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ssdamon's review against another edition
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.
rbogue's review against another edition
4.0
“Why am I me?” is an important – and unanswered – question that George Dyson asked his father, Freeman Dyson, at age 8. It’s at the heart of Judith Rich Harris’ work in No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality. It’s the essence of the tension between our desire to be like others and our need to have status amongst our peers. I’ve read and reviewed Harris’ previous work, The Nurture Assumption (written in 1998), so in many ways her work here builds on her theories, which I’ve previously studied. No Two Alike is a dozen years old as I write this, having been published in 2006. However, many of the observations that she makes and the research she cites still isn’t widely known by parents.
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ramonnogueras's review against another edition
4.0
Este libro continúa la anterior obra de la autora, [b:El mito de la educación|17313370|El mito de la educación|Judith Rich Harris|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1462263195l/17313370._SY75_.jpg|619424]. Una vez en el anterior estableció que los padres tenemos una mínima influencia en el desarrollo de la personalidad de nuestros hijos, y que el estilo de crianza da bastante igual, la autora explora el por qué incluso los gemelos idénticos criados en la misma familia son tan diferentes entre sí. Es una lectura esencial que tumba muchos de los mitos en este campo, y por ello necesaria especialmente para aquellos que somos padres.
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