbarian 5y ago

Thinking fast and slow has profoundly changed how I view the world and continually provides me with tools I use to better myself and the organizations I'm a part of. I now regularly revisit my prior assumptions and attempt to reason from first principles and I am better at recognizing when to encourage it in others. I've also read influence. It's Great but it didn't have near as much impact on me. but it does really drive home how people rationalize prior assumptions rather than logically arriving at conclusions.

qwerty456127 5y ago

Is "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman really worth reading the whole book? I feel like I understand the phenomenon it describes (and I believe a page or two is more than enough to explain it), I'm glad somebody described it popularly and attracted attention of wide audience raising their awareness. But reading a 500 pages book is a huge investment of time and mental energy. What's there one might find worth it?

gnarbarian 5y ago
I thought it was great. You might want to try the audiobook.
- qwerty456127 5y ago
  I have no doubt it is great. And my life is not enough to read all the great books I want to, even if I were not ADHD, slow reader and generally overwhelmed. Why should I pick this one if I know what it is about already (and have in fact already started reading it once)? What will I find there that will make me feel glad I've actually read it? Can you come up with a curious quote from there perhaps? I mean a quote which a person understanding the concept can still find interesting.
  - gnarbarian 5y ago
    I also have ADD. (it took me 16 years to graduate college medicated.) This book is profoundly interesting and will give you many fun thought experiments and examples. This book sunk its teeth into me and I could not put it down. It's so much more than the basic concept You may already understand.
  - bloak 5y ago
    I read about a quarter of it and regret the time I wasted. It's interesting to look at the Amazon reviews: most of the reviews give 5 stars, but if you look at the 1-star reviews you'll see that there is a significant minority of reviewers with opinions like this one, for example: "It's an overrated book that is unnecessarily long. It will suffice to read the book blurb as the rest is repetitive explanation of the same topic with endless examples." To me it is an interesting psychological phenomenon that people find the book worth reading. Perhaps someone should write a book about that ...

skumar88023 5y ago

Nice book.

AzzieElbab 5y ago

Interesting, I never considered "Thinking Fast and Slow" and " "Persuasion" to be psychology books or I would not have read them

tome 5y ago
Where are you seeing "Persuasion"?
- heymijo 5y ago
  #2 on the list by Robert Cialdini. Durmonski omitted the full title from the list, which it is well known for. The full title is: Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion

mikasa7 5y ago

omg

voisin 5y ago

The Body Keeps Score is one of the most impactful books I’ve read in the last few years. The thesis is that trauma resides not only in the brain as an experience, but in the body (the central nervous system) as a reaction to that experience, and so resolution of trauma must be more than “talk therapy”, and indeed the research shows that all manner of physical action helps to resolve trauma. There are many components that are needed, and I can confirm with my own n=1 study of the effectiveness of many of the techniques. I hope to continue with the things I am doing and try more of the things he talks about. Highly recommended! Also, pair with “Widen the Window”

binaryorganic 5y ago
Same! I was so glad to see it’s inclusion in the list. It’s had a huge impact on me. Will check out Widen the Window.

jamesgreenleaf 5y ago

I'm surprised none of Robert Greene's books are on this list. Maybe they wouldn't be strictly categorized as psychology. The Laws of Human Nature delves into some psychology and personality types though, and is worth reading.

SubiculumCode 5y ago

Flagged. Freud? Are you kidding me? Pop Psychology books? -signed, A disgruntled psychologist scientist who is tired of having his field maligned with bullshit.

dash2 5y ago
Here is how you could be more persuasive: use your expertise to explain why modern psychological science has moved on from Freud, how it's different from pop psychology, and to give some examples of solid, reproducible, insightful work in the field.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  Goodbye Sigmund Freud: The case for exorcising the ghost of Freud from the field of psychology https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10911359.2019.1673869?casa_token=sby3TrdHOgcAAAAA%3A4gwzKGbeujXNyGTi1IdK3PRfBvGBcZyfPEBfpsxIZAME2MpterOtvskYQhfFIGtSEFKdpFLb50bCXg https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10911359.2019.1...
  - leucineleprec0n 5y ago
    Nice, thanks for this, I've no papers on the matter of course but this was always my issue with his drivel on an instinctive level before I was able to elucidate it - namely the lack of even vague attempts at grounding his Uber-mystic theories with empirical foundations, tests. What may be more amazing is that scrolling through these threads treating K*hneman or others seriously. Invariably if cognitive psych or physiology make the rounds here I feel a serious case of guilty Gell-Mann Amnesia. I mean, is it too much to ask the constituents of this forum to keep the pace ahead of "Ah, Thinking Fast and Slow was really intellectually stimulating" in 2021, or... ever?.
panosfilianos 5y ago
Provide an alternative list then for us who are interested.

