Susan Pinker

Susan Pinker, a psychologist, journalist, and best-selling author, writes about the social sciences with sophistication and lucidity. Her latest book, The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter, is about the impact of face-to-face contact on health, lifespan, education, romance, and business (ideas she shared on the TED2017 mainstage). Publishers Weekly calls it “a hopeful, warm guide to living more intimately in a disconnected era.” Charles Duhigg wrote, “Susan Pinker’s delightful book shows why face-to-face interaction at home, school and work makes us healthier, smarter and most successful.”

Her first book, The Sexual Paradox, is an engrossing read on the differences between the sexes: how they think, how they behave, what will sway them, and how each defines success. The book caused an international sensation, was published in 17 countries, and received the prestigious William James Book Award given by the American Psychological Association.

“Drawing on scores of psychological and sociological studies, Pinker suggests that living as our ancestors did, steeped in face-to-face contact and physical proximity, is the key to health, while loneliness is less an exalted existential state than a public health risk; … smart readers will take the book out to a park to enjoy in the company of others.”— The Boston Globe

Pinker currently writes about fresh finds in behavioral science for The Wall Street Journal’s Mind and Matter column. She wrote The Business Brain and Problem Solving columns for The Globe and Mail, which applied the latest evidence from the fields of neuroscience, behavioral economics, and sports psychology to the world of business. She regularly writes opinions and feature articles on psychology, public policy, education, behavioral economics, and business for the international press. Her ideas have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Fast Company, MacLean’s, The Times of London, Psychology Today, and Oprah Magazine. She spent over two decades in clinical practice and taught Educational Psychology at McGill University.