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A review by ssdamon
No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality by Judith Rich Harris
5.0
Reflecting Judith Harris' own liminal position with respect to academic psychology, this book reads somewhere between academic and a pop science. There's a good chunk of straightforward scientific argumentation drawing on a gamut of sources, but it's all presented straightforwardly, with a clear, folksy voice. Harris' topic in this and her previous book is a child's development of personality.
In the popular Western understanding, a person's trait owe to a peculiar combination of nature and nurture: how they were born and how they were brought up. Harris wants us to recognize nurture, i.e. parenting, as only one part (and, as it turns out, a relatively unimportant part) of a child's development. In particular, Harris thinks both contemporary psychology and popular understanding overestimate the role of parenting's contribution to a child's personality at the expense of underestimating the role of peers.
In this work, Harris advances a theory of child development centered around peer interactions. In particular, she understands this development as the result of the interplay of three mental modules. These are the relationship system (our capacity for distinguishing one another and forming unique and motivating relationships with one another, friendships, enmities, etc.), the socialization system (our capacity to understand our social world in terms of social groups, my family, my tribe, my city, coupled with a desire to fit in with a social group) and the status system (our capacity to rank social groups, who's top dog on the playground, coupled with a desire to rank highly in our own group). It is in the tussle of these motivations (coupled with a child's intrinsic pecularities, owing to their genetics and a host of environmental factors) that a child forms their personality in contact with their peers.
This theory is plausible enough, at least to a complete nonexpert like myself, and Harris' case is suggestive. Obviously, it would be beyond the ability of a lay person to assess the scientific case adequately. Even if the case ultimately falls apart, I think this book is still worth reading as along the way to her conclusion Harris conducts enlightening surveys of a range of topics. And it's a much more fun read than one might expect.
In the popular Western understanding, a person's trait owe to a peculiar combination of nature and nurture: how they were born and how they were brought up. Harris wants us to recognize nurture, i.e. parenting, as only one part (and, as it turns out, a relatively unimportant part) of a child's development. In particular, Harris thinks both contemporary psychology and popular understanding overestimate the role of parenting's contribution to a child's personality at the expense of underestimating the role of peers.
In this work, Harris advances a theory of child development centered around peer interactions. In particular, she understands this development as the result of the interplay of three mental modules. These are the relationship system (our capacity for distinguishing one another and forming unique and motivating relationships with one another, friendships, enmities, etc.), the socialization system (our capacity to understand our social world in terms of social groups, my family, my tribe, my city, coupled with a desire to fit in with a social group) and the status system (our capacity to rank social groups, who's top dog on the playground, coupled with a desire to rank highly in our own group). It is in the tussle of these motivations (coupled with a child's intrinsic pecularities, owing to their genetics and a host of environmental factors) that a child forms their personality in contact with their peers.
This theory is plausible enough, at least to a complete nonexpert like myself, and Harris' case is suggestive. Obviously, it would be beyond the ability of a lay person to assess the scientific case adequately. Even if the case ultimately falls apart, I think this book is still worth reading as along the way to her conclusion Harris conducts enlightening surveys of a range of topics. And it's a much more fun read than one might expect.