The Social Animal

by David Brooks

  14 They feel a simultaneous urge Cozolino, 230.

  15 They look away from Alison Gopnik, The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2009), 184.

  16 more fearful than other children Susan D. Calkins, “Early Attachment Processes and the Development of Emotional Self-Regulation,” in Handbook of Self-Regulation: Research, Theory, and Applications, eds. Roy F. Baumeister and Kathleen D. Vohs (New York: Guilford Press, 2004), 332.

  17 more promiscuous in adolescence David M. Buss, The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating (New York: Basic Books, 2003), 93.

  18 higher rates of psychopathology Mary Main, Erik Hesse, and Nancy Kaplan, “Predictability of Attachment Behavior and Representational Processes at 1, 6, and 19 Years of Age: The Berkeley Longitudinal Study” in Attachment from Infancy to Adulthood: The Major Longitudinal Studies, eds. Klaus E. Grossmann, Karin Grossmann, and Everett Waters (New York: Guilford Press, 2005), 280.

  19 retarded synaptic development Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon, A General Theory of Love (New York: Vintage, 2001), 199.

  20 That’s in part because Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, Linda Meyer Williams, and David Finkelhor, “Impact of Sexual Abuse on Children: A Review and Synthesis of Recent Empirical Studies,” Psychological Bulletin 113, no. 1 (1993): 173, http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/pdf/VS69.pdf.

  21 They’ve found, for example Gopnik, 182.

  22 “predictive power of childhood experience” Sroufe et al., 268.

  23 Attachment-security and caregiver-sensitivity Sroufe et al., 164.

  24 Kids who had dominating, intrusive Sroufe et al., 167.

  25 By observing quality of care Sroufe et al., 210.

  26 Most reported having no Sroufe et al., 211.

  27 Forty percent of the parents Sroufe et al., 95.

  28 “When Ellis seeks help” Sroufe et al., 287.

  CHAPTER 6: LEARNING

  1 In 1954 Muzafer Sherif conducted Muzafer Sherif et al., The Robbers Cave Experiment: Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988).

  2 Gossip is the way Roy F. Baumeister, The Cultural Animal: Human Nature, Meaning, and Social Life (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 2005), 286–87.

  3 big eyes and puffy cheeks Gordon B. Moskowitz, Social Cognition: Understanding Self and Others (New York: Guilford Press, 2005), 78.

  4 Most people automatically assume Ayala Malach Pines, Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose (New York: Routledge, 2005), 93.

  5 As the novelist Frank Portman Frank Portman, King Dork (New York: Delacorte Press, 2006), 123.

  6 And in fact Steven W. Anderson et al., “Impairment of Social and Moral Behavior Related to Early Damage in Human Prefrontal Cortex,” in Social Neuroscience: Key Readings in Social Psychology, eds. John T. Cacioppo and Gary G. Berntson (New York: Psychology Press, 2005), 29.

  7 Work by David Van Rooy Anderson et al., 34.

  8 In some studies, fourteen-year-olds John D. Bransford, Ann L. Brown, and Rodney R. Cocking, eds., How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (Washington, DC: National Academies Press), 119.

  9 The pituitary glands Louann Brizendine, The Female Brain (New York: Broadway Books, 2006), 33.

  10 In the first two weeks Brizendine, 45.

  11 As a result of hormonal surges Brizendine, 34.

  12 As John Medina writes John Medina, Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (Seattle, WA: Pear Press, 2008), 110.

  13 Fish Is Fish Bransford, Brown, and Cocking, eds., 11.

  14 She didn’t so much teach Peter Carruthers, “An Architecture for Dual Reasoning,” in In Two Minds: Dual Processes and Beyond, eds. Jonathan Evans and Keith Frankish (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 2009), 121.

  15 Edith Hamilton’s book Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1993), 156.

  16 Benjamin Bloom has found Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. (New York: Bantam Books, 2009), 175.

  17 Again, the younger Bransford, Brown, and Cocking, eds., 97.

  18 Researcher Carol Dweck has found Carol S. Dweck “The Secret to Raising Smart Kids,” Scientific American Mind, December 2007, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id-the-secret-to-raising-smart-kids.

  19 Alfred North Whitehead saw David G. Myers, Intuition: Its Powers and Perils (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 17.

  20 reach and reciprocity Richard Ogle, Smart World: Breakthrough Creativity and the New Science of Ideas (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2007).

  21 The grandmasters could remember Geoff Colvin, Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else (New York: Portfolio, 2008), 46–47.

  22 IQ is, surprisingly Colvin, 44.

  23 When the same exercise Colvin, 46–47.

  24 A telephone transmits only Robert E. Ornstein, Multimind: A New Way of Looking at Human Behavior (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 105.

  25 “You know more than you know” Jonah Lehrer, How We Decide (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2009), 248.

  26 “Life for him was an adventure” Hamilton, 147.

  27 “All arrogance will reap” Hamilton, 108.

  28 “The mind wheels” Ornstein, 23.

  29 A person who is interrupted Medina, 92.

  30 researchers showed Shereshevskii Medina, 147.

