Quirk
Brain Science Makes Sense Of Your Peculiar Personality
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Funny, insightful and clever book about our personality quirks and how most of them lie between our ears!
Are you neurotic, eager to please, and honest? Or cheerful, gregarious, and disorganized? Whatever you're like, with the tweak of a couple of genes, scientists can make a mouse just like you. And mice, and the scientists who study them, can tell us a lot about ourselves.
Hannah Holmes shows us by humorously examining her own personality and those of her friends and family members, almost everything comes from our genes, from how much we talk to how we vote and how we eat our M&Ms. Using what psychologists call the Five Factor Model, Holmes explains all five (Neuroticism, Extroversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Openness) and how each manifests itself in real people. Just some of the fascinating things you'll learn … - Why people, and all animals, need personality to survive. - Your score on the factors (Neuroticism, Extroversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Openness) that make up a personality. - What roles your type evolved to fill. - Which parts of your personality leave you vulnerable in the modern world. - Your risk for alcohol or drug addiction. - How anxiety helps us to survive. - Why you're compatible with specific types of people, and why other types of people drive you crazy. …and much more!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The contours of the human soul emerge from the scamperings of mutant rodents in this sprightly exposition of the biological roots of behavior. Science journalist Holmes (The Well-Dressed Ape) tours neurology and psychology labs the world over where genetically engineered mice, rats, and voles explore mazes; survive shocks, dunkings, and being hung upside down by their tails; get hooked on cocaine and have their brains probed for chemicals. Amid their ordeals, Holmes contends, they display rudimentary, pint-sized versions of human personality traits like anxiety, cheerfulness, altruism, self-discipline, and even artsiness. Holmes links their travails to deft explorations of the latest research into human psychology and makes insightful firsthand observations of specific personalities, from her own shy neuroticism to her husband's impulsive extroversion and scientists' quivering dread of animal rights "terrorists." The author's take is relentlessly mechanistic: personality, in her view, is largely the product of genes, governed by the involuntary action of hormones and neurotransmitters, and explained by potted speculations about evolutionary advantages that are interesting if not always convincing. Fortunately, her tart reductionism ("Spark, schmark!... Humans have no more sacred spark in our personality than squirrels do") is softened by sympathetic reportage and whimsical humor.
