Category Archives: Book Reviews

Rick Hanson, senior fellow at the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley and a New York Times best-selling author of several books, has teamed up with his son Forrest, a writer and editor for the website Eusophi, to write a book to help us heal from our past and develop resources to cope with the present and future. Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness draws on neuroscientific and psychological research to help readers cope with adversity.

Rick and Forrest Hanson argue that people have three basic needs—safety, satisfaction, and connection. We meet those needs in four ways: recognizing the truth, building our resources, regulating thoughts and feelings, and relating to others and the world. The book is structured such that Hanson and Hanson describe twelve inner strengths we can develop to become resilient. Each of those twelve strengths—compassion, mindfulness, learning, grit, gratitude, confidence, calm, motivation, intimacy, courage, aspiration, and generosity—corresponds to the combination of one of the three aforementioned needs with one of the four aforementioned ways of meeting those needs. With stories to bring the twelve strengths alive and exercises for the reader to practice enacting these strengths, this book is intended to be a useful guide to help the reader build resilience at once and develop habits that will encourage the strengths to bring about lasting change.

The first of these strengths is compassion, or recognizing pain and wanting to relieve it. Hanson and Hanson emphasize that compassion for oneself, not only for others, is critical. For example, given that certain neurotransmitters in the brain respond to pleasurable activities, by focusing on enjoyable aspects of a task we can make it easier for ourselves to engage in the task. Attending to the present moment all the time, can be hard to do; yet this skill of mindful attention shapes who we become. Hanson and Hanson offer guidance for engaging in meditative practices, letting go of negative thoughts, and seeking out experiences to restore and maintain psychological balance.

Our ability to learn is also key to our resilience. We learn when we have beneficial experiences, enrich them, absorb them, and link them to other ideas and experiences. The authors argue that our neocortex, the size of which distinguishes us from other species, enables us to exercise strengths such as compassion, mindfulness, and learning that make us resilient. Three strengths that allow us to build our internal resources to support resilience are grit, gratitude, and confidence. Grit means finding a way to be resourceful, even when one feels depleted. It requires having a sense that one has agency to make things happen and determination and patience to see them through. Accepting oneself and maintaining health habits can build one’s reserve so that he can demonstrate grit when needed. Giving thanks, seeking pleasurable experiences, feeling personally successful, and experiencing joy for others can lead to greater gratitude. Gratitude, in turn, is associated with greater satisfaction and physical health. Early life experiences (e.g., patterns of parental attachment) and recent experiences with rejection can lead to feelings of insecurity and heightened self-criticism. Regardless of one’s past, we can develop confidence by building a coherent narrative of our life experiences, being mindful of their self-criticism, and nurturing a supportive inner voice.

Calmness, motivation, and intimacy require us to regulate our thoughts, feelings, and actions. To experience calm Hanson and Hanson advise relaxing deeply each week, slowing down, harnessing the power of breath, drawing on the support of loved ones, and recognizing that anger hurts the person who feels it at least as much as it hurts the object of his anger. Motivation can help people pursue opportunities even when doing so is challenging. It can also lead people to perpetually experience want. Hanson and Hanson argue that one way to relieve suffering is to try to want less and be satisfied with what one has. They explain that dopamine is released in response to novelty and reward, which impacts motivation. Support, rather than criticism, can help individuals stay motivated. Being known by others and connecting with them helps us build resilience. We can experience this intimacy with others when we recognize that being strongly autonomous actually facilitates, rather than diminishes, intimacy. Empathy, compassion, and kindness also help people develop intimacy.

The final way in which people seek to satisfy their needs is by relating to others. Courage, aspiration, and generosity are skills that help us relate to others. Specifically, Hanson and Hanson focus on the courage to speak one’s own truth, share experiences, and negotiate fairly with others. They remind their readers that, while each day may pass slowly, years seem to pass quickly. As such, we should strive to use each day to bring us closer to achieving what matters to us. When we are willing to fail in achieving our goals and cease comparing our accomplishments to those of others, we become more likely to succeed.

Hanson and Hanson conclude with a call for generosity. Giving without expectation of reciprocity, enjoying the experience of giving, forgiving ourselves and others, and expanding the circle of people with whom we feel similar can help us build the reserve we need to face the challenges we may encounter. With its diverse strategies and exercise to practice implementation, Resilient is a useful read for those currently in need of strong psychological resources to navigate a challenge as well as for those who hope to engage in a reflective exercise and strengthen their psychological resources.

Hanson, R. (2018). Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness. New York, NY: Harmony Books.