  31 “We cultivate refinement” Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War (Middlesex: Echo Library, 2006), 77–80.

  32 German scientist Jan Born Nell Boyce and Susan Brink, “The Secrets of Sleep,” U.S. News & World Report, May 17, 2004, http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/articles/040517/17sleep.htm.

  33 Research by Robert Stickgold Emma Young, “Sleep Tight: You spend around a third of your life doing it, so surely there must be a vital reason for sleep, or is there?” New Scientist, March 15, 2008, 30–34.

  34 In these sorts of early-morning Jonah Lehrer, “The Eureka Hunt,” The New Yorker, July 28, 2008, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_lehrer.

  35 A second before an insight Lehrer, “The Eureka Hunt.”

  36 It was a sensation Robert Burton, On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008), 23.

  37 As Robert Burton wrote Burton, 218.

  38 “an unsuspected kinship” Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain (New York: Scribner, 2004), 168.

  CHAPTER 7: NORMS

  1 According to the Fragile Families “The Retreat From Marriage by Low-Income Families,” Fragile Families Research Brief No. 17, June 2003, http://www.fragilefamilies.princeton.edu/briefs/ResearchBrief17.pdf.

  2 “Whining, which was pervasive” Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), 107.

  3 Language, as Alva Noë Alva Noë, Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness (New York: Hill & Wang, 2009), 52.

  4 “The amount of talking” Lareau, 146.

  5 Betty Hart and Todd Risley David L. Kirp, “After the Bell Curve,” New York Times Magazine, July 23, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23/magazine/23wwln_idealab.html.

  6 On an hourly basis Paul Tough, “What It Takes to Make a Student,” New York Times Magazine, November 26, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/magazine/26tough.html?pagewanted=all.

  7 This affects a variety Martha Farah et al., “Childhood Poverty: Specific Associations with Neurocognitive Development,” Brain Research 1110, no. 1 (September 19, 2006): 166–174, http://cogpsy.skku.ac.kr/cwb-bin/CrazyWWWBoard.exe?db-newarticle&mode=download&num=3139&file=farah_2006.pdf.

  8 Research with small mammals Shirley S. Wang, “This Is Your Brain Without Dad,” Wall Street Journal, October 27, 2009, http://o
nline.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704754804574491811861197926.html.

  9 Students from the poorest David Brooks, “The Education Gap,” New York Times, September 25, 2005, http://select.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/opinion/25brooks.html?ref=davidbrooks.

  10 economist James J. Heckman Flavio Cunha and James J. Heckman, “The Economics and Psychology of Inequality and Human Development,” Journal of the European Economic Association, 7, nos. 2–3 (April 2009): 320–64, http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/JEEA.2009.7.2-3.320?journalCode=jeea.

  11 As Albert-László Barabási wrote Albert-László Barabási, Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means (New York: Plume, 2003), 6.

  12 “Local information can lead” Steven Johnson, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software (New York: Touchstone, 2001), 79.

  13 As Deborah Gordon of Stanford Johnson, 32–33.

  14 “The honest answer to” Turkheimer, “Mobiles: A Gloomy View of Research into Complex Human Traits,” in Wrestling with Behavioral Genetics: Science, Ethics, and Public Conversation, eds. Erik Parens, Audrey R. Chapman, Nancy Press (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 100–101.

  15 “No complex behaviors” Turkheimer, 104.

  CHAPTER 8: SELF-CONTROL

  1 Another big shock Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. (New York: Bantam Books, 2009), 148.

  2 Walter Lippmann once wrote Walter Lippman, “Men and Citizens,” in The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy, eds. Clinton Rossiter and James Lare (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 168.

  3 Some newborns startle more Daniel J. Siegel, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (New York: Guilford Press, 1999), 20.

  4 psychologist Jerome Kagan John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 2008), 133.

  5 dandelion children and orchid children David Dobbs, “The Science of Success,” The Atlantic, December 2009, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/12/the-science-of-success/7761/.

  6 A study of engineers Blair Justice, “The Will to Stay Well,” New York Times, April 17, 1988, http://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/17/magazine/the-will-to-stay-well.html.

  7 Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman Angela L. Duckworth and Martin E. P. Seligman, “Self-Discipline Outdoes IQ in Predicting Academic Performance of Adolescents,” Psychological Science 16, no. 12 (2005): 939–44, http://www.citeulike.org/user/kericson/article/408060.

  8 The marshmallow test turned Jonah Lehrer, How We Decide (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2009), 112.

  9 The kids who possessed Jonah Lehrer, “Don’t! The Secret of Self-Control,” The New Yorker, May 18, 2009, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all.

  10 These children could wait Walter Mischel and Ozlem Ayduk, “Willpower in a Cognitive-Affective Processing System: The Dynamics of Delay of Gratification,” in Handbook of Self-Regulation: Research, Theory, and Applications, eds. Roy F. Baumeister and Kathleen D. Vohs (New York: Guilford Press, 2004), 113.

  11 a 2001 survey Douglas Kirby, “Understanding What Works and What Doesn’t in Reducing Adolescent Sexual Risk-Taking,” Family Planning Perspectives 33, no. 6