What is worth reading in psychology, if you don’t have too much time to explore the field?
My value set explicitly rates chemistry (specifically) and hard sciences (generally) as more worthy of my time than the soft sciences. Due to the culture I’m in, I may be unduly dissing the latter. In case that’s true, I would like to rectify that. I would like to get a grasp of what is known, what is not, and what can be known.
However, I would much prefer to get some kind of applicable knowledge. I am as susceptible to the fuzzies of thinking I understand something understood by few as the next guy, even though that belief is as likely to be right as not by default. To avoid this pitfall, I’d like to acquire a model that even if taken as gospel, even though it might not necessarily describe the world perfectly, is usable to make predictions. That is, if you’ve found a book you think is worth reading, please recommend it with the assumption that I am going to believe, and take everything in it as gospel which I sort of will, because I won’t have much time to double check. So, applied psychology, right? (With knowledge applicable to daily life prefered to being able to make predictions on who would flank out in military training, but both being good enough to be worth mentioning.) (I’ve actually tried to do this sometime, with e.g educational psychology, but with some pretty new textbook found lots of time dedicated to learning-styles and all I know is that all I hear about that is that it’s BS, and the book did’nt seem too interesting either way (and had no glossary, no nothing, while managing to be all pictury and colorful, heresy!) so it’s trajectory ended outside my house.)
Examples of everydayish applications:
If psychologist were indeed more able to put people at ease, and making them open up about themselves, that would be one, for example
Similarly, any scenarios for which they may have prewritten scripts, which tend to take the average Joe unprepared (e.g someone’s relatives died)
I never tried to teach kids (and thinking I could teach classmates without preparing, or notes written was a humbling exercise indeed) but I would assume that educational psychology could be useful? (Which, I don’t know… new teachers always come out, with those promising techniques they will apply so their students will learn like they were made for it (cough) and then over time always end up using the same old standard)
From my experience the most “value added per book” in psychology is reading Games People Play. Just read the “games” and ignore all the psychoanalytical classifications attached to them—psychoanalysis is highly dubious field, but the examples of the “games” come from real life, and many readers are shocked to find out that some of their life-long problems are actually instances of quite trivial scenarios. Sometimes there is an advice about how to quit playing the “game”.
I know it’s not exactly the kind of book you wanted, but it probably has more everyday applications than anything else. And it is really easy to read (when you skip the psychoanalytical classifications, which are provided separately).
Seconded. Both my parents are well respected communication professionals, and they refer to the mechanics described in this book more than any other. Plus it has some very cute retro cartoons.
Some more healthy ideas can be found in a parallel book, Games Trainers Play, which is more useful for getting adults to engage in communication through (nominally) fun / silly activities as a way of learning about team communication dynamics etc. There are certainly lessons and models in there I have used in useful discussions as well.
I haven’t read “Games Trainers Play”, but from the online descriptions, it seems to contain icebreakers and fun activities. To avoid possible misunderstanding, “Games People Play” is not like that.
Berne uses the word “game” to mean—I’ll use my own words here—an insincere human interaction, where people pretend that they try to achieve X as an outcome of the interaction, but they actually want to achieve Y (and they arrange things so that Y actually happens). This insincerity is driven by not fully conscious forces; people may have these kinds of interactions for years without fully realizing what is going on. Sometimes the games are cooperative: both players pretend to want X, both want to achieve the same Y; both can win by playing the game. Sometimes the games are adversarial: one player pretends to want X but works to get Y, the other player either honestly wants X or they want some different Z; one player wins by making the other one lose. Sometimes the games are relatively harmless, sometimes they can ruin lives. The value of the book is describing some frequently played “games”, and explaining what the X, Y and Z are for each of them. So next time you find yourself in such situation, you may have a better model of what is really happening.
Now I wonder, which of these “games” may frequently apply to wannabe rationalists...
“Ain’t It Awful”—instead of optimizing for their goals, people complain about how the world is irrational. The pretended goal is to optimize the world. The real emotional goal is to create a sense of togetherness, and the feeling that we are better than the rest of the world.