The Neuroscience of Intelligence explores intriguing ideas about the neuroscientific and genetic bases of intelligence such as that genes play a more critical role than does environment in determining intelligence, that there are neurological markers of intelligence, and that we may be able to apply neuroscience to increase individuals’ intelligence. Author Richard J. Haier is professor emeritus at the University of California, Irvine, a former president of the International Society for Intelligence Research, and a pioneer in the use of neuroscientific methods to study intelligence. He writes in both a scientifically accurate and detailed way and in a manner that comprehensibly situates scientific findings in a broader perspective. Thus, the book will appeal both to neuropsychologists interested in a survey of the last several decades of intelligence research as well as to a general audience interested in understanding the implications of intelligence research as we build a better society. Haier addresses misconceptions about intelligence, explains how it is measured, and discusses the genetic-, epigenetic-, and brain-bases of intelligence. He concludes by discussing ways we can increase intelligence (and why we should be leery of many claims about increasing intelligence) and the policy implications of doing so.

Haier explains that intelligence is a general mental ability. Individuals vary in their ability to learn, remember, and deduce. This variability is measureable to assess intelligence. The common factor governing performance on all tests of mental ability is called “g,” the general factor of intelligence. IQ, measured with tests like the Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrix, is different from g, but often used as a reliable proxy for it. Haier emphasizes that one of the shortcomings with IQ scores is that they are intelligible only relative to other people. They are not scored on a ratio scale with a true zero value. Nonetheless, IQ scores, Haier claims, are unbiased and do predict academic and life success. He reviews several studies suggesting that IQ measured early in life can predict success, longevity, happiness, and health much later in life. As such, in considering changes to the educational system, he argues that we need to consider the real limits IQ exerts on the ability of some individuals to achieve.

Drawing from a body of research, Haier argues that the vast majority of variability in intelligence is due to genes, rather than environmental factors. It is likely the case that many genes influence intelligence. He says that finding the genes involved in determining intelligence has been and will continue to be difficult, and that an even greater challenge is understanding how, why, and when certain genes influence intelligence.

Early research into the brain-basis of intelligence provided evidence for the idea that brain efficiency, rather than overall brain activity, is related to intelligence. It also provided evidence for the idea that not all brains perform the same functions in the same way. While anatomically it is difficult to distinguish between brains from high and low IQ people, there are observable differences in brain functioning and connectivity related to IQ. For example, the thickness of the corpus callosum (which connects the two brain hemispheres) is related to IQ, and the density and organization of white matter tracts in the frontal and parietal lobes of the brain differ as a function of IQ. Haier and his colleague developed the parieto-frontal integration theory of intelligence, which suggests that the integration of and communication between certain frontal and parietal areas is especially important for intelligence. Recent brain imaging studies have added evidence that supports this theory. Haier reports that scientists are working towards identifying neuromarkers of intelligence as unique as our fingerprints that may lead to more personalized educational programs.

Haier is optimistic about the potential for neuroscience and especially genetic research to boost intelligence. Although confident that we will be able to boost intelligence, Haier discusses several high profile studies—about listening to Mozart, training working memory, and playing computer games—that inappropriately claimed to increase intelligence. One of the largest roadblocks to advancing the study of intelligence enhancement is that psychometric testing of intelligence lacks a ratio score. Chronometric testing, which assesses the speed with which people reason, may be a way to measure intelligence using ratio scores.

Wading into some of the most controversial and important work related to intelligence, Haier argues that “poverty and near-poverty for [low IQ people] is a condition that may have some roots in the neurobiology of intelligence beyond anyone’s control.” That is, genetic determinants of intelligence may partially explain why some people live in poverty. Although this seems concerning, Haier argues that there is reason for optimism because we may be able to treat “neuro-poverty.” He argues that because intelligence is rooted in genetics, and thus subject to limited control, it is wrong for society to avoid protecting individuals from the consequences of their cognitive weaknesses.

As a careful scientist, Haier reminds his readers repeatedly that the brain is complex, no one study of the brain is definitive, and it takes time for truth to emerge from a body of literature about the brain. He has carefully synthesized and analyzed what he sees as the truth in that body of literature. With enthusiasm he urges young scientists to continue to pursue vigorously the study of intelligence, as we may be on the precipitous of great advances in the field.

Haier, R. J. (2016). The Neuroscience of Intelligence. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

In their new book The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity, and Resilience in Your Child, Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson offer parents guidance about how to support their children in “say[ing] yes to the world.” They argue that raising truly successful children who can create for themselves a life of connection and fulfillment means raising children who are not impulsively reactive but instead have the sense of balance, resilience, personal insight, and empathy for others to be receptive to the world around them. In the vein of making this book comprehensible to neuroscience novices, some scientists may note a lack of specificity about the neurological characteristics of the “yes brain.” This book includes cartoon animations of key concepts, prompts to build a “yes brain,” and a summary sheet of key characteristics of a “yes brain”, all of which makes it an accessible and useful tool for parents.

