The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter - Rilegato

Pinker, Susan

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 1400069572 ISBN 13: 9781400069576

Casa editrice: Spiegel & Grau, 2014

Riassunto

In her surprising, entertaining, and persuasive new book, award-winning author and psychologist Susan Pinker shows how face-to-face contact is crucial for learning, happiness, resilience, and longevity.

From birth to death, human beings are hardwired to connect to other human beings. Face-to-face contact matters: tight bonds of friendship and love heal us, help children learn, extend our lives, and make us happy. Looser in-person bonds matter, too, combining with our close relationships to form a personal “village” around us, one that exerts unique effects. Not just any social networks will do: we need the real, in-the-flesh encounters that tie human families, groups of friends, and communities together.

Marrying the findings of the new field of social neuroscience with gripping human stories, Susan Pinker explores the impact of face-to-face contact from cradle to grave, from city to Sardinian mountain village, from classroom to workplace, from love to marriage to divorce. Her results are enlightening and enlivening, and they challenge many of our assumptions. Most of us have left the literal village behind and don’t want to give up our new technologies to go back there. But, as Pinker writes so compellingly, we need close social bonds and uninterrupted face-time with our friends and families in order to thrive—even to survive. Creating our own “village effect” makes us happier. It can also save our lives.

Praise for The Village Effect

“The benefits of the digital age have been oversold. Or to put it another way: there is plenty of life left in face-to-face, human interaction. That is the message emerging from this entertaining book by Susan Pinker, a Canadian psychologist. Citing a wealth of research and reinforced with her own arguments, Pinker suggests we should make an effort—at work and in our private lives—to promote greater levels of personal intimacy.”—Financial Times

“Drawing on scores of psychological and sociological studies, [Pinker] suggests that living as our ancestors did, steeped in face-to-face contact and physical proximity, is the key to health, while loneliness is ‘less an exalted existential state than a public health risk.’ That her point is fairly obvious doesn’t diminish its importance; smart readers will take the book out to a park to enjoy in the company of others.”—The Boston Globe

“A hopeful, warm guide to living more intimately in an disconnected era.”—Publishers Weekly

“A terrific book . . . Pinker makes a hardheaded case for a softhearted virtue. Read this book. Then talk about it—in person!—with a friend.”—Daniel H. Pink,New York Times bestselling author of Drive and To Sell Is Human

“What do Sardinian men, Trader Joe’s employees, and nuns have in common? Real social networks—though not the kind you’ll find on Facebook or Twitter. Susan Pinker’s delightful book shows why face-to-face interaction at home, school, and work makes us healthier, smarter, and more successful.”—Charles Duhigg, New York Times bestselling author ofThe Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

“Provocative and engaging . . . Pinker is a great storyteller and a thoughtful scholar. This is an important book, one that will shape how we think about the increasingly virtual world we all live in.”—Paul Bloom, author ofJust Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil

Su questo libro

Recensione:

“The benefits of the digital age have been oversold. Or to put it another way: there is plenty of life left in face-to-face, human interaction. That is the message emerging from this entertaining book by Susan Pinker, a Canadian psychologist. Citing a wealth of research and reinforced with her own arguments, Pinker suggests we should make an effort—at work and in our private lives—to promote greater levels of personal intimacy.”—Financial Times
 
“Drawing on scores of psychological and sociological studies, [Pinker] suggests that living as our ancestors did, steeped in face-to-face contact and physical proximity, is the key to health, while loneliness is ‘less an exalted existential state than a public health risk.’ That her point is fairly obvious doesn’t diminish its importance; smart readers will take the book out to a park to enjoy in the company of others.”—The Boston Globe
 
“A hopeful, warm guide to living more intimately in an disconnected era . . . Pinker explores the powerful effects of face-to-face contact in our increasingly computer-mediated world. While the benefits of human contact may seem like common sense, Pinker’s witty and informative book reveals a far more complex picture of these interactions. It may not surprise readers that having a web of friends and acquaintances makes both job-hunting and surviving the death of a spouse more palatable. But the biological effects that come from the community, and daily interactions with friends, partners, and parents are much less familiar.”—Publishers Weekly

“A terrific book . . . Susan Pinker makes a hardheaded case for a softhearted virtue. Read this book. Then talk about it—in person!—with a friend.”—Daniel H. Pink, New York Times bestselling author of Drive and To Sell Is Human
 
“What do Sardinian men, Trader Joe’s employees, and nuns have in common? Real social networks—though not the kind you’ll find on Facebook or Twitter. Susan Pinker’s delightful book shows why face-to-face interaction at home, school, and work makes us healthier, smarter, and more successful.”—Charles Duhigg, New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
 
“Provocative and engaging . . . Pinker is a great storyteller and a thoughtful scholar. This is an important book, one that will shape how we think about the increasingly virtual world we all live in.”—Paul Bloom, author of Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil
 
“A fascinating, nuanced study of that most fundamental need: the need for human connection.”—Maria Konnikova, New York Times bestselling author of Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes
 
“The Village Effect is a fascinating explanation of why we need regular contact with people, not just screens—and why time spent with your neighbors will enrich and extend your life in ways you never imagined.”—John Tierney, New York Times bestselling co-author of Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
 
“With a raft of surprising data, this compulsively readable, lively and meticulously researched book shows that direct and frequent human contact is at least as important to our survival as clean air or good nutrition.”—Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Freedom Feminism: Its Surprising History and Why It Matters Today
 
“For those who look forward to life with cool robots, think again. Pinker shows us that crucial personal interactions are essential to true human feelings. The Village Effect is brilliant and compelling.”—Michael Gazzaniga, professor of psychology, director of the SAGE Center for the Study of Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara

“Intimate, face-to-face contact with partners, family, and friends is an ancient and deep human need. How do group-living primates like us make the transition to an online world in the evolutionary blink of an eye? Can they? Pinker shows how this is happening. And—even more important—she shows us how this should happen with a valuable prescription based on the best science. Pinker writes with authority and verve, and she offers an integrated treatment of online and offline interactions. She sketches our modern digital interactions on the ancient parchment of our minds.”—Nicholas Christakis, author and psychologist, Human Nature Lab, Yale University
 
“Susan Pinker’s The Village Effect is a bold, intelligent foray into what social isolation does to each of us in an age of technology. She offers keen insights into how social engagement enhances romance, parenting, career, family and friendship. Most impressively, Susan Pinker explores how gender and invisible social forces play into our daily lives.”—Susan Shapiro Barash, author of The Nine Phases of Marriage and Toxic Friends

L'autore:

Susan Pinker is a developmental psychologist, columnist, and broadcaster who writes about social science. Her first book,The Sexual Paradox, was published in seventeen countries and was awarded the William James Book Award by the American Psychological Association. Her work has been featured inThe New York Times, The Times of London, The Economist, The Atlantic, Financial Times, andDer Spiegel and on the BBC, the CBC, and NBC’s Today show. She lives in Montreal.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Spiegel & Grau
• Data di pubblicazione: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1400069572
• ISBN 13: 9781400069576
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 368