Future-Minded: The Psychology of Agency and Control

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Description

What drives us to make decisions Future-Minded explores the psychological processes of agency and control. If you've ever wondered why we think of coincidences as matters of fate rather than the result of the laws of probability, this book provides the answer. From memory and reasoning to our experiences of causality and consciousness, it unpicks the mechanisms we use on a daily basis to help us predict, plan for and attempt to control the future. Future-Minded - Features a wealth of real world examples to help you engage with this fast-developing area. - Provides clear analysis of psychological experiments and their findings to explain the evidence behind the theory. Thought-provoking and highly topical, Future-Minded is fascinating reading for psychology students studying cognition or consciousness, and for anyone interested in understanding how we try to determine the future.

Reviews

'A wonderfully original and masterly overview of how we think about our influence on the world and about how we sometimes develop delusional beliefs about ourselves as agents in the world. Osman is a pioneer in this fast-developing field and has written a clear and lucid book.' - David Shanks, Professor of Psychology, University College London, UK 'An extremely interesting book that conveys some very complex concepts and experiments in a very accessible way. The book is engaging and, unusually for a psychological text, difficult to put down.' - Richard J. Tunney, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Nottingham, UK

Author Bio

Magda Osman is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Biological and Experimental Psychology at Queen Mary, University of London, UK. Her research interests include causal reasoning, problem-solving, learning and vision, and she is currently Associate Editor for Experimental Psychology, and consults on several national and international research councils.