Siegel is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, the founder and co-director of the UCLA mindful awareness research center, and executive director of the Mindsight Institute. Bryson is a pediatric and adolescent psychotherapist, director of parenting for the Mindsight Institute, and a child development specialist. Both Siegel and Bryson are New York Times bestselling authors, including of two books they previously co-authored, “The Whole-Brain Child” and “No Drama Discipline.”

According to Siegel and Bryson the “yes brain” is able to overcome challenges, remain flexible, and receptive to the world, while the “no brain” is reactive, and quick to attack, reject, or remain stubbornly fixed. The authors claim that the difference between a “yes brain” and a “no brain” is not merely a difference in mindsets but a difference in the brain’s response to situations. They draw an analogy between a brain and a house such that brainstem and limbic regions, which are fast-acting and supportive of life-sustaining functions, are the bottom floor of the house and the cerebral cortex, which supports complex thought and emotion, is the upstairs part of the house undergoing construction after the bottom floor has developed. They argue that balance, resilience, insight, and empathy are all supported by the prefrontal cortex in the “upstairs brain.” To suggest that there is not prefrontal cortex activity in reactive responses may not be accurate, but the authors are right to argue that there are neurological differences associated with being receptive versus reactive. Their “yes brain” construct may be best understood as a set of psychological and behavioral skills and mindsets.

Siegel and Bryson argue that balance or emotional stability and flexibility is important for finding success. It is natural for children to become imbalanced by acting out in a hyperaroused state or by shutting down in a state of hypoarousal. To help them regulate themselves, parents should remember that children do not like feeling imbalanced; they need a loving, soothing, understanding presence to help them return to feeling in control. Free play, diversifying the way one spends his time, prioritizing quality sleep, and receiving instruction about balance can promote balance.

Building resilience, or the ability to bounce back after failure, requires allowing children to feel the sting of failure so that in the long-run they can rise above setbacks. Parents need to allow kids opportunities to stand up for themselves as well as to intervene on their children’s behalf when challenges are too big to face alone. To build resilience, Siegel and Bryson argue for making it clear that reasonable risk-taking and failure are okay and for making children feel safe, seen, soothed, and secure.

Siegel and Bryson argue that children need to develop insight to understand themselves and have control over their social and emotional lives. One strategy to promote insight is taking well-timed pauses to act as a spectator of one’s own life. Parents can develop their own insightfulness by building a coherent narrative of who they are as a parent and a person and acting in a way that accords with who they want to be.

The final component of the “yes brain” is empathy. Siegel and Bryson remind parents that empathic abilities develop over the course of childhood and adolescence; so it is natural if youngsters do not always seem optimally empathic. Modeling empathic listening, perspective taking, and caring are critical for developing empathic kids. Parents can help children develop empathy by reframing situations with role playing, providing children with a vocabulary to communicate care, and exposing children to the way other people live.

Helping children develop an internal sense of self, a concern for others, and curiosity is likely to lead to deep and meaningful success. Siegel and Bryson argue that for parents’ to help their children develop balanced, resilient, insightful, and empathic “yes brains” they must allow kids to grow into who they will be while being prepared to help when children are in need of practice building these key skills.

 

Siegel, D. J. & Bryson, T.P. The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity, and Resilence in Your Child. New York: Bantam Books

Humans are driven to create and innovate. In fact, this drive is what fuels our success as a species. Anthony Brandt, a musical composer, and David Eagleman, a neuroscientist, partnered to co-author The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World. In it, they argue that it is human to engage in “what-if” thinking. The show that creativity is shaped by culture and time period. Across domains—the arts, business, science—we innovate by breaking, bending, and blending what already exists, taking risks, engaging in the social side of creativity, and generating lots of ideas, even if many ultimately are discarded. Finally, they suggests applications of these principles of creativity to the boardroom and the classroom.

Familiarity can feel comfortable, but too much of it leads to boredom. The challenge is that newness becomes normalized. Indeed, our brains show suppressed activation to stimuli upon repeated exposure. As such, we are constantly driven to innovate, to find the next new idea to stimulate us. The process of innovating requires a balancing act. We balance exploring new ideas with exploiting strategies that we already know work. We balance using what already exists with making improvements to it. We balance desirable novelty with outlandish novelty.

