Books such as this one are a team effort, and we don’t mean just us. Many, many people have played important roles both in conducting the experiments described and in helping us to have the time and opportunity to write about them. First and foremost, we’d like to thank our families, who were probably the only people on the planet happier than we were when we finally finished writing. Dave thanks his wife, Amy, and his daughters, for their insights, moral support, and just plain love (as well as for reminding him that sometimes it’s more fun to go to the beach than to stare at a blank computer screen). Carlo thanks his wife, Liz, and daughter, Isabella, for the smiles, distractions, and discussions that made this process a pleasure from start to finish, and the family and friends whose diverse and colorful characters have, perhaps unknowingly, inspired much of the work herein.
Beyond our families, we thank the many brilliant, warm, and wonderful people with whom we’ve had the good fortune to work. In fact, many of the findings you’ll read about in this book would not have been discovered if not for the intelligence and dedication of the young scholars who have been a part of the lab. Each of these individual’s contributions deserves to be noted, and so we have included a Guide to the Lab at the end of the volume.
We also owe a debt of gratitude to our editor and champion at Crown, Talia Krohn. Talia was the one who, from the first instant, saw the promise in our work and made it her mission to make sure everyone else did as well. Through several incarnations of the manuscript (and lots of red ink), Talia helped us to tell the story we wanted to tell. We also want to thank our agent, Jim Levine, and all the fine folks at the Levine/Greenberg Literary Agency for guiding us successfully through the sometimes Byzantine-seeming world that is the publishing industry. If not for Jim, we might never have taken a shot at writing a book.
Finally, we want to thank the institutions that have made this work possible. Much of the research described in this book has benefited greatly from the financial assistance provided by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health. We also thank Northeastern University for its continued support of the lab and Dave’s fantastic colleagues in the Psychology Department for putting up with his daily complaints about writer’s block.