“Blemish”—instead of using the useful resources, people try to find fault at everything. (LessWrong is cultish; Eliezer is not fit; Gleb’s articles are only read by stupid people.) The pretended goal is to make sure that things are really good before we start to rely on them. The real emotional goal is to show that everything is faulty, so we can comfortably focus on other people’s imperfections instead of thinking about our own.
“Schlemiel”—sometimes you find them at a LessWrong meetup. They don’t have time to even look at the Sequences, but they have their own special theory of consciousness or quantum physics or whatever, which is based on confused thinking and pseudoscientific videos on youtube, and they will spend half of the meetup explaining the theory, while everyone who has read the Sequences is facepalming since the first few sentences. Yet you will let them speak and invite them again, because both sides are dishonest here. The pretended goal is to have a rational debate, and to be willing to hear also the minority opinions. The real emotional goal is (for the speaker) to enjoy ostentatiously breaking the social norms of the group with impunity, and (for the group) to feel superior because of how incredibly tolerant they are even in situations where it is obviously undeserved by the target.
You’re entirely right, ‘Games Trainers Play’ is not at all like Games People Play, but it is a useful book in terms of practical applications of applied human psychology. The amount of value I’ve observed added to newly-formed teams and temporary groups through the contents—in terms of near-immediate cohesion, bonding, and comfortable introductions to group dynamic discussions—has been tremendous.
If I were going to retitle the two, GPP would become “Communicative Dark Arts and How To Spot Them”, whereas GTP would be “Communicative Light Arts And How To Enjoy Them”. I appreciate being able to spot someone else drawing me into a game I don’t feel like playing, or don’t play well enough to get my preferred payout. Being pretty firmly on the Light side of communication, I also appreciate being able to get groups integrated and performing well together easily and quickly, especially in my lines of work, which tend to involve a lot of people working together for short periods of time and with little prior contact.
I like the few games you’ve picked out, and they certainly seem to apply to LW specifically. If I broadened the scope a little, I’d probably pick two of the ‘games’ from GPP that it’s common for me to see in LW-like communities:
Yes, But: This is a game where a problem is stated by the initiator, the (unknowing) respondent makes a suggestion towards a state problem, and the initator rebuffs it with a ‘Yes, but’ and then rephrases or further complicates the problem. Observe :
“I can’t solve X!”
“Have you tried doing A?”
“Yes, but then Y!”
“Oh, well, what about B?”
“Yes, but then Z!”
“Well, you could always C...”*
“Yes, but… [repeat ad nauseum]”
This game is commonly launched into by someone who has either an intrinsic reluctance or a hidden external impetus to not actually resolve their initial problem. Sometimes caused by someone who simply wants to have a vent, and is caught off-guard by someone else not realising this and focusing in on a solution. Otherwise, this is a power game—the problem-stater insisting on being ‘rescued’, not once, but multiple times. May involve subtle goalpost-shifting.
The expected payoff for the Yes-But-er is to eventually wear the respondent down until they throw their hands up and agree, yes, the problem is intractable / we don’t know enough / nobody can really say, etc, etc. The respondent-rescuer may then step in to complete the problem (“It’s easier if I just fix it for you”) or offer their acceptance of the insolubility of a soluble problem (“Well, I suppose some people just can’t lose weight”).
“Now I’ve Got You, You Son Of a Bitch” (NIGYSOB): Pretty self-explanatory, this essentially describes the process of assigning too much utility to a ‘righteous’ retributive action than is appropriate. If followed through on intemperately, can lead to an unnecessary escalation of conflict with deleterious results for either or both parties.
Example: Alice asks Bob for a quote on some web design. Bob quotes $998.50 with a carefully itemised list, which Alice carefully peruses and signs off on. Bob designs the website and realises he forgot the ongoing domain registration charges. He presents his bill to Alice for $1009.50. Alice angrily accuses Bob of unprofessional conduct and refuses to pay the bill. Bob, thinking Alice is being unreasonable, refuses to reduce the bill and keeps Alice’s webpage non-functional. Communication has broken down. Until they de-escalate, Bob has lost out on revenue and Alice has no website.