Brandt and Eagleman argue that most innovation occurs through breaking, bending, or blending. Breaking describes the process of taking apart something formerly whole and assembling the pieces in a new way. We engage in breaking every time we use abbreviations, acronyms, or synecdoches. Innovation can arise from bending—making a variation on a common theme, or reinventing a classic work. Blending occurs when we weave together disparate knowledge to create something new in this mixture. The extent to which any of these modes of innovation are seen as creativity is shaped by one’s cultural milieu. Because creativity depends so much on public reception, artists are rarely lonely, isolated figures, even though they are depicted as such in media. Innovators take great risks to depart from the norm. In order to gauge the success of those risks, they need feedback. As such, creators are social by necessity. Another myth about the creative process is that it happens after a flash of insight causes one to perceive a new idea. In reality, creativity comes from generating a myriad of ideas, each of which is a variation or combination of ideas that preceded it.

As our economy evolves, especially with increased atomization and emerging technologies, creativity and cognitive flexibility will become increasingly critical. Schools and companies can be the perfect environment for fostering individual’s creativity and capitalizing on the benefits thereof. Too often, however, they stifle creativity. Companies, Brandt and Eagleman advise, should be versatile and diversified in the ideas and projects they support. While the means to enhanced creativity in the workforce will continue to change (e.g., open-office plans are not a panacea), building a corporate culture that flexibly changes routines and incentivizes new ideas may be the best recipe for innovation. Similarly, schools should create assignments in which students need to generate a variety of solutions to real-world problems and determine new ways to find solutions. Schools should motivate students to stick with challenging problems, praise their effort rather than results, and invest in arts education. Brandt and Eagleman emphasize that we all have enormous potential to be creative, and thus we need to invest in everyone’s development, and not discriminate based on assumptions about which gender or other identity group is most likely to contribute.

With illuminative examples of creativity across fields, Brandt and Eagleman, effectively explain why creativity is so important to human success and advancement, how we make creative products, and what practices we can implement to enhance creativity. To read additional works by Eagleman read our review of his book The Brain: The Story of You.

 

Brandt, A., & Eagleman, D., (2017). The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World. New York, NY: Catapult.

How can educators prepare students for an uncertain future? A.J. Juliani, a former middle and high school teacher, education consultant, author, and the current director of technology and innovation for Centennial School District, tackles this question by offering practical and digestible advice to help educators implement innovative practices and support their students in becoming innovators. Intentional Innovation: How to Guide Risk-Taking, Build Creative Capacity, and Lead Change argues that we can create innovative classrooms and prepare students for tomorrow by understanding how they learn, while valuing relationships first and foremost, creating student-center learning environments, providing opportunities to create, fostering a safe space to take risks and fail, and recognizing that any person with passion can be an innovator. Juliani suggests that the acronym PLASMA—Praise, Look for, Assess, Support differences, Make time for creative work, and Allow for the new and unknown—is a useful self-assessment, planning, and observation tool to bring about innovation.

Learning, Juliani states, is a process of experimentation. We need to constantly learn, unlearn, and relearn information, especially given the current rapid pace at which information develops. Interest and necessity motivate people to learn. Attention to the to-be-learned material allows for it to be properly encoded, stored in memory, and ultimately retrieved.

Equipped with an understanding of how people learn, it is possible to understand how to support them in innovating. Some of the steps educators can take to help students become more innovative include: modeling how to learn, providing opportunities for collaboration and relationship building, embracing technology, measuring learning in creative ways, making classrooms enjoyable, and propagating the idea that we can all be innovators, especially if we focus greater energy on creating. Juliani allows his students to try their hand at innovating by using the “20% rule.” The students spend 20% of their class time pursuing an innovative project of their choice. He supports them in their work but gives them tremendous freedom. Juliani offers other ways to spur innovation, such as creating opportunities for students to learn outside of school in the community, encouraging students to teach what they know (e.g., through YouTube tutorial videos), giving students a voice in the assessment process, and having students debate one another.

Students are more likely to demonstrate creativity when they feel supported, understand the importance of effort, develop productive habits, are allowed to follow their own interests, and can engage in authentic work. Educators should bear in mind that allowing for creativity in students will take time and can feel slower than directing students more explicitly. Juliani refers to Jessica Lahey’s The Gift of Failure (reviewed here at Learning and the Brain) to remind educators that students learn and develop self-control and creative abilities when they are allowed to fail and pick themselves back up. This is especially true in a culture in which failure is not embarrassing but rather a sign of learning.

A book about innovation in education would not be complete without a discussion of technology. Juliani argues that although few modern technologies were specifically designed for education and none has proven to be an elixir for improving education, technology has changed the experience of students and teachers in many ways. We no longer need to store vast amounts of information to be considered intelligent; rather, what is most important, according to Juliani, is to be able to find and create with information. Educators should use technologies like social media platforms to engage students in the arenas in which they are already engaged. While technology inevitably changes what happens in education, the key ingredient—supportive relationships—will always remain the same. Teachers should challenge students, provide opportunities for inquiry, solve problems collaboratively, and get to know students personally. Similarly, teachers can improve their own practice by cultivating strong relations with other teachers.

