Possessed Why We Want More Than We Need

by Hood, Bruce

• ISBN13: 9780190699918
• ISBN10: 0190699914
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2019-09-03
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

You may not believe it, but there is a link between our current political instability and your childhood attachment to teddy bears. There's also a reason why children in Asia are more likely to share than their western counterparts and why the poor spend more of their income on luxury goods than the rich. Or why your mother is more likely to leave her money to you than your father. What connects these things?

The answer is our need for ownership. Award-winning psychologist Bruce Hood draws on research from his own lab and others around the world to explain why this uniquely human preoccupation governs our behaviour from the cradle to the grave, even when it is often irrational, and destructive. What motivates us to buy more than we need? Is it innate, or cultural? How does our urge to acquire control our behaviour, even the way we vote? And what can we do about it?

Timely, engaging and persuasive, Possessed is the first book to explore how ownership has us enthralled in relentless pursuit of a false happiness, with damaging consequences for society and the planet - and how we can stop buying into it.

Author Biography

Bruce Hood is Professor of Developmental Psychology in Society at Bristol University. He undertook his Ph.D. at Cambridge followed by appointments at University College London, MIT and a faculty professor at Harvard. He researches child development, origins of superstition and self-identity. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Society, the Royal Institution of Great Britain and the British Psychological Society. Bruce gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 2011 and has written three popular science books - SuperSense, The Self Illusion and The Domesticated Brain. He is working on his fourth book about ownership. Bruce is the founder of Speakezee - the world's largest academic speaker platform connecting experts with audiences.