New Books in Psychology

A collection of reported stories that explore the relationship between mothers and daughters, from Rachel Aviv, the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing for her work in The New Yorker.

Between Fixed and Fickle: Why Our Moral Views Keep Changing (Harvard UP, 2026), a psychologist explains why—and how—moral views change across different life stages, situations, and historical eras. We like to believe that moral truths are obvious and unchangeable: cheating is wrong, killing is wrong, slavery is wrong. Yet people have often cheated, killed, and enslaved without regret. The acts that feel glaringly wrong to us in the here and now can seem fine to someone who is younger, or faces different circumstances, or lived a century ago. Why does morality appear so unstable? The popular explanation is that emotions, self-interest, and social pressure easily divert people from moral concerns because they lack sincere moral commitment. But the evidence shows otherwise. Drawing on studies of young children, adolescents, and adults, Audun Dahl argues that human morality is neither immutable nor capricious, neither fixed nor fickle. Rather, people change their moral views when they believe they have good reasons to—reasons that they can articulate to themselves and would endorse for others. The science of moral change cannot resolve our ethical dilemmas: it does not tell us what’s morally right or wrong. But it can help us understand why we have moral views in the first place, why those views keep changing, and why moral views that seem obvious to us aren’t obvious to everyone else. Separating moral psychology from moralizing, Between Fixed and Fickle reveals what’s behind our changing agreements and disagreements as we travel toward shared and hard-won moral truths. Host: Renee Garfinkel Guest: Audun Dahl

Embodied Intelligence: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Natural, Artificial, and Hybrid Systems (MIT Press, 2026) explores a radical transformation taking place in intelligence research. Rather than focusing exclusively on brains and computer code, the book examines the important role that embodiment plays in producing intelligent, goal-directed behavior.

In Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species (Prometheus Books, 2024), Will M. Gervais, a global leader in the psychological study of atheism, shows that the ubiquity of religious belief and the peculiarities of atheism are connected pieces in the puzzle of human nature. Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD candidate at Université Laval in Quebec City. [email protected] @carrielynnland.bsky.social

In John Charles Simon and Jennalee Donian’s Understanding Laughter and Humor: Why We Laugh, Why We Don’t, and Why It Matters (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), the authors put forward a comprehensive new theoretical approach to understanding laughter and the humour we use to inspire it. Applying an evolutionary and biological lens to these complex and universal human behaviours, the book distinguishes itself from classical and contemporary theories by focusing not simply on laughter’s causes and effects, but on what can be gleaned from considering its communicative meaning.