Innovative educational practices and support of students in developing skills as innovators are both valuable and necessary components of education. As educators innovate, it is incumbent upon them to remember that innovation is not primarily about novelty; it is about service to others and impact upon them. Indeed, Juliani has demonstrated his innovativeness with this book that is likely to spur many ideas for educators about how to innovate.

 

Juliani, A. J. (2017). Intentional Innovation: How to Guide Risk-Taking, Build Creative Capacity, and Lead Change. New York, NY: Routledge.

 

Parents—a noun, something an individual may be—have existed for as long as there have been children. The idea of “parenting” as a verb, something one does, is a new, odd, and problematic cultural change for parents and children alike. Alison Gopnik, a self-described “bubbe at Berkeley” or mother and grandmother, and University of California, Berkeley professor of psychology and philosophy, argues that parents can aspire to love their children better without thinking of their role as making their child into a certain kind of adult. Her most recent book, The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us about the Relationship Between Parents and Children, references the idea that parents should act like a gardener, providing a rich and safe environment in which flowers (or people) can grow into the best version of themselves and thrive. Gopnik advises that Parents should not mold children into a particular and unchanging kind of being the way a carpenter molds furniture into its specific form. tThroughout the book Gopnik explores parenting paradoxes and the implications for how to support children. These paradoxes include the fact that children must transform from complete dependence to complete autonomy; children must transform from people who mostly play to people who mostly work; parents need both to pass on knowledge and traditions and to allow kids to innovate and differentiate; and parents’ love is specific to their individual children, which can conflict with the job of supporting positive development for a community’s children.

The verb of “parenting” only emerged towards the end of the 1950s and then spiked in popular usage in the 1970s. Rather than parenting, we need to let kids learn and grow by providing them a safe and protected period to do so. Tragically, even though the U.S. is the richest nation, we do not do a good job as a society of protecting children (e.g., 1 out of 5 kids lives in poverty, we do not have guaranteed paid leave for parents to care for kids).

Gopnik argues that an evolutionary perspective on the parent-child relationship can help us understand how to be parents today. We are unique among species in our long period of childhood, and across species longer average childhoods are associated with greater parental involvement, fewer children per mother, longer lives of offspring, higher survival rates of offspring, more intelligence, and larger brains. The tendency of our species to form long-term bonds with a co-parent, invest significantly in raising children, live long enough to become grandparents, and rely on other adults to assist with child care have all contributed to our longer childhoods.

Our longer childhoods provide a protected period of observation, learning, and play, which contributes to our ability to become flexible, innovative adults. Children learn from observing actions and intentions of other people, especially individuals similar to them, who have proven themselves to be good teachers, and who convey confidence. Apprenticeships, in which students see skills modeled and in which their learning process and production of products are entwined, is an effective way to learn. Children learn from what adults say and from answers to the questions children ask adults. Play helps kids engage in counterfactual thinking, develop theory of mind, and develop cognitive flexibility, but kids must feel safe to engage in play. We do not need to formally instruct in order to support young children in learning; rather, we should involve them in the activities of our daily lives and make them feel secure. Gopnik argues that wealthy children often have overly scheduled and controlled environments, while poor children often have chaotic lives in which they are neglected. Few children have the ideal environment that feels both safe and free.

Very young children show tremendous versatility in their learning and plasticity in their brain. By about school age kids become a bit less flexible but more efficient, both in how they learn and in how their brain is connected within itself. Adolescence brings a reemergence of neural plasticity and a desire to innovate. During this period of innovation, parents serve as a bridge to the past as they watch their teens enter into the future.

Parents who are turned off by the pressure to prepare kids for the Ivy League before they have started Little League, educators who are concerned by a school culture or the broader culture of overly involved parenting, policy makers interested in creating scientifically informed policies to support the next generation’s development, and anyone interested in how the relationship between parents and children make us uniquely human will find Gopnik’s book informative and compelling.

Gopnik, A. (2016). The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Macmillan.

“Empathy can motivate kindness to individuals that makes the world better.” Paul Bloom, the Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology at Yale University, asserts this emphatically. Yet, Bloom makes a compelling case for reducing our reliance on empathy in order to achieve fairness and kindness. Bloom’s Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion will be of interest to those seeking to develop their own moral muscles and to those interested in helping others cultivate the social emotional skills they need to foster a kinder world. Bloom argues that empathy, or feeling or experiencing what another person feels or experiences, on the whole makes us less caring and just, and more parochial, short-sighted, and insensitive to the scope of human suffering. Deliberative decision-making is the best path forward for cultivating a more compassionate world.

