The Village Effect

By Susan Pinker,

Book cover of The Village Effect: How Face-To-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier and Happier

Book description

In her surprising, entertaining and persuasive new book, award-winning author and psychologist Susan Pinker shows how face-to-face contact is crucial for learning, happiness, resilience and longevity.
          From birth to death, human beings are hard-wired to connect to other human beings. Face to face contact matters: tight bonds of friendship and…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Village Effect as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Susan Pinker, a developmental psychologist in Montreal, demonstrates that online communicating can never replace the benefits we derive from face-to-face interpersonal contact. Strong bonds of friendship and love heal us and keep us healthy, just as they help children learn, and just as they extend our lives and make us happy. Looser, secondary in-person bonds also have a significant effect on us. In combination with our close relationships, they form a personal “village” around us composed of networks of connectedness. Susan Pinker presents numerous surprising discoveries from social neuroscience, as well as stories from people’s lives. In the final chapter,…

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