Alice and Bob may, if they are clever, realise that their actions were disproportionate to the situation. Alice may have been screwed over by contractors in the past for much larger amounts of money, and, having ‘safeguarded’ herself by carefully scrutinising the quote this time around, had a NIGYSOB trigger and fire without realising that an extra ~$10 on a $1,000 bill was basically a rounding error and not worth a great deal of worry. Bob, on the other side, may have had clients try to dramatically short-shrift him in the past, may have had his last few clients default on their payments, etc, etc, and would have had his own, equally seemingly valid reasons for potentially losing all his income over what would be, in effect, a discount of 1% of the value of the contract.
I guess the idea is that both made a stupidly extreme version of their precommitments, which will repeatedly produce this kind of conflict in the future. But they will continue to believe that the precommitment was smart, only they had the bad luck to meet exceptionally horrible people.
The idea of the book is that these kinds of scenarios are repeated over and over again in lives of some people.
I would prefer textbooks, but I am willing to take even a list on some website if it is not about fuzzies while reading it, but giving you an idea of how to apply that knowledge.Although, pop-science does’nt seem the way to go if one wants to get a sense of the field.
Textbook-wise I recommend skipping the intro textbook, and just going straight into the specialties. Intro textbooks have a lot of problems as outlined here. I think the inclusion of rejected findings such as Maslow’s hierarchy or Piaget’s stages of development in many textbooks is just ridiculous even if their work influenced a lot of researchers.
Choosing a specialty will depend on your interests. If you just want to read about a bunch of applied research findings, then a Clinical Psychology textbook is probably going to be your best bet. If you want to jump right into something you can use, then most likely you’ll want an Industrial-Organizational Psychology textbook. lukeprog has compiled a ton of suggestions for people who are looking for self-help advice. I too would recommend The Procrastination Equation, which does compile a lot of useful studies from multiple disciplines although it is intended for a popular audience, so what he’s saying in some places isn’t the best description of the theory you’ll ever find.
If you want a deep understanding of theory, then I recommend getting textbooks on Cognitive Science, Behavior Analysis, and Developmental Psychology in that order. Most of the best recent theoretical research can be connected to Cognitive Science in some form or other. Behavior Analysis textbooks are useful for learning about a lot of the better older studies, but the terminology is different in some areas than the way most psychologists use it, which is why I don’t recommend starting with it. Developmental Psychology also has a mixture of both recent and older studies of high quality, so it’s a good third option. I don’t recommend starting with Development because many of the ideas are ones you’ll find in the other two textbooks, and you’ll also likely get some outdated research included.
What is worth reading in psychology, if you don’t have too much time to explore the field?
My value set explicitly rates chemistry (specifically) and hard sciences (generally) as more worthy of my time than the soft sciences. Due to the culture I’m in, I may be unduly dissing the latter. In case that’s true, I would like to rectify that. I would like to get a grasp of what is known, what is not, and what can be known. However, I would much prefer to get some kind of applicable knowledge. I am as susceptible to the fuzzies of thinking I understand something understood by few as the next guy, even though that belief is as likely to be right as not by default. To avoid this pitfall, I’d like to acquire a model that even if taken as gospel, even though it might not necessarily describe the world perfectly, is usable to make predictions. That is, if you’ve found a book you think is worth reading, please recommend it with the assumption that I am going to believe, and take everything in it as gospel which I sort of will, because I won’t have much time to double check. So, applied psychology, right? (With knowledge applicable to daily life prefered to being able to make predictions on who would flank out in military training, but both being good enough to be worth mentioning.) (I’ve actually tried to do this sometime, with e.g educational psychology, but with some pretty new textbook found lots of time dedicated to learning-styles and all I know is that all I hear about that is that it’s BS, and the book did’nt seem too interesting either way (and had no glossary, no nothing, while managing to be all pictury and colorful, heresy!) so it’s trajectory ended outside my house.)
Examples of everydayish applications:
If psychologist were indeed more able to put people at ease, and making them open up about themselves, that would be one, for example
Similarly, any scenarios for which they may have prewritten scripts, which tend to take the average Joe unprepared (e.g someone’s relatives died)
I never tried to teach kids (and thinking I could teach classmates without preparing, or notes written was a humbling exercise indeed) but I would assume that educational psychology could be useful? (Which, I don’t know… new teachers always come out, with those promising techniques they will apply so their students will learn like they were made for it (cough) and then over time always end up using the same old standard)
From my experience the most “value added per book” in psychology is reading Games People Play. Just read the “games” and ignore all the psychoanalytical classifications attached to them—psychoanalysis is highly dubious field, but the examples of the “games” come from real life, and many readers are shocked to find out that some of their life-long problems are actually instances of quite trivial scenarios. Sometimes there is an advice about how to quit playing the “game”.