Bloom is clear to state that he is not against goodness and kindness. In fact, he is interested in bringing about more of these qualities through less empathy. He argues that like a spotlight directing our visual attention to one area at the near exclusion of others, empathy directs our emotional attention to an issue while reducing our ability to discern who needs help the most and what the consequences of our attempts to help may be. Our empathic capacities are limited; we can only empathize with a few people at a time, and we are more likely to empathize with those similar to us. Too much empathy can paralyze one from acting to change the circumstances of the object of empathy.

Bloom provides several examples of empathy-motivated actions that were illogical or counter-productive, e.g., after the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, the city received so many toy donations (often from people less affluent than the residents of Newtown) that storing all the toys became burdensome. On a smaller scale, if parents were to feel all the time what their children felt they would be less motivated to get their children to do things that are good for them in the long-run but unpleasant in the short-term, such as receiving medical shots. He argues that understanding what others think or feel can be valuable, but actually experiencing those feelings is rarely beneficial, or at a minimum not as beneficial as being able to demonstrate compassion, self-control, and reason. On a neural level, feeling empathy has been associated with activity in some of the same brain areas as those involved in experiencing a given emotional state for oneself. For example, the anterior insula activates when a person experiences pain and disgust and when the person experiences empathy for another person’s pain and disgust. Although the magnitude of activation is larger for one’s own experience than an empathic experience, Bloom argues that it would be better not to have the empathic experience in the first place.

Individuals vary in their levels of empathic ability, and different circumstances will lead individuals to exercise empathic skills to varying degrees. Regardless of one’s ability or propensity for empathizing, empathy will only make another person’s experience salient; it will not make an individual more moral. For example, people induced to empathize with a sick child were more likely than those not induced to do so to decide to give that child preferential treatment at the expense of sicker children—an unfair decision. Empathy can even motivate violence and cruelty, when for example, a group goes to war to avenge the wrong inflicted upon someone with whom the group empathizes. Empathy is not what motivates our care for others; rather our concern for others stems from an abstract, reasoned recognition that regardless of how we feel about those others, their lives have value. Bloom argues, “it’s only when we escape from empathy and rely instead on the application of rules and principles or a calculation of costs and benefits that we can, to at least some extent, become fair and impartial.”

While this call for rational compassion might promote justice and morality overall, many might suspect that within the context of intimate relationships empathy is still valuable. Indeed, Bloom acknowledges that before he was completely “against empathy”, he believed it had value in one-on-one relationships. Now, however, he argues that even in intimate relationships empathy is not beneficial. If one has too much of it, one can get overly involved in the lives of his loved ones, which ultimately hurts both parties and damages the relationship. Compassion, not empathy, makes us better partners, parents, and friends.

All in all, Bloom concludes that the negatives of empathy outweigh its positives and that while reason is not sufficient for being a good and moral person, in general, the more reasoned, rational, and self-regulated one is the better.

 

Bloom, P. (2016). Against empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion. New York, NY: Harper-Collins.

 

 

 

How can creativity and innovation give rise to positive changes in ourselves and the world around us? Wilma Koutstaal, University of Minnesota Professor of Psychology, and Jonathan Binks, who runs the organization InnovatingMinds4Change, tackle this challenging question in their book Innovating Minds: Rethinking Creativity to Inspire Change. They offer a framework of five key questions to consider in undertaking endeavors that call for creativity. First, we should identify the ideas that capture our attention and consider how we shape those ideas. To see a problem differently, we should consider changing the level of abstraction with which we think about it. We should allow spontaneity and deliberateness to be part of the creative process. The authors encourage us to recognize the role of emotions, motivations, and perceptions in our creative endeavors. Finally, we should consider how our physical, symbolic, and social spaces and tools impact our ability to demonstrate creativity. Koutstaal and Binks conclude each chapter with stimulating questions to challenge their readers to think about how their habits impact their creativity. This book will provide help to the creative individual seeking to accelerate her work, as well as to the leader of an organization wishing to bring about change.

Our ideas come about from cyclical interactions among our minds, brains, and environments. Thinking occurs in our minds, supported by our brains. Our brains integrate signals from our bodies, and our bodies are continually exploring our environment. Depending on these interactions, different ideas can come to mind with differing levels of ease or challenge. To generate new and creative ideas it can be helpful to allow our thinking to oscillate between “zooming in” and “zooming out.” Changing levels of abstraction can help us reason by analogy, reduce our working memory load to create more space to think openly, and diminish our tendency to see objects in terms of only their intended use rather than in terms of all their possible uses.

