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The Nurture Effect: How the Science of Human Behavior Can Improve Our Lives and Our World by [Anthony Biglan, Steven C. Hayes, David Sloan Wilson PhD]

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Anthony Biglan

The Nurture Effect: How the Science of Human Behavior Can Improve Our Lives and Our World Kindle Edition

by Anthony Biglan (Author), Steven C. Hayes (Foreword), David Sloan Wilson PhD (Afterword) Format: Kindle Edition

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A fascinating look at the evolution of behavioral science, the revolutionary way it’s changing the way we live, and how nurturing environments can increase people’s well-being in virtually every aspect of our society, from early childhood education to corporate practices. If you want to know how you can help create a better world, read this book.

What if there were a way to prevent criminal behavior, mental illness, drug abuse, poverty, and violence? Written by behavioral scientist Tony Biglan, and based on his ongoing research at the Oregon Research Institute, The Nurture Effect offers evidence-based interventions that can prevent many of the psychological and behavioral problems that plague our society.

For decades, behavioral scientists have investigated the role our environment plays in shaping who we are, and their research shows that we now have the power within our own hands to reduce violence, improve cognitive development in our children, increase levels of education and income, and even prevent future criminal behaviors. By cultivating a positive environment in all aspects of society—from the home, to the classroom, and beyond—we can ensure that young people arrive at adulthood with the skills, interests, assets, and habits needed to live healthy, happy, and productive lives.

The Nurture Effect details over forty years of research in the behavioral sciences, as well as the author’s own research. Biglan illustrates how his findings lay the framework for a model of societal change that has the potential to reverberate through all environments within society.

Print length

274 pages
Language

English
Publisher

New Harbinger Publications
Publication date

March 1, 2015
File size

1400 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“What a wonderful and truly beneficial gift that Anthony Biglan has given us! Thought-provoking and inspirational, Biglan shares with us his wisdom and provides a compelling call to individuals, families, schools, communities, organizations, corporations, and policymakers to be part of creating nurturing environments. The Nurture Effect is a science-based prescription for creating a more health-enhancing society. Biglan concisely summarizes his hard-earned wisdom from a remarkable career as a clinician and scientist, his knowledge of diverse scientific fields, as well as his rich life experiences, including as husband, father, and grandfather. Transformative and practical, it provides a guide for the foundation of a more caring and health-promoting society.”
―Kelli A. Komro, PhD, professor of health outcomes and policy at the College of Medicine, associate director of the Institute for Child Health Policy, and Research Foundation Professor at the University of Florida

“Anthony Biglan’s vast intelligence and scientific experience are brought together in The Nurture Effect to provide a vision, a road map, and a sense of optimism about solving the very real social problems facing our country. Evidence-based behavioral programs and policies provide the basis for Anthony’s argument that greater attention to nurturing, as opposed to coercion―at home, in schools, with peer groups, within communities, and even as public policy―will lead to healthier and better-adjusted youth and adults. The book is critically important as we consider how we are raising the current and next generations, and can serve to guide discussions on next steps in science, policy, and practice.”
―Cheryl L. Perry, PhD, professor and regional dean at The University of Texas School of Public Health, Austin Regional Campus

“Anthony Biglan’s latest book The Nurture Effect is a powerful reminder of the transformational impact a nurturing environment has on individuals’ well-being throughout their lives. In documenting many carefully selected examples of evidence-based interventions from early childhood and through subsequent stages of development, it makes an outstanding contribution to the field of prevention science. Biglan makes a compelling case for widely implementing scientifically supported interventions that create nurturing environments in our homes, schools and communities. When individuals develop the social and emotional competencies they need to do well, their lives are permanently transformed. This book challenges policy makers, professionals, and the community at large to think well beyond individual benefit, and consider that behavioral science knowledge can apply to entire populations. I unreservedly endorse this excellent and timely contribution.”
―Matthew R. Sanders, PhD, professor of clinical psychology and director of the Parenting and Family Support Centre at the University of Queensland, as well as founder of the Triple P – Positive Parenting Program

“Read this book, please read this book! … The nurture effect impacts us daily in our health, intelligence, behavior, emotions, work, and relationships. The daily nurture effect even codes our gene expression―something my scientific colleagues and I only began to suspect one or two decades ago, but have proof of now. This book maps how we can intentionally nurture ourselves, our loved ones, our communities, and even our nations. All of this is based on rigorous practical science. If you want to improve the now and better the future, read this book and apply the nurture effect at home, at work or at school, and in your community.”
―Dennis D. Embry, PhD, president and senior scientist at PAXIS Institute

