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The World Inside Your Head

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This groundbreaking book reveals the perceptual underpinnings of society, showing how sights, sounds, and smells build social and political worlds.
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  • 16 June 2026
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To socialize, your brain needs to see and hear other people, yet your brain is sealed inside a bony box: your skull. How does an internal mass of tissue comprehend the world outside? How does it form social relationships? This groundbreaking book answers those questions and reveals the perceptual underpinnings of society.

Charles and Daphne Maurer provide a clear explanation of how the brain interprets sensory inputs, showing how rudimentary sensations evolve into social interactions at every scale from nursery to nation. Their novel approach shows how sights, sounds, and smells build social and political worlds. They offer fresh insights into broad swaths of the social sciences.

The World Inside Your Head brings science to life, interweaving cutting-edge research with eye-opening examples across cultures and eras. Its style is lively and free of jargon, yet its argument is rigorous and scholarly. It is an accessible and iconoclastic rethinking of conventional psychology.

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Price: $25.00
Pages: 268
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Publication Date: 16 June 2026
Trim Size: 8.50 X 5.50 in
ISBN: 9780231223485
Format: Paperback
BISACs:

SCIENCE / Life Sciences / Neuroscience, PSYCHOLOGY / Cognitive Psychology & Cognition, PSYCHOLOGY / Physiological Psychology

Drawing on Daphne Maurer’s profound expertise in developmental neuroscience, the Maurers have crafted a masterful, surprisingly witty exploration of human nature. The World Inside Your Head brilliantly bridges the gap between infant sensory perception and complex adult behaviors, revealing the early roots of everything from prejudice to societal norms. A rigorous yet highly accessible read.
— Ella Striem-Amit, Georgetown University

Charles Maurer is a freelance writer who specializes in science and technology.

Daphne Maurer is a Distinguished University Professor at McMaster University in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behaviour.

The Maurers are the authors of two previous groundbreaking books about perception: The World of the Newborn (1988), which received the Book Award of the American Psychological Association, and Pretty Ugly: Why We Like Some Songs, Faces, Foods, Plays, Pictures, Poems, Etc., and Dislike Others (2019).