David F Marks Popular Books

David F Marks Biography & Facts

David Francis Marks (born 1945) is a psychologist, author and editor of numerous articles and books largely concerned with five areas of psychological research – judgement, health psychology, consciousness, parapsychology and intelligence. Marks is also the originator of the General Theory of Behaviour, and has curated exhibitions and books about artists and their works. Biography Marks was born 12 February 1945 in Liphook, Hampshire, England to Victor W.F. Marks and Mary Dorothy (née Goodman) Marks. Marks earned a BSc at University of Reading in 1966 and a PhD at University of Sheffield in 1970. From there, he moved to New Zealand where he taught at the University of Otago as lecturer then senior lecturer in psychology. He returned to the UK as Head of the School of Psychology at Middlesex University before working at City University London from 2000 to 2010. He founded the Journal of Health Psychology and Health Psychology Open, an open access journal. His brother Jon Marks was a jazz musician. He has two children. David Marks retired from his university post in 2010 and lives in Arles, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, France. Memberships British Psychological Society (Fellow) Committee for the Scientific Investigation of the Paranormal (now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry)(Fellow) Judgement For his doctoral research at the University of Sheffield Marks carried out laboratory studies on subjective probability judgements. He found that subjects typically used a simplifying strategy or heuristic to manage probability revision in a Bayesian decision task (Marks and Clarkson, 1972). In 1968 Marks had contacted Amos Tversky about his findings. A paper reporting the same representativeness heuristic was published by Kahneman and Tversky in 1972. Switching to another aspect of judgement, Marks then ran an experiment on relative subjective probability judgements demonstrating that relative judgements of the more probable of two statements are quicker if the statements are both probable rather than improbable. For judgements of the less probable, the reverse result is obtained. Marks proposed a theory that judgement involves a relation between a stimulus and a word acting as a reference point and he followed Louis Leon Thurstone's suggestion that stimuli differ in their discriminal dispersions; see Law of comparative judgment. Marks' (1972) reference point theory of relative judgement is found to be consistent with results in psycholinguistics. Four decades later, Dawn Chen, Hongjing Lu and Keith Holyoak (2014) confirmed Marks' theory in a computational realization by demonstrating that: "Reference points cued by the form of comparative questions systematically modulate the precision of magnitudes represented in working memory, yielding the semantic congruity effect" (Chen, Lu and Holyoak, 2014, p. 46). Health psychology In his work on health psychology Marks advocated a greater understanding of the socio-political context affecting individual behaviour (Marks et al., 2005). With Michael Murray and colleagues he actively promoted a critical-theoretical approach, including the foundation of the International Society of Critical Health Psychology. This organisation has included the consideration of social justice, community approaches, and arts projects for the reduction of health inequalities. Marks has also been interested in new research methods for clinical psychology and health psychology (Marks & Yardley, 2004). David Marks' first project in the health psychology area was concerned with the effects of cannabis use which, in the 1970s, was an illegal substance in the majority of Western countries and a subject of social concern, especially when mixed with alcohol and driving. With Professor Peter McKellar at the University of Otago, Marks obtained funding from the Medical, now Health Research Council of New Zealand, to carry out double-blind randomised controlled trials to investigate the acute effects of cannabis intoxication, e.g. "Cannabis and Temporal Disintegration in Experienced and Naive Subjects", subsequently published in Science. A series of masters and doctoral students including Sally Casswell and Annette Beautrais submitted this research for their PhD or MSc dissertations. His second project in health psychology concerned designing psychological therapy for smoking cessation. This research began with another doctoral student, Paul Sulzberger, at the University of Otago where they developed the Isis Smoking Cessation Programme (Sulzberger & Marks, 1977). After returning to England in 1986 Marks developed a UK version of the programme which was originally published by the British Psychological Society in 1993 as The QUIT FOR LIFE Programme (Marks 1993, 2005). The approach was developed further and re-published in the 'Overcoming' series by Robinson as "Overcoming Your Smoking Habit" (Marks 2005). Conceptualizing methods for the design, description and evaluation of interventions has been a complex challenge for the discipline of Psychology. Marks (2009) published a Taxonomic System for psychological interventions. In 2015, Marks published a new theoretical explanation of obesity based on the concept of homeostasis, a property of all living things (Marks, 2015). Physiological homeostasis maintains equilibrium at set-points using feedback loops for optimum functioning of the organism. Long-term imbalances in homeostasis arise though genetic, environmental or biopsychosocial mechanisms causing illness and/or loss of well-being. Psychological homeostasis works in a similar fashion to maintain stability in emotion and behaviour. However, rapid environmental and economic changes generate challenging conditions for the human organism. Over-consumption of high-caloric, low-nutrient foods, combined with stressful living and working conditions, have caused imbalances in homeostasis, overweight and obesity in more than two billion people. Annunziato and Grossman (2016) explain that Marks' homeostasis theory attributes the obesity imbalance to a “Circle of Discontent”, a system of feedback loops linking weight gain, body dissatisfaction, negative affect, and overconsumption. These authors state that the theory is consistent with an extensive evidence base. Annunziato and Grossman (2016) indicate that the homeostasis theory focuses on five feedback loops that form an insidious and vicious "Circle of Discontent". If for any reason high levels of dissatisfaction, negative affect, consumption, or increased body weight should arise, then interactivity through feedback loops a vicious circle is created, a disturbance to the stability of the system that controls weight gain. When it becomes activated, the system drifts away from equilibrium toward a dysfunctional state of non-control. The authors explain that Marks (2015) proposes a four-armed strategy to halt the obesity epidemic consists of (1) putting a stop to victim-blaming, stigma, and discrimination.... Discover the David F Marks popular books. Find the top 100 most popular David F Marks books.