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Narrated by Lisa S. Ware
Judith Rich HarrisUnabridged — 12 hours, 12 minutes
Narrated by Lisa S. Ware
Judith Rich HarrisUnabridged — 12 hours, 12 minutes
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In short, the evolutionary logic that makes us different from one another will gradually make us different from ourselves, context by context. Personality — behavior that is "consistent across time and place," as one textbook puts it — will fade. We'll miss characters like Harris, the little woman from New Jersey who boasted of giving psychologists a "wedgie" and tried to solve the puzzle of human nature. There won't be another one like her.
— The New York Times
Why do identical twins who grow up together differ in personality? Harris attempts to solve that mystery. Her initial thesis in The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do is replaced here with a stronger, more detailed one based on evolutionary psychology. Reading this book is akin to working your way through a mystery novel-complete with periodic references to Sherlock Holmes. And Harris has a knack for interspersing scientific and research-laden text with personal anecdotes. Initially, she refutes five red herring theories of personality differences, including differences in environment and gene-environment interactions. Eventually, Harris presents her own theory, starting from modular notions of the brain (as Steven Pinker puts it, "the mind is not a single organ but a system of organs"). Harris offers a three-systems theory of personality: there's the relationship system, the socialization system and the status system. And while she admits her theory of personality isn't simple, it is thought provoking. Harris ties up the loose ends of the new theory, showing how the development of the three systems creates personality. Harris's writing is highly entertaining, which will help readers stick with her through the elaboration of a fairly complex theory. 12 b&w illus. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
In this follow-up to her controversial 1998 book, The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, Harris presents what may be the best personality theory since Sigmund Freud's. Why do identical twins with the same genes and raised in the same household grow up with different personalities? According to Harris, adept brains and complex culture account for the difference. With neither a doctorate nor a university behind her, Harris more than compensates with intelligence, dogged research, lively writing, a love of mystery, and droll humor. She wrestles bulging files of research data into shape, in the process taking down some champions of the old order, including Freud, James Watson, Eleanor Maccoby, and Frank Sulloway. Her three-systems theory of personality postulates a modular brain that must from infancy learn the particulars of relationships along with abstract principles of language and socialization. Harris makes behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology enjoyable and accessible to general readers as well as scholars. Essential for general and academic libraries.-E. James Lieberman, George Washington Univ. Sch. of Medicine, Washington, DC Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
As she did in The Nurture Assumption (1998), independent scholar Harris makes waves again with a new theory of personality to explain why no two people are alike. Based on behavioral genetics and evolutionary and social psychology, and fitted into a modular theory of how the brain works (e.g., you have a face-recognition module, a categorization module), she posits three distinct systems as the molders of personality. One is a relationship system that allows babies to distinguish family from strangers and throughout life allows us to build a "mental rolodex" of information on discrete individuals. The second is a socialization system. Sure, parents count, she says, but what turns us into social beings is what happens in school and at play, as we become members of a group, learn the pecking order and absorb the group's culture within the larger cultural context. Third is a status system by which we acquire self-knowledge by measuring how we stand up against rivals, and want to beat them out. These dynamics play out against a hefty genetic contribution that makes individuals more or less aggressive, shy, anxious, attractive and so on. There's a lot to be said in favor of these systems (and genes), and Harris lays out telling points in their defense-while also laying out some of the leading lights of personality psychology for their sins of omission and commission. But is that all? There is something a little too rational and static, a little too game-theoretical in Harris's approach. Sure the systems can explain, as Harris set out to do, why identical twins raised together have distinct personalities. But the model needs tweaking not only to deal with overlaps across systems, but also toexplain how individuals change group dynamics: What forces create the personalities who are the movers and shakers as opposed to those moved and shaken by "the systems"?Credit Harris for moving personality away from simplistic theories-but not far enough away-and expect some lively rebuttals.
"No Two Alike is another firecracker of a book by the woman who forced the world to rethink how we became who we are. Harris's scholarship and the persuasiveness of her arguments make this book mandatory reading for psychologists; her style, humor, and storytelling skills make it exhilarating reading for everyone."
"A display of scientific courage and imagination."
"This is an absolute stunner of a popular science book. The author does a brilliant job of demolishing the academic psychology establishment, by questioning a fundamental assumption that was made without properly checking it—that nurture would influence personality. She does all this in a very personal, human fashion, with as much reference to the way traditional crime fiction works as to scientific research."
This is an absolute stunner of a popular science book. The author does a brilliant job of demolishing the academic psychology establishment, by questioning a fundamental assumption that was made without properly checking it--that nurture would influence personality. She does all this in a very personal, human fashion, with as much reference to the way traditional crime fiction works as to scientific research.--Martin O'Brien "Popular Science"
No Two Alike is another firecracker of a book by the woman who forced the world to rethink how we became who we are. Harris's scholarship and the persuasiveness of her arguments make this book mandatory reading for psychologists; her style, humor, and storytelling skills make it exhilarating reading for everyone.--Steven Pinker, author of Rationality and The Better Angels of Our Nature
As she did in The Nurture Assumption, independent scholar Harris makes waves again with a new theory of personality to explain why no two people are alike.-- "Kirkus Reviews"
A display of scientific courage and imagination.— William Salatan
| BN ID: | 2940178139189 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tantor Audio |
| Publication date: | 05/09/2023 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