billfruit 5y ago

The list seems very pop-psychology heavy to me. I would put William James, Principles of Psychology in the top spot. In general William James writing seems full of profound ideas.

navait 5y ago

Have any of the books in this list hit problems with replication, or later finding out the science isn't so good?

wodenokoto 5y ago
Yes. The Sigmund Freud book.

psysharp 5y ago

"How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain" by Lisa Feldman Barrett should be considered for this list.

durmonski 5y ago
Thanks for sharing. Never heard of this book. I will check it out.
- jhap 5y ago
  I second the recommendation. I thought it was great.
alok-g 5y ago
The very first review I see at Amazon (Kimberly) is saying "Book's main premise is an erratic, non-peer reviewed assertion". The said review is detailed and has cited multiple references. I don't know what to conclude. Advice would help. https://www.amazon.com/How-Emotions-Are-Made-Secret/dp/1509837523/ https://www.amazon.com/How-Emotions-Are-Made-Secret/dp/15098...
- rramadass 5y ago
  You should not let one review stop you from reading Barrett's book. The subject is highly fascinating and important since much of our lives are ruled by emotions and feelings. I note that the review is from one "emotion researcher" who might be focusing on finer nuances which might not be relevant for a initial broad understanding of the topic for a general audience. Also the reviewer quotes Paul Ekman (i got introduced to this subject through his book Emotions Revealed) who has had his own research questioned - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ekman#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ekman#Criticisms. Nothing is set in stone here; marrying Social Psychology to concrete Neuroscience is a very difficult endeavour so an exposure to all viewpoints should be sought out.
  - alok-g 5y ago

nazgulnarsil 5y ago

It's a bad list

briefcomment 5y ago

Relevant: "Reversals in Psychology" [1] [2] [1] https://www.gleech.org/psych https://www.gleech.org/psych [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27709266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27709266

crazygringo 5y ago
I disagree, that's not relevant at all. These are books that synthesize huge amounts of data. They're incredibly valuable and have plenty of third-party reviews you can read to further learn what their strengths and weaknesses are. They're not perfect, but nothing in science is. On the other hand, the post you're linking to is a bunch of tiny hand-picked studies that haven't had replication succeed -- as would be trivial to assemble such a list in any field. Those studies don't form the main underpinning of any of these books, so they don't have anything to do with it.

imbnwa 5y ago

I'd recommend Three Essays on Sexuality over Interpretation of Dreams.

Rzor 5y ago

The little I understood about Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart was really interesting. It's about the effectiveness of simple heuristics sometimes outshining sophisticated methods and really thriving in the unknown. Also, it's a bit weird that Gerd Gigerenzer doesn't usually appear in the same circles as Kahnemann does. His Wikipedia page alone would tell you this and his research really adds a nice counter-weight to the argument of irrationality of human minds.

andrei_says_ 5y ago

Come as you are. It is sold as a book about sex but it’s a (pop-) psychology book. Compassionate, practical, empowering. Punished by rewards by Alfie Kohn. The amount of research showing that incentivizing people kills internal motivation is… staggering.

aristofun 5y ago

The irony is that at least half of these books has almost nothing to do with psychology (as a theoretical or practical science).

rramadass 5y ago

Has anybody here read Watson and Tharp's Self-Directed Behavior: Self-Modification for Personal Adjustment ? Any review/insight/recommendation would be much appreciated.

bordercases 5y ago
The full book is worth reading if and only if you want to have an entire theory of reinforcement psychology in your head. Else, the first four chapters and the last few are good enough. What it teaches you is that, behavior is situational, not innate. As it is situational you ought to enumerate and decompose your current behavior into its antecedents, its content, and its consequences; describing your behavior's whole context. From there, you ought to apply tactics onto these ABCs to increase or decrease your target behavior accordingly. You should track your progress for relapse, and then have plans to adjust your behavior if and when relapse occurs. The book describes these tactics and gives hints on how to achieve all of the above. It is an excellent book. If BJ Fogg's "Tiny Habits" felt like they lacked substance, then pick up "Self-Directed Behavior".

ajdude 5y ago

When I was in undergrad, my psychology professor gave me a list of books[0] to read; “if you read these books, you’ll be one of the smartest people in the world.” I actually noticed one of the books on that list! [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20100527123450/http://www.gbc.edu/~toothmaj/readings.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20100527123450/http://www.gbc.ed...