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Oxford University Press
The following review appeared in the May 2021 issue of CHOICE. The review is for your internal use only. Please review our Permission and Reprints Guidelines or email ChoiceHelp@ala.org.
Social & Behavioral Sciences
Psychology
Why do human beings do the things they do, think the things they think, or feel the things they feel? Those who consider themselves psychologists—whether armchair or otherwise—will have pondered these questions. Many of us have wished the answers were straightforward. But human action is famously anything but simple, a situation made abundantly clear by Raeff in this ambitious, scholarly, and introspective work. Raeff expertly balances theory with practical example, concluding the book with the section "Implications and Applications" (part 3). For readers uncertain about what a work on human action might cover, a cartoon—perhaps originally executed by the author herself—appears on page 6, visualizing the conceptual framework of "people acting in relation to others." Of particular interest to this reviewer, a social psychologist by profession, is Raeff's expression of the multicausality of human actions: "what people do cannot be easily attributed to one cause; what people do involves multiple kinds of causes." Worth remarking are two chapters in part 3 delivering, arguably, the core of Raeff's message: "Evidence and Research Implications" (chapter 11), and "Complex and Empathic Understanding" (the final chapter, 13). These chapters alone should entice the philosophically inclined to explore this interesting work, a must-read for scholars of action theory and research.
--R. E. Osborne, Texas State University