Carol Tavris
Personal Information
Description
Carol Tavris is a social psychologist, writer, and lecturer whose goal is to promote psychological science and critical thinking in improving our lives. She is coauthor, with Elliot Aronson, of "Mistakes Were Made (But Not by ME): Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts." Her other major books include the landmark "Anger: The misunderstood emotion," a book well known for its critical look at unvalidated notions about the inevitability of anger and the need to "ventilate" it, and how anger can best be expressed constructively. She is also author of the award-winning "The Mismeasure of Woman: Why women are not the better sex, the inferior sex, or the opposite sex," and coauthor of two widely used textbooks for introductory psychology. She has written hundreds of essays and book reviews on topics in psychological science, and is a highly regarded lecturer who has spoken to groups around the world, from New Zealand to Finland. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and a Charter Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and a member of the editorial board of the APS journal "Psychological Science in the Public Interest." [Source]
Books
Introduction à la psychologie
Dans cet ouvrage, dans un premier temps, on retrace l'évolution de la conception de l'Homme au cours de l'histoire, évolution qui a conduit, à la fin du XIXe siècle, à la constitution d'une discipline institutionnellement autonome. Dans un second temps, on propose une réflexion sur les démarches méthodologiques par lesquelles la psychologie s'inscrit dans le mouvement scientifique, sur les questions d'éthique qui s'y rattachent, sur leur incidence dans la formation et dans l'activité professionnelle des psychologues.
The mismeasure of woman
When "man is the measure of all things," woman is forever trying to measure up. In this enlightening book, Carol Tavris unmasks the widespread but invisible custom -- pervasive in the social sciences, medicine, law, and history -- of treating men as the normal standard, women as abnormal. Tavris expands our vision of normalcy by illuminating the similarities between women and men and showing that the real differences lie not in gender, but in power, resources, and life experiences.
La colère
Etude approfondie, mais accessible de la colère, ses manifestations, ses interprétations, ses visages positif et négatif, son contrôle, sa réhabilitation bien comprise.
Study Guide for Psychology
Psychology
Current Directions in Introductory Psychology (Association for Psychological Science Readers)
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)
At some point we all make a bad decision, do something that harms another person, or cling to an outdated belief. When we do, we strive to reduce the cognitive dissonance that results from feeling that we, who are smart, moral, and right, just did something that was dumb, immoral, or wrong. Whether the consequences are trivial or tragic, it is difficult, and for some people impossible, to say, “I made a terrible mistake.” The higher the stakes—emotional, financial, moral—the greater that difficulty. Self-justification, the hardwired mechanism that blinds us to the possibility that we were wrong, has benefits: It lets us sleep at night and keeps us from torturing ourselves with regrets. But it can also block our ability to see our faults and errors. It legitimizes prejudice and corruption, distorts memory, and generates anger and rifts. It can keep prosecutors from admitting they put an innocent person in prison and from correcting that injustice, and it can keep politicians unable to change disastrous policies that cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives. In our private lives, it can be the death of love. Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) examines: - Why we have so much trouble accepting information that conflicts with a belief we “know for sure” is right. - The brain’s “blind spots” that make us unable to see our own prejudices, biases, corrupting influences, and hypocrisies. - Why our memories tell more about what we believe now than what really happened then. - How couples can break out of the spiral of blame and defensiveness. - The evil that men and women can do in the name of God, country, and justice -- and why they don’t see their actions as evil at all. - Why random acts of kindness create a “virtuous cycle” that perpetuates itself. Most of all, this book explains how all of us can learn to own up and let go of the need to be right, and learn from the times we are wrong—so that we don't keep making the same mistakes over and over again.
The mismeasure of women
Social psychologist Tavris discusses the widespread but invisible custom - pervasive in the social sciences, medicine, law, and history - of treating men as the normal standard, women as abnormal. Tavris expands our vision of normalcy by illuminating the similarities between women and men, showing that the real differences lie not in gender, but in power, resources, and life experiences.