No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human IndividualityThe author of the controversial book The Nurture Assumption tackles the biggest mystery in all of psychology: What makes people differ so much in personality and behavior? It can't just be "nature and nurture," because even identical twins who grow up together--same genes, same parents--have different personalities. And if psychologists can't explain why identical twins are different, they also can't explain why each of us differs from everyone else. Why no two people are alike. Harris turns out to be well suited for the role of detective--it isn't easy to pull the wool over her eyes. She rounds up the usual suspects and shows why none of the currently popular explanations for human differences--birth order effects, for example, or interactions between genes and environment--can be the perpetrator she is looking for. None of these theories can solve the mystery of human individuality. The search for clues carries Harris into some fascinating byways of science. The evidence she examines ranges from classic experiments in social psychology to cutting-edge research in neuroscience. She looks at studies of twins, research on autistic children, observations of chimpanzees, birds, and even ants. Her solution is a startlingly original one: the first completely new theory of personality since Freud's. Based on a principle of evolutionary psychology--the idea that the human mind is a toolbox of special-purpose devices--Harris's theory explains how attributes we all have in common can make us different. This is the story of a scientific quest, but it is also the personal story of a courageous and innovative woman who refused to be satisfied with "what everyone knows is true." |
Contents
An Appreciation ofDifferences | 3 |
That Damn Rectangle | 27 |
Monkey Business | 51 |
Birth Order and Other Environmental Differences | 83 |
The Person and the Situation | 115 |
The Modular Mind | 143 |
The Relationship System | 163 |
The Socialization System | 183 |
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adulthood adults aggressive alike attributed autism baby Baron—Cohen behave behavioral genetic behavioral geneticists biological birth order boys brain chapter child childhood children’s behavior chimpanzee correlation Cowan cross—fostering culture developmental developmental psychology developmentalists dominance hierarchy e—mail E. O. Wilson effects ences environmental evidence evolutionary psychologists experiences explain feedback figure find finding first firstborns fish fit five fundamental attribution error genes genetic influences Harris heritability home environment human identical twins individual infant interactions Johnson kids kind language laterborns lexicon long—term look Maccoby mate mechanism mental mind monkeys mother Nurture Assumption ofthe older one’s ordinary siblings parents peers people—information people’s Pinker play Plomin produce random reared relationship system researchers similar social category societies someone species specific status system Steven Pinker subjects Sulloway Sulloway’s Suomi tests theory there’s things tion Tooby Townsend unexplained variance words