I know it’s not exactly the kind of book you wanted, but it probably has more everyday applications than anything else. And it is really easy to read (when you skip the psychoanalytical classifications, which are provided separately).
Seconded. Both my parents are well respected communication professionals, and they refer to the mechanics described in this book more than any other. Plus it has some very cute retro cartoons.
Some more healthy ideas can be found in a parallel book, Games Trainers Play, which is more useful for getting adults to engage in communication through (nominally) fun / silly activities as a way of learning about team communication dynamics etc. There are certainly lessons and models in there I have used in useful discussions as well.
I haven’t read “Games Trainers Play”, but from the online descriptions, it seems to contain icebreakers and fun activities. To avoid possible misunderstanding, “Games People Play” is not like that.
Berne uses the word “game” to mean—I’ll use my own words here—an insincere human interaction, where people pretend that they try to achieve X as an outcome of the interaction, but they actually want to achieve Y (and they arrange things so that Y actually happens). This insincerity is driven by not fully conscious forces; people may have these kinds of interactions for years without fully realizing what is going on. Sometimes the games are cooperative: both players pretend to want X, both want to achieve the same Y; both can win by playing the game. Sometimes the games are adversarial: one player pretends to want X but works to get Y, the other player either honestly wants X or they want some different Z; one player wins by making the other one lose. Sometimes the games are relatively harmless, sometimes they can ruin lives. The value of the book is describing some frequently played “games”, and explaining what the X, Y and Z are for each of them. So next time you find yourself in such situation, you may have a better model of what is really happening.
Now I wonder, which of these “games” may frequently apply to wannabe rationalists...
“Ain’t It Awful”—instead of optimizing for their goals, people complain about how the world is irrational. The pretended goal is to optimize the world. The real emotional goal is to create a sense of togetherness, and the feeling that we are better than the rest of the world.
“Blemish”—instead of using the useful resources, people try to find fault at everything. (LessWrong is cultish; Eliezer is not fit; Gleb’s articles are only read by stupid people.) The pretended goal is to make sure that things are really good before we start to rely on them. The real emotional goal is to show that everything is faulty, so we can comfortably focus on other people’s imperfections instead of thinking about our own.
“Schlemiel”—sometimes you find them at a LessWrong meetup. They don’t have time to even look at the Sequences, but they have their own special theory of consciousness or quantum physics or whatever, which is based on confused thinking and pseudoscientific videos on youtube, and they will spend half of the meetup explaining the theory, while everyone who has read the Sequences is facepalming since the first few sentences. Yet you will let them speak and invite them again, because both sides are dishonest here. The pretended goal is to have a rational debate, and to be willing to hear also the minority opinions. The real emotional goal is (for the speaker) to enjoy ostentatiously breaking the social norms of the group with impunity, and (for the group) to feel superior because of how incredibly tolerant they are even in situations where it is obviously undeserved by the target.
You’re entirely right, ‘Games Trainers Play’ is not at all like Games People Play, but it is a useful book in terms of practical applications of applied human psychology. The amount of value I’ve observed added to newly-formed teams and temporary groups through the contents—in terms of near-immediate cohesion, bonding, and comfortable introductions to group dynamic discussions—has been tremendous.
If I were going to retitle the two, GPP would become “Communicative Dark Arts and How To Spot Them”, whereas GTP would be “Communicative Light Arts And How To Enjoy Them”. I appreciate being able to spot someone else drawing me into a game I don’t feel like playing, or don’t play well enough to get my preferred payout. Being pretty firmly on the Light side of communication, I also appreciate being able to get groups integrated and performing well together easily and quickly, especially in my lines of work, which tend to involve a lot of people working together for short periods of time and with little prior contact.