“The Nurture Effect is a remarkably ambitious book that draws the blueprints for creating prosocial communities aiming to help people live healthier, value-directed, and enjoyable lives. Biglan explains how people can work together to reduce suffering and improve quality of living for each other, and supports these plans with reliable behavioral research. The science of this book is captivating because Biglan expresses the ideas in an understandable and practical manner. In other words, he simplifies the science of human behavior so you can use it to improve your own community. The Nurture Effect hits the ground running with clear, concise, well-stated facts about creating a social context for people to experience a life well-lived. Throughout the book, Biglan expands these ideas into the different branches of community, such as family, schools, work, peer-relations, and discusses how―when approached appropriately―they can make lasting positive contributions to individuals. The perspectives you gain from this book will not only assist you in helping your community to become stronger and healthier, but will also help you as an individual to experience those same positive outcomes.”
―D.J. Moran, PhD, founder of Pickslyde Consulting and the MidAmerican Psychological Institute

“This marvelous book integrates the most compelling scientific knowledge about how we can improve the lives of citizens of this country with a bold call to action. Fundamentally, Anthony Biglan―a gifted and experienced behavioral scientist―challenges us to ask, ‘What kind of society do we want? How can we use what we know to create such a society?’ His central thesis is that widely implementing what we have learned over decades in developing programs that nurture children, adolescents, parents and adults in families, in schools, and in the larger society―which he calls a revolution in behavioral science―will make a huge difference.

The book contains highly practical, specific recommendations for families, practitioners, and policy makers. Biglan rightly recognizes that to significantly change society for the better, we must address larger social forces―for example, the negative effects of poverty and economic inequality, or of marketing tobacco and alcohol to youth. Eminently readable, this book comprehensively reviews evidence based on a lifetime of experience as a social scientist, and knits it together with a compelling agenda, that if enacted, could lead to a significant, positive transformation of our country.”
―William R. Beardslee, MD, director of the Baer Prevention Initiatives at Boston Children’s Hospital, and Gardner-Monks Professor of child psychiatry at Harvard Medical School

“The Nurture Effect is exciting because it is grounded in science but leads us well beyond the fragmented slivers in which scientific findings are often delivered. Anthony Biglan persuades us that rather than focusing on preventing individual problems of family dysfunction, drug addiction, academic failure, child abuse, and even crime, we need to cut to the chase and attend to what all of these have in common. Biglan shows that poverty consistently makes it harder to help, and that nurture is so frequently missing. By integrating findings from the past fifty years in psychology, epidemiology, education, and neuroscience, he pulls out the common threads to show that it is possible to make families, schools, and the larger social context more nurturing, and ultimately to create the nurturing environments so vital to well-being and to preventing widespread harm.”
―Lisbeth B. Schorr, senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Social Policy, and coauthor of Within Our Reach

“This work is Anthony Biglan’s magnum opus. He has pulled together many ideas from multiple disciplinary domains. It is required reading for anyone who is serious about fixing the problems in our education system and alleviating poverty. Anyone who liked David Brooks’ TheSocial Animal will also like this. Although Biglan is a self-identified and proud behaviorist, this work shows his openness to other perspectives. I was especially happy to see his new nuanced view of the role of reinforcement in human behavior (pages 28-29). Intrinsic motivation is more powerful in the long term than extrinsic motivation.”
―Brian R. Flay, DPhil, professor of social and behavioral health sciences at Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, and emeritus distinguished professor of public health and psychology at University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL

“The author’s engaging writing style enables readers to appreciate the elegance of applying knowledge based on rigorous research to develop and apply evidence-based interventions that prevent problems and promote well-being on a societal scale.”
―Marion S. Forgatch, PhD, senior scientist emerita at the Oregon Social Learning Center (OSLC), where she developed and tested programs for families with children at risk or referred for child adjustment problems and substance abuse

“The Nurture Effect is one of those rare books that draws from a lifetime of careful scientific study to provide clear prescriptions—in language non-scientists can understand—about how to make our world a better place. Pushing back against contemporary fatalism, Anthony Biglan shows us that we know more than ever about how to promote human flourishing. The problem is that we’re not applying this knowledge as we should. The Nurture Effect explains how we could change that, and, even more important, how you can help make the change happen.”
—Jacob S. Hacker, PhD, Stanley B. Resor Professor of political science, director at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, and coauthor of Winner-Take-All Politics --This text refers to the paperback edition.