Several distributed networks in the brain work together to orchestrate our creative thinking. The executive control network helps us plan, pay attention, and monitor progress towards a goal. The default mode network is important for imagining, thinking about the future, and taking others’ perspectives. The salience network helps us detect information in our environment, integrate information that is important to us, and switch between the utilization of other networks in the brain. Koutstaal and Binks explain that the brain’s prefrontal cortex is important for abstract thinking. They also explain the role of dopamine, a neurochemical, in producing cognitive stability and flexibility and in seeking new experiences, which can prompt creativity.

Either by our own violation or because of factors in our environment, our focus can shift from being pointed and deliberate to being expansive and free-flowing. The creative process necessitates both deliberate and spontaneous thoughts. Reducing our intense, pointed attention or allowing our minds to wander can foster creativity by making space for a greater variety of stimuli in the environment to enter our awareness. This, in turn, can shape the way we think about a challenge and impact our ability to notice opportunities to fill a need. On the other hand, intense focus and control allow us to persist through obstacles to achieve a creative goal.

The authors identify several factors that can boost creativity. A few of the examples the authors offer include: instructing people to think differently, having practiced and prepared for the demands of a creative task, explaining creative ideas to others to prompt shifting levels of abstraction, minimizing distractions to allow for a state of flow, adding and removing constraints within a creative problem, improvising, and thinking about the future without losing sight of the present.

Change begets change. More experience can foster more creativity. When teams or organizations seek to change or innovate, both the individual members of the group and the group as a whole impact the group’s adaptability. Teams that are more receptive to novelty, more emotionally stable, and more reflective about their practices are better able to change. Optimism is beneficial in promoting creativity, but it must be paired also with the ability to critique and be skeptical from time to time.

Ultimately, Koutstaal and Binks suggest identifying meaningful goals, finding synergy among one’s goals, being driven by one’s goals while remaining open to change in light of new information, modulating the extent to which our goals come to mind when we need them, and modifying our goals when needed. Because of the insights in this book into the innovation process and the examples of successful creative individuals and teams, Innovating Minds is likely to advance the way any reader thinks about the creative change process.

 

Koutstaal, W., & Binks, J. (2015). Innovating Minds: Rethinking Creativity to Inspire Change. New York: Oxford University Press.

 

Humans are capable of horrifying aggression, dehumanization, destruction, and violence and at the same time inspirational altruism, compassion, and forgiveness. Drawing on an astounding array of evidence from across subfields within biology, neuroscience, psychology, and anthropology, Robert M. Sapolsky explains how people come to display these behaviors. Sapolsky, a Stanford University professor of biology and neurology, has recently written Behave: The Biology of Humans at our Best and our Worst. The book traces behaviors to occurrences in the brain, body, environment, and culture preceding an action on timescales ranging from seconds to thousands of years. Although long and intricate, the arguments are easy to follow because of the captivating integration of interdisciplinary research, the use of an informal, engaging tone, and appendices that aid in understanding basics of neuroscience, endocrinology, and proteins. This book is an excellent choice for those looking for a non-fiction book recommendation and for those committed to understanding how to harness the best of human behavior.

Although our best and worst behaviors do not begin in the brain, in the seconds before we act the factors that enable our actions converge in the brain. Sapolsky describes how our nervous system and particularly certain parts of the brain (e.g., the amygdala) contribute to our aggressive behaviors and how other parts (e.g., the frontal cortex) contribute to difficult but appropriate behaviors. Immediately preceding a behavior there are also cues in the environment that impact the decisions we make. These cues may be subliminal, verbal, visual, or from our body. Hormones such as testosterone and oxytocin impact the way we behave on a protracted timescale and as a function of their ratios relative to one another. Although the interaction between our genes and environment shapes our behavior, our genes influence our behavior to a lesser extent than most think, Sapolsky argues. Nonetheless, he offers an evolutionary perspective on how we have evolved to cooperate (or not).

A human development perspective is helpful in understanding how people behave the way they do. For example, Sapolsky reviews the fact that adolescence is a time during which individuals across cultures (and even species) engage in greater risk-taking, exploration, peer affiliation, and emotional reactivity. The brain’s frontal cortex, which supports engaging in self-regulation, is not yet able to operate at maximal efficiency. This contributes to adolescents exhibiting some aberrant behaviors. However, well before adolescence, during infancy and childhood, people are developing social and moral skills such as empathy, perspective-taking, and the delay of gratification that will contribute to their propensity to act in certain ways as adults. A child’s environment, including the parenting practices, culture, and socio-economic status to which they are exposed, affects their development on both biological and psychological levels. Sapolsky is careful to caution, however, that it is unlikely that childhood experiences will definitively lead to a specific adult behavior.

