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Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life
- A Psychologist Investigates How Evolution, Cognition, and Complexity Are Revolutionizing Our View of Human Nature
- Narrated by: Fred Stella
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
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Publisher's summary
Why do we do what we do? Especially those seemingly inexplicable behaviors—from the disreputable to the downright despicable?
Between what can be learned from evolutionary psychology (thinking that has developed in our species over the millennia to ensure its propagation) and cognitive science (how our minds literally think) a picture emerges. In Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life, social psychologist Douglas Kenrick fuses these two fields to create a coherent story of human nature.
In his analysis, many ingrained, apparently irrational behaviors—one-night stands, prejudice, conspicuous consumption, even art and religious devotion—are quite explicable and (when desired) avoidable. When combined with insights from complexity theory, Kenrick’s argument reveals how simple mechanisms give rise to complex life.
Through an engaging blend of anecdote, analogy, and research findings, Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life takes listeners on a singular tour of the human mind, exploring the pitfalls and promises of our biological inheritance.
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The Mind Club
- Who Thinks, What Feels, and Why It Matters
- By: Daniel M. Wegner, Kurt Gray
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Nothing seems more real than the minds of other people. When you consider what your boss is thinking or whether your spouse is happy, you are admitting them into the "mind club". It's easy to assume other humans can think and feel, but what about a cow, a computer, a corporation? What kinds of minds do they have? Daniel M. Wegner and Kurt Gray are award-winning psychologists who have discovered that minds - while incredibly important - are a matter of perception.
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Who is the self in me? Am I part of something bigger?
- By Philomath on 03-24-16
By: Daniel M. Wegner, and others
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The Self Illusion
- Why There Is No "You" Inside Your Head
- By: Bruce Hood
- Narrated by: Bruce Hood
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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The Self Illusion provides a fascinating examination of how the latest science shows that our individual concept of a self is in fact an illusion. Most of us believe that we possess a self - an internal individual who resides inside our bodies, making decisions, authoring actions and possessing free will. The feeling that a single, unified, enduring self inhabits the body is compelling and inescapable. But that sovereignty of the self is increasingly under threat from science as our understanding of the brain advances.
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Disappointing
- By David R Pinsof on 05-10-12
By: Bruce Hood
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Blindspot
- By: Mahzarin R. Banaji, Anthony G. Greenwald
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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I know my own mind. I am able to assess others in a fair and accurate way. These self-perceptions are challenged by leading psychologists Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald as they explore the hidden biases we all carry from a lifetime of exposure to cultural attitudes about age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, sexuality, disability status, and nationality. Blindspot is the authors’ metaphor for the portion of the mind that houses hidden biases.
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Difficult to interpret.
- By Ryan Arnold on 12-21-15
By: Mahzarin R. Banaji, and others
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Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters
- By: Alan S. Miller, Satoshi Kanazawa
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Contrary to conventional wisdom, our brains and bodies are hardwired to carry out an evolutionary mission that determines much of what we do, from life plans to everyday decisions. With an accessible tone and a healthy disregard for political correctness, this lively and eminently readable book popularizes the latest research in a cutting-edge field of study: one that turns much of what we thought we knew about human nature upside-down.
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Not bad but didn't live up to the reviews
- By Ana Mohammed on 01-08-12
By: Alan S. Miller, and others
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The Intelligence Paradox: Why the Intelligent Choice Isn't Always the Smart One
- By: Satoshi Kanazawa
- Narrated by: Paul Neal Rohrer
- Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Satoshi Kanazawa's Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters (written with Alan S. Miller) was hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "a rollicking bit of pop Science & Technology that turns the lens of evolutionary psychology on issues of the day." That book answered such burning questions as why women tend to lust after males who already have mates and why newborns look more like Dad than Mom. Now Kanazawa tackles the nature of intelligence: what it is, what it does, what it is good for.
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Very entertaining
- By Liz W. on 03-01-20
By: Satoshi Kanazawa
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Mating Intelligence Unleashed
- The Role of the Mind in Sex, Dating, and Love
- By: Scott Barry Kaufman PhD., Glenn Geher PhD., Helen Fisher PhD. - foreword
- Narrated by: Bernard Setaro Clark
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Psychologists often paint a picture of human mating as visceral, instinctual. But that's not the whole story. In courtship and display, sexual competition and rivalry, we are also guided by what Glenn Geher and Scott Barry Kaufman call Mating Intelligence - a range of mental abilities that have evolved to help us find the right partner. Mating Intelligence is at work in our efforts to form, maintain, and end relationships. It guides us in flirtation, foreplay, copulation, finding and choosing a mate, and many other behaviors.