About the Author

Anthony Biglan, PhD, is a senior scientist at Oregon Research Institute, and a leading figure in the development of prevention science. His research over the past thirty years has helped to identify effective family, school, and community interventions to prevent the most common and costly problems of childhood and adolescence. He is a leader in efforts to use prevention science to build more nurturing families, schools, and communities throughout the world. Biglan lives in Eugene, OR.

Foreword writer Steven C. Hayes, PhD, is Nevada Foundation Professor in the department of psychology at the University of Nevada. An author of thirty-four books and more than 470 scientific articles, he has shown in his research how language and thought leads to human suffering. He cofounded acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)―a powerful therapy method that is useful in a wide variety of areas. Hayes has been president of several scientific societies and has received several national awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies.

Afterword writer David Sloan Wilson, PhD, is president of the Evolution Institute and SUNY distinguished professor of biology and anthropology at Binghamton University. He applies evolutionary theory to all aspects of humanity, in addition to the biological world. His books include Darwin’s Cathedral, Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives, The Neighborhood Project, and Does Altruism Exist? --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00QUIAJW0
Publisher ‏ : ‎ New Harbinger Publications; 1st edition (March 1, 2015)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 1, 2015
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1400 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 274 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #941,067 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #478 in Behavioral Psychology (Books)
- #1,037 in Social Psychology & Interactions
- #1,786 in Mental Illness

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Anthony Biglan

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Anthony Biglan, PhD, is a senior scientist at Oregon Research Institute and a leading figure in the development of prevention science. His research over the past thirty years has helped to identify effective family, school, and community interventions to prevent all of the most common and costly problems of childhood and adolescence. He is a leader in efforts to use prevention science to build more nurturing families, schools, and communities throughout the world. Biglan lives in Eugene, Oregon.

In recent years, his work has shifted to more comprehensive interventions that have the potential to prevent the entire range of child and adolescent problems. He and colleagues at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences published a book summarizing the epidemiology, cost, etiology, prevention, and treatment of youth with multiple problems (Biglan et al., 2004). He is a former president of the Society for Prevention Research. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Prevention, which released its report in 2009 documenting numerous evidence-based interventions that can prevent multiple problems.

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2 star		1%
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Top reviews from the United States

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E. N. Anderson

and sees correctly that people respond better to kind words

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 18, 2015

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Anthony Biglan promises that this book could solve our social problems and fix the world, and maybe it could if several things were fixed. He advocates a very wide and broadly-conceived form of behaviorism, the idea that changing behavior through positive and negative reinforcements will change the organism--heredity matters little, and thoughts merely follow the behavioral changes. He credits B. F. Skinner with this, but actually the idea that "rewards and punishments" are the key to changing behavior and creating community has been the basis of much of Chinese social thought for 2500 years, and was old in psychology long before Skinner. Skinner took an extreme position: you could teach pigeons to talk, or be religious, by proper administration of food pellets or electric shocks. Biglan is more reasonable, and sees correctly that people respond better to kind words, helping hands, supportive emotions, and social strokes than to food pellets. (Still, he unfairly scores off on Alfie Kohn for being "against" behaviorism; all Kohn did was make the perfectly correct point that material rewards can be downright counterproductive when people are internally motivated or motivated by social rewards.) Toward the end of the book, especially after p. 200, Biglan deserts behaviorism entirely, and merely advocates the usual social remedies for our ills--all good stuff, but none of it depending on actually rewarding anybody with food pellets or even compliments. In fact, his political recommendations would earn some very negative reinforcements indeed for any candidate that advocated them in a conservative district; such a candidate would have to be motivated by the internal motives (conscience, idealism, dreams) that Biglan's theory dismisses.
All this said, his ideas for changing behavior are not only very good, they are well proved by much research and experience, and should be out there in the "best practices" and "experience-tested" universe. If they were biomedical practice, they would be. But psychological and psychotherapeutic medicine is slower to change, unfortunately. The book is very well worth the read for anyone interested in raising or teaching children. The only complaint here is that he is too quick to assume that education is served by retreat to 'basics" and standardized tests. Nope. Doesn't work. Here he unfortunately deserts his otherwise firm commitment to "best practice"--he may not be totally aware of recent research on what works in teaching (projects, hands-on, labs, experiments, field trips, etc.) and what doesn't (cramming for endless, mindless testing).
With all these social rewards and even internally-motivated politics, Biglan2 has drifted off into cognitive-behavioral theory, but he denies it; he has evidently been afflicted by the same sort of badly-done CBT that I have (see p. 110), where therapists work only on the
"cognitive" part--just talking to you--and not the behavior change. He's rightly critical of that species of CBT.
The worst flaw in the book is a serious one that bedevils almost all the recent literature on social issues (cf. Robert Putnam's OUR KIDS for another example): It doesn't tell you how to get from here to there. Actually reforming society in the ways Biglan advocates would require a major grassroots revolution led by activists who knew behavioral theory but also knew how to, and were motivated to, fight for a cause. A narrow Skinnerian theory would actually make that impossible (for obvious reasons). Biglan's theory allows it, but we need--we desperately need--another book telling how to do it. I can't imagine mobilizing such an army. Health care has done it, though, with the "best practices" revolution in treatment--though such emotion-laden fields as childbirth have a long way to go. Maybe there is hope, if we can get the best advice from this and other works out into the schools and communities.

