{"title":"John Baer","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"on-the-front-lines-of-pennsylvania-politics-book-john-baer-9781609497156","title":"On the Front Lines of Pennsylvania Politics","description":"Pennsylvania, first home of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, has a tradition of political progress. However, along with the good, the political playground of Pennsylvania has also seen the brazenly bad behavior of its political leaders. For over twenty-five years, political columnist John Baer has had a front-row seat to the foibles and follies of the Keystone State's political system. Baer takes readers through his memories of covering state politics for the last quarter century, from Democratic governor Milton Shapp's short-lived run for president--in which he finished behind no preference in the Florida primary--to highlights of some of the game-changing campaign missteps and maneuvers that moved administrations in and out of the capital. 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If free will is more than an illusion, what kind of free will do people have? How can free will influence behavior? Can free will be studied, verified, and understood scientifically? How and why might a sense of free will have evolved? These are a few of the questions this book attempts to answer.   People generally act as though they believe in their own free will: they don't feel like automatons, and they don't treat one another as they might treat robots. While acknowledging many constraints and influences on behavior, people nonetheless act as if they (and their neighbors) are largely in control of many if not most of the decisions they make. Belief in free will also underpins the sense that people are responsible for their actions. Psychological explanations of behavior rarely mention free will as a factor, however. Can psychological science find room for free will? How do leading psychologists conceptualize free will, and what role do they believe free will plays in shaping behavior?   In recent years a number of psychologists have tried to solve one or more of the puzzles surrounding free will. This book looks both at recent experimental and theoretical work directly related to free will and at ways leading psychologists from all branches of psychology deal with the philosophical problems long associated with the question of free will, such as the relationship between determinism and free will and the importance of consciousness in free will. It also includes commentaries by leading philosophers on what psychologists can contribute to long-running philosophical struggles with this most distinctly human belief. 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Most people (including creativity researchers) also believe that there is a set of general creativity-relevant skills that can be applied to most problems in ways that will lead to more creative outcomes. Creativity research now calls these beliefs into question. A domain-general misunderstanding of the nature of creativity-relevant skills and the equally mistaken belief that creativity exists independently of actual creative things and ideas have together hindered creativity theory, research, assessment, and training. A more domain-specific and nominalist understanding of creativity will free creativity researchers to make progress in areas where it is currently stymied.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52452542447889,"sku":"NLS9781009073547","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53360633839889,"sku":"NIN9781009073547","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781009073547.jpg?v=1759365061"},{"product_id":"creativity-and-divergent-thinking-book-john-baer-9780805812954","title":"Creativity and Divergent Thinking","description":"Do general-purpose creative-thinking skills -- skills like divergent thinking, which is touted as an important component of creative thinking no matter what the task domain -- actually make much of a contribution to creative performance? Although much recent research argues against such domain-transcending skills -- including several new studies reported in this book -- the appeal of such general skills remains strong, probably because of the theoretical economy and power such skills would provide. Divergent thinking, in particular, has had an incredible staying power. Despite its many flaws, divergent thinking remains the most frequently used indicator of creativity in both creativity research and educational practice, and divergent thinking theory has a strong hold on everyday conceptions of what it means to be creative.    Reviewing the available research on divergent thinking, this book presents a framework for understanding other major theories of creativity, including Mednick's associative theory and a possible connectionist approach of creativity. It reports a series of studies (including the study that won APA's 1992 Berlyne Prize) that demonstrate the absence of effects of general creative-thinking skills across a range of creativity-relevant tasks, but indicate that training in divergent thinking does in fact improve creative performance across diverse task domains. The book then ties these findings together with a multi-level theory, in which a task-specific approach to creativity is strengthened by recasting some divergent-thinking concepts into domain- and task-specific forms.    This book fills the gap between divergent-thinking theory and more recent, modular conceptions of creativity. Rather than advocate that we simply discard divergent thinking -- an approach that hasn't worked, or at least hasn't happened, because of many attacks on its validity and usefulness -- this book shows how to separate what is useful in divergent-thinking theory and practice from what is not. It shows that divergent-thinking training can be valuable, although often not for the reasons trainers think it works. And it offers specific suggestions about the kinds of creativity research most needed today.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52522538991889,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52522539417873,"sku":"NLS9780805812954","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780805812954.jpg?v=1760577858"},{"product_id":"creativity-and-divergent-thinking-book-john-baer-9781138966932","title":"Creativity and Divergent Thinking","description":"Do general-purpose creative-thinking skills -- skills like divergent thinking, which is touted as an important component of creative thinking no matter what the task domain -- actually make much of a contribution to creative performance? 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