Sapolsky reviews cornerstone social and affective psychological research about how we identify with others, rank members of our groups, obey authority, act morally, and understand and alleviate other’s suffering. We naturally tend to form groups of “us” and “them,” and we tend to think of “them” more negatively than “us.” We form hierarchies that formalize unequal access to resources, although humans are unique among species in that sometimes those at the top of hierarchies try to serve the common good, and not only their own. All societies have rules about moral and ethical behavior, although there are cultural differences in morality. Religion likely evolved to help us do right, and belief in a judgmental god facilitates strangers interacting cooperatively.  While empathy can help us understand how others feel, it is actually an emotionally distant stance that helps us act more compassionately. Social neuroscientists have made sweeping claims about the role of “mirror neurons”—neurons that activate both when we perform an action and when we see someone else perform that action—in feeling and understanding other’s pain. Sapolsky cautions that the importance of mirror neurons in understanding and mimicking others’ behavior and taking their perspective has likely been oversold.

Sapolsky concludes by expressing his concern about flagrant injustices in the criminal justice system. Although he calls for major revision to the system and to how we treat those found guilty of crimes, on the whole he ends on a hopeful note. Overall, there is a trend towards the worst of human behavior declining (e.g., fewer murders, less denial of rights) and example after example of remarkably inspiring behavior occurring even in the most unlikely of circumstances. People are on average more generous with others than it is logical for them to be. Moreover, we have reason to be hopeful because, as Sapolsky demonstrates, we have an ever-growing body of knowledge about how to inspire the best of human behavior.

Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. New York, NY: Penguin Press.

 

Today’s learners have different needs than those of yesterday. Educators and policy makers, therefore, need to rethink optimal learning environments. Heidi Hayes Jacobs, founder and president of Curriculum Designers, and Marie Hubley Alcock, president of the education consulting company Learning System Associates, help educators and policy makers contemporize education spaces, curriculum, and pedagogical practices with their new book Bold Moves for Schools: How We Create Remarkable Learning Environments.

The authors argue for the need for updated learning principles, enumerate and explain skills of the effective contemporary teacher, and explain options that have emerged recently for expanding learning environments. Jacobs and Alcock offer guidance about selecting and updating curricula and assessments, especially in light of the significant problems associated with current standardized assessments. They advocate for the benefits of more shared leadership in educational settings. Jacobs and Alcock offer a realistic and progressive vision for how the skilled educators of today can push education practice forward to help prepare students for tomorrow. They urge educators to learn and develop themselves always. With the recommended readings and study guide questions in Bold Moves for Schools, this book can help educators do exactly that.

The authors argue that reformers can begin to affect change by considering education practices that are antiquated and should be eliminated, classical and ought to be preserved, and contemporary and ought to be formulated and expanded. For example, while we should discontinue thinking of students as empty vessels and teachers as disseminators of knowledge, we should think of students as budding creative and critical thinkers whom teachers are responsible for nurturing. Today’s learners need to develop skill in directing their own learning process, building social contracts, critiquing and producing media, innovating, and acting as global citizens. Teachers need to model these skills for their students and advocate for effective, contemporary learning practices. The authors offer bulleted lists of action steps to help teachers develop each of these skills.

In addition to changes in the teaching profession, there must be changes made also to the content taught. Experimental learning, learning that takes place outside the classroom, and learning that is organized around a topic or issue rather than an academic subject can help energize students’ learning by allowing them to feel a sense of ownership and offering opportunities for personalization based on students’ needs.

Schools can update the way they think about learning space, teaching time, the grouping of learners, and the group of teachers to improve learning. For example, rather than grouping students based on age, students could be grouped by interest. Similarly, rather than grouping teachers based on the subjects they teach, groupings ought to be more dynamic, multi-dimensional, and collegial. The benefits of strong professional learning communities should be stressed to teachers. A lateral, collaborative leadership structure within schools and the education system might help make it possible for more innovation. Making major changes in schools can be difficult. Jacobs and Alcock suggest setting up planning teams to help with changes, clarifying a school’s mission, and seeking feedback at multiple levels, including from students before implementing changes.

According to the authors one major issue that has stymied learning in a major way is our accountability system. The exaggerated focus on high stakes tests makes teachers feel a lack of trust and respect, diminishes the appeal of the teaching profession, and discourages collaboration among teachers. It leads to untested, but valuable, subjects being eliminated or whittled down, and it stifles creative and critical thinking. Testing and accountability matter, but we need a radical shift in what assessments look like. They should be authentic, based in performance of real-world tasks and skills, based on measuring innovation and student growth and development, take place over an extended period of time, and include input from students.

We are departing from the industrial age for the information age. Learning environments need to change to keep up. With the help of Bold Moves for Schools Educators and policy makers can use the objective of improving learning as the starting point for the modernization of learning environments.

 

Jacobs, H. H., & Alcock, M. H. (2017). Bold Moves for Schools: How We Create Remarkable Learning Environments. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.