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Tedious with the gems buried deep within
- By Matt J on 09-26-15
By: Scott Barry Kaufman PhD., and others
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The Moral Animal
- Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
- By: Robert Wright
- Narrated by: Greg Thornton
- Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Are men literally born to cheat? Does monogamy actually serve women's interests? These are among the questions that have made The Moral Animal one of the most provocative science books in recent years. Wright unveils the genetic strategies behind everything from our sexual preferences to our office politics - as well as their implications for our moral codes and public policies.
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Ridiculously Insightful
- By Liron on 10-25-10
By: Robert Wright
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The Molecule of More
- How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity - And Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race
- By: Daniel Z. Lieberman MD, Michael E. Long
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and will Determine the Fate of the Human Race, George Washington University professor and psychiatrist Daniel Z. Lieberman, MD, and Georgetown University lecturer Michael E. Long present a potentially life-changing proposal: Much of human life has an unconsidered component that explains an array of behaviors previously thought to be unrelated, including why winners cheat, why geniuses often suffer with mental illness, why nearly all diets fail, and more.
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Did you know conservatives have more orgasms?
- By Josh on 10-21-20
By: Daniel Z. Lieberman MD, and others
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The Mind of the Market
- Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics
- By: Michael Shermer
- Narrated by: Michael Shermer
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Abridged
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The Mind of the Market will change the way we think about the economics of everyday life. Drawing on research from neuroeconomics, Michael Shermer explores what brain scans reveal about bargaining, snap purchases, and how trust is established in business. Utilizing experiments in behavioral economics, Shermer shows why people hang on to losing stocks and failing companies, why business negotiations often disintegrate into emotional tit-for-tat disputes, and why money does not make us happy.
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Good ideas overshadowed by obnoxious polemics
- By Philo on 09-15-13
By: Michael Shermer
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The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking
- How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy, and Sane
- By: Matthew Hutson
- Narrated by: Matthew Hutson, Don Hagen
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In this witty and perceptive debut, a former editor at Psychology Today shows us how magical thinking makes life worth living. Psychologists have documented a litany of cognitive biases and explained their positive functions. Now, Matthew Hutson shows us that even the most hardcore skeptic indulges in magical thinking all the time - and it's crucial to our survival. Drawing on evolution, cognitive science, and neuroscience, Hutson shows us that magical thinking has been so useful to us that it's hardwired into our brains.
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Highly enjoyable
- By David R Pinsof on 05-01-12
By: Matthew Hutson
What listeners say about Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- beinbloom
- 11-10-15
skip it
the author was self-absorbed. he brags about his 3 wives getting 10 years younger each time. it's all about him.
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6 people found this helpful
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- quinet
- 06-11-13
Exceeded my expectations
The book's title does not do justice to the content, which is really about new approaches to looking at how evolution affects our psychology. I am hooked on the new wave of rigorously researched works of popular science and this book is definitely one of the best. A must-read if you are interested in evolutionary psychology.
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- Occasional Reviewer
- 10-08-12
Good introduction to evolutionary pscyhology
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
yes, clear overview
Would you listen to another book narrated by Fred Stella?
Fred Stella did a superb job. I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't actually Kenrick speaking.
Any additional comments?
Kenrick is good with anecdotes and has a personable manner. He was one of the earliest researchers in evolutionary psychology and has done a good deal of primary research, so he gives an insider's view of developments in the field. The story has a narrative trajectory, beginning with the early efforts to overcome mass resistance to biological explanations and concluding in a serene late stage, with the revolution more or less completed.
Kenrick accepts the idea of massive modularity but at least systemizes modules by appealing effectively to human life history theory. He doesn't adequately register the way evolutionary psychology has finally succeeded in assimilating the idea of general intelligence, so his concept of human behavior retains the inflexibility that was a crucial limitation in early evolutionary psychology. Theoretically, humans remain robots animated by an array of basic motives automatically elicited by specific environmental inputs. They lack the power of altering behavior by envisioning their own identities extending over time, connecting to social networks beyond the immediate sensory field, and subject to norms, values, and beliefs. But that's only theoretically. Kenrick has enough wisdom, as a narrator, to see beyond some of the limitations in his theoretical model.