9 people found this helpful

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Denni Launse

Science in Action

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 8, 2015

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In the field of Prevention Science, Dr. Tony Biglan has been a household name for decades. His work has impacted many policies (in particular, tobacco legislation) and has been instrumental in raising the bar for what constitutes an evidence-based intervention. In recent years, Dr. Biglan has helped to define the core principles and practices underlying effectiveness of interventions designed to prevent behavioral problems. He has established that similar influences in our social environment contribute to a whole range of social ills, from risky behaviors (e.g., drug abuse, violence, school drop out, teen pregnancy) to medical conditions (e.g., diabetes, heart disease, cancer). These ills span all social boundaries but are particularly prevalent in lower income areas where environmental conditions tend to be essentially unhealthy, both from a psychological and physical standpoint. This book brings it all together in a way that is understandable and will be compelling to public and private sectors, broadly. Dr. Biglan translates scientific findings from many disciplines to shed light on the role of these prevailing conditions in behavioral and physical health problems, but goes many steps further. He outlines ways in which we, as individuals and professionals and as a society, can make a difference in the lives of children, teens and families to improve their chances for successful lives. These same principles can be applied to build communities and government agencies that are responsive to the science by systematically focusing on ameliorating those conditions that so negatively impact all our lives. In outlining the research, guiding principles and specific recommendations, this book is a must-read for all, regardless of one's station in life. It will propel the reader into action and make each of us aware of both the small and large things that we do every day that can make a difference in other's lives. It will also incite the development of large-scale practices and policies that have potential to positively influence outcomes on a population level. I strongly recommend this book for all our sakes but most especially, for those most vulnerable.

4 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer

Inspirational book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 9, 2018

Verified Purchase

In a world of problems that seem to defy solutions, I felt that I had stumbled across a secret society of benign wizards. Amazing words from David Sloan Wilson... Fantastic read

Kindle Customer

Excellent read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 12, 2015

Verified Purchase

Really enjoyed this book,lots to think about and consider. I have my first child on the way and I feel this has put me in good stead to being a nurturing parent. Thanks Anthony

Ethan Buchan

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 17, 2015

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Some very exciting ideas here.

Don Cook

The 2015 must read

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on July 2, 2015

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This book is the book you must read even if you read no other book in 2015. Easy to read, well researched and with directions for effective positive action. This book must be read by all educators and politicians so that their decision making is informed by evidence based research. An excellent guide to effective policy and action. Highly recommended also for journalists to inform their intelligent questioning of public policy.

Tiffany Rochester

A Must Read for All People!!!

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on June 10, 2015

Verified Purchase

If I could, I would put this book into the hands of everyone I know. Biglan steps the reader through decades of research in an entirely accessible way. It's not often I'd describe a book like this as a page-turner, but I couldn't put it down. Each chapter concludes with a blue-print for action.

One person found this helpful

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