I like the few games you’ve picked out, and they certainly seem to apply to LW specifically. If I broadened the scope a little, I’d probably pick two of the ‘games’ from GPP that it’s common for me to see in LW-like communities:
Yes, But: This is a game where a problem is stated by the initiator, the (unknowing) respondent makes a suggestion towards a state problem, and the initator rebuffs it with a ‘Yes, but’ and then rephrases or further complicates the problem. Observe :
This game is commonly launched into by someone who has either an intrinsic reluctance or a hidden external impetus to not actually resolve their initial problem. Sometimes caused by someone who simply wants to have a vent, and is caught off-guard by someone else not realising this and focusing in on a solution. Otherwise, this is a power game—the problem-stater insisting on being ‘rescued’, not once, but multiple times. May involve subtle goalpost-shifting.
The expected payoff for the Yes-But-er is to eventually wear the respondent down until they throw their hands up and agree, yes, the problem is intractable / we don’t know enough / nobody can really say, etc, etc. The respondent-rescuer may then step in to complete the problem (“It’s easier if I just fix it for you”) or offer their acceptance of the insolubility of a soluble problem (“Well, I suppose some people just can’t lose weight”).
“Now I’ve Got You, You Son Of a Bitch” (NIGYSOB): Pretty self-explanatory, this essentially describes the process of assigning too much utility to a ‘righteous’ retributive action than is appropriate. If followed through on intemperately, can lead to an unnecessary escalation of conflict with deleterious results for either or both parties.
Alice and Bob may, if they are clever, realise that their actions were disproportionate to the situation. Alice may have been screwed over by contractors in the past for much larger amounts of money, and, having ‘safeguarded’ herself by carefully scrutinising the quote this time around, had a NIGYSOB trigger and fire without realising that an extra ~$10 on a $1,000 bill was basically a rounding error and not worth a great deal of worry. Bob, on the other side, may have had clients try to dramatically short-shrift him in the past, may have had his last few clients default on their payments, etc, etc, and would have had his own, equally seemingly valid reasons for potentially losing all his income over what would be, in effect, a discount of 1% of the value of the contract.
Alice and Bob have precommitted and were unlucky enough to be caught in the situation where following through on the precommitment was harmful.
I guess the idea is that both made a stupidly extreme version of their precommitments, which will repeatedly produce this kind of conflict in the future. But they will continue to believe that the precommitment was smart, only they had the bad luck to meet exceptionally horrible people.
The idea of the book is that these kinds of scenarios are repeated over and over again in lives of some people.
Are you looking for textbooks or pop-psychology?
I would prefer textbooks, but I am willing to take even a list on some website if it is not about fuzzies while reading it, but giving you an idea of how to apply that knowledge.Although, pop-science does’nt seem the way to go if one wants to get a sense of the field.
Textbook-wise I recommend skipping the intro textbook, and just going straight into the specialties. Intro textbooks have a lot of problems as outlined here. I think the inclusion of rejected findings such as Maslow’s hierarchy or Piaget’s stages of development in many textbooks is just ridiculous even if their work influenced a lot of researchers.
Choosing a specialty will depend on your interests. If you just want to read about a bunch of applied research findings, then a Clinical Psychology textbook is probably going to be your best bet. If you want to jump right into something you can use, then most likely you’ll want an Industrial-Organizational Psychology textbook. lukeprog has compiled a ton of suggestions for people who are looking for self-help advice. I too would recommend The Procrastination Equation, which does compile a lot of useful studies from multiple disciplines although it is intended for a popular audience, so what he’s saying in some places isn’t the best description of the theory you’ll ever find.
If you want a deep understanding of theory, then I recommend getting textbooks on Cognitive Science, Behavior Analysis, and Developmental Psychology in that order. Most of the best recent theoretical research can be connected to Cognitive Science in some form or other. Behavior Analysis textbooks are useful for learning about a lot of the better older studies, but the terminology is different in some areas than the way most psychologists use it, which is why I don’t recommend starting with it. Developmental Psychology also has a mixture of both recent and older studies of high quality, so it’s a good third option. I don’t recommend starting with Development because many of the ideas are ones you’ll find in the other two textbooks, and you’ll also likely get some outdated research included.