Tim Beck’s Final Brainstorms

Recalling their near-weekly conversations over the two-and-a-half years before mental health pioneer Aaron T. Beck’s death at age 100, the author—possible biographer, irritating interviewer, admiring friend—bears witness to the founder of cognitive therapy’s ceaseless quest to live a “rich full life.”

Toward a New Boyhood

From toxic masculinity to feminist overreach, angry white men to benevolent sexism, #HimToo to #TimesUp, American manhood is in disarray. Into the fray steps Michael Reichert, with a blueprint for raising the next generation right.

When William James Got Hungry

In an excerpt from his new autobiography, Penn psychology professor Martin Seligman tells the little-known story of the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting in 1904, held at Penn. Its reverberations were profound—for Penn psychology professor Edwin Twitmyer and for American psychology.

Imagination Man

Scott Barry Kaufman has been called “the leading empirical creativity researcher of his generation.” Now he wants to use the tools he’s developed to unleash the “quiet potential” of vulnerable people—including kids like him—and help them flourish.

Unconditional Pavlov

Daniel Todes spent 25 years researching and writing his epochal biography of Ivan Pavlov. The result is a science historian’s answer to Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Dr. Zhivago.

Character’s Content

Penn psychologist Angela Duckworth Gr’06 argues that character—not intelligence, quality of instruction, family situation, or income level—is the crucial determinant of achievement in school. Now she just has to figure out how to measure character—and influence it for the better.

Degrees of Happiness

In Penn’s intensive one-year master’s program in applied positive psychology, working professionals from more than a dozen countries and a staggering range of fields come to learn how to “add to the tonnage of happiness in the world.”

The Reverse Engineer

Forget nature versus nurture. From cooperation to social stigma, morality to mating, evolutionary adaptation is the key to understanding human behavior, says Penn psychologist Robert Kurzban.

Who’s Who on the Savannah

Studying the social knowledge of a troop of baboons in Botswana, Penn researchers Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth gain insights into monkey cognition—and our own.