Understanding cause-and-effect relationships is essential for credible research and informed decision-making. The Data Analyst’s Guide to Cause and Effect offers a clear, practical roadmap for answering causal questions using both experimental and observational data.Built around the EEESI workflow—Estimand, Estimator, Estimate, Simulation-based Inference—this book provides a systematic approach to defining, estimating, and validating causal effects. Readers will le...

Why are humans obsessed with divine minds? What do gods know and what do they care about? What happens to us and our relationships when gods are involved?Drawing from neuroscience, evolutionary, cultural, and applied anthropology, social psychology, religious studies, philosophy, technology, and cognitive and political sciences, The Minds of Gods probes these questions from a multitude of naturalistic perspectives. Each chapter offers brief intellectual histories of their ...

A comprehensive and cutting-edge introduction to quantitative methods of causal analysis, including new trends in machine learning.Reasoning about cause and effect—the consequence of doing one thing versus another—is an integral part of our lives as human beings. In an increasingly digital and data-driven economy, the importance of sophisticated causal analysis only deepens. Presenting the most important quantitative methods for evaluating causal effects, this text...

A scientist integrates evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and more to explore the development and workings of human societies."There is no good reason why human societies should not be described and explained with the same precision and success as the rest of nature." Thus argues evolutionary psychologist Pascal Boyer in this uniquely innovative book.Integrating recent insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychol...

Many of our questions about religion, says the internationally renowned anthropologist Pascal Boyer, were once mysteries, but they no longer are: we are beginning to know how to answer questions such as "Why do people have religion?" and "Why is religion the way it is?" Using findings from anthropology, cognitive science, linguistics, and evolutionary biology, Boyer shows how one of the most fascinating aspects of human consciousness is increasingly admissible to coherent, naturalistic exp...

This ambitious, interdisciplinary book seeks to explain the origins of religion using our knowledge of the evolution of cognition. A cognitive anthropologist and psychologist, Scott Atran argues that religion is a by-product of human evolution just as the cognitive intervention, cultural selection, and historical survival of religion is an accommodation of certain existential and moral elements that have evolved in the human condition.

How the sciences of the mind can advance the study of religionThe essence of religion was once widely thought to be a unique form of experience that could not be explained in neurological, psychological, or sociological terms. In recent decades scholars have questioned the privileging of the idea of religious experience in the study of religion, an approach that effectively isolated the study of religion from the social and natural sciences. Religious Experienc...

The Second Edition of the cutting edge work, The Handbook of Humanistic Psychology, by Kirk J. Schneider, J. Fraser Pierson and James F. T. Bugental, represents the very latest scholarship in the field of humanistic psychology and psychotherapy. Set against trends inclined toward psychological standardization and medicalization, the handbook offers a rich tapestry of reflection by the leading person-centered scholars of our time. Their range in topics is f...

An expansive look at how culture shapes our emotions—and how we can benefit, as individuals and a society, from less anger and more shameThe world today is full of anger. Everywhere we look, we see values clashing and tempers rising, in ways that seem frenzied, aimless, and cruel. At the same time, we witness political leaders and others who lack any sense of shame, even as they display carelessness with the truth and the common good. In How to Do Things with E...

This book is for anyone who has biomedical data and needs to identify variables that predict an outcome, for two-group outcomes such as tumor/not-tumor, survival/death, or response from treatment. Statistical learning machines are ideally suited to these types of prediction problems, especially if the variables being studied may not meet the assumptions of traditional techniques. Learning machines come from the world of probability and computer science but are not yet widely used in biomed...

A groundbreaking new theory of religionReligion remains an important influence in the world today, yet the social sciences are still not adequately equipped to understand and explain it. This book builds on recent developments in science, theory, and philosophy to advance an innovative theory of religion that goes beyond the problematic theoretical paradigms of the past.Drawing on the philosophy of critical realism and personalist social theory, Christian S...

How embracing untranslatable terms for well-being—from the Finnish sisu to the Yiddish mensch—can enrich our emotional understanding and experience.Western psychology is rooted in the philosophies and epistemologies of Western culture. But what of concepts and insights from outside this frame of reference? Certain terms not easily translatable into English—for example, nirvāṇa (from Sanskrit), or agápē (from Classical Greek), or ...