There are many ways in which people behave that have been shown by numerous studies to be detrimental to the human condition.

Being harsh in disciplining children and distant in their emotional relationships with them was a trait the fathers of Nazi leaders exhibited. Being unconditionally rewarding of a child, whilst a better extreme than the other, is also shown to bring up children with poor emotional self-control. Many studies have shown the best way of bringing up emotionally mature children is consistent, well thought out light discipline, from a loving parent interested in their child. In fact, it was exactly the sort of people bought up in homes where problems were talked over, rather than resolved by violence, that we're more likely to help Jewish people fleeing from the Nazis despite the great personal risk to themselves.

It is in the application of these sorts of studies that many hopes for a better world lie, studies that show deep human tendencies that are difficult to see in the subjective opinions of our normal day. Psychology has so much to offer us as a society, we can be more intelligent about the way we work towards many goals that we seek. We know what is wrong with the world, poverty, violence, environmental degradation and the barbaric treatment of animals, what we need to know is how to get every else to look up from their self-obsessive lives just long enough to help us solve these problems.

This is where this sort of book comes in, the path to changing the world passes inexorably through the human mind and ultimately our human mind.