The wider evolutionary vision of human nature now takes in "group selection" as part of "multi-level selection." It also takes in the idea of "gene-culture co-evolution." Kenrick doesn't get that far. He reduces human behavior to three causal principles: inclusive fitness, differential parental investment, and reciprocal altruism (Hamilton, Trivers, and Trivers). He shows clearly just how far those three causes can take us in understanding human behavior. He thus also lets us see the limitations in those three explanatory principles.He reduces all mental effort to status striving, itself reduced to mating displays.
Inclusive fitness and differential parental investment account for so much of all animal behavior that evolutionary psychologists can produce a reasonable facsimile of human nature by treating humans as if they have adaptive capabilities no different from those of birds, chimps, and meerkats.That leaves out specifically and singularly human activities and accomplishments: technology, science, trade, philosophy, history, aesthetics, religion, myth, the arts, music, narrative, and ideology. All of human civilization is accounted for by waving airily at the peacock's tail.
Like most evolutionary psychologists even now, Kenrick essentially explains away the human mind. Evolutionary thinkers have only just recently begun to make real progress in understanding gene-culture co-evolution, and Kenrick has made no effort to include those recent and still rudimentary advances. He can thus explain human behavior only in the degree to which it is indistinguishable from the behavior of other dual parenting species or other species capable of cooperative group endeavor.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Danny Derby
- 02-21-15
an intro to sociobiology
i had this book for a long time and finally got to readcit, written in a fun to read way. it is highly recommended
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- Ben
- 08-20-12
A harmony of personal stories and science
The authors frankness about his own life and how it related to studies was what kept me interested in this book over many other similar books I have read. I thoroughly enjoyed it and walked away with at least two concepts of human behavior that will change how I view humanity forever. If you like behavioral science and real life examples of how and why humans do what they do I recommend this right up there next to "The Happiness Hypothesis" which can also be found here on Audible.
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2 people found this helpful
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- CMH
- 05-26-16
love this book
I only bought it because the title was very catchy. but it turned out to be an amazing book, I highly recommend it and I also recommend " influence by Robert cialdini"
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- Laurie Frick
- 07-21-11
Rather dated and self-aggrandizing
Kenrick's frame of reference, examples and tone is very dated. All of his examples and chapter beginnings are about himself, which you would expect would humanize the book and help it move along. Instead it's heavy, dull and incredibly self-aggrandizing. Other books in the Neuro-lit category are much, much better. Avoid this one.
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12 people found this helpful
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- rosieBCPD1
- 06-10-14
Research Results on Superficial People
What disappointed you about Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life?
The book recites the results of studies showing that older men like younger women and if men look at too much porn the can only find photoshopped, triple D women attractive. I think he needs to look at his research practice and filter out douchebags and dirty old men from his studies.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Midnight Muffins
- 05-25-21
Comes off like a weird sermon
To be fair, I didn't finish this, I only made it to chapter 6. From me, that in itself is a review because I'm a bit of a completionist and try to finish everything I start... I'm just not interested in anything else it has to say.
I really should have read the reviews because the first few you see are pretty spot on. This comes off weirdly as some old guy writing a manifesto about how it's natural for men to be attracted to younger women and women looking for resources. Like. We get it bro, you like little girls and you think all they're interested in is money. Let's move on. The personal brags also just make it evident this is a weird guy.
The big problem with this, though is it's not objective and he said so much where I left of. To paraphrase, essentially he's explaining why his opinion makes something right despite criticisms he's been given.
You want to give the benefit of the doubt, but that was the "not worth my time" nail in the coffin for me. I don't buy a book on a subject to get a memoir in disguise from a biased author. I get it, a lot of authors do this and it's ok, they're trying to get you to connect to the material, but the material here barely holds weight. There are several points I noticed in this where I recognized the data given, but also that certain other bits were conveniently left out to support his narrative.
On a whole, disappointing. If you're looking for something with a bit more weight about human nature and an only slightly annoying butt-ins about the author's life, I just finished "the anatomy of violence", which was good and hits topics this should have from a respectable research standpoint along with good detail and pace.
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- Traci
- 08-31-11
Terrible Narrator
I bought this book because the subject matter seemed extremely interesting. Unfortunately, I can't even listen to it because Fred Stella is a terrible narrator. He over annunciates words and makes a book that could have been interesting, dull. His style reminds me of how students read when I was in middle school. If you can get past the narrator you may enjoy this book, personally I'm going to read it instead.
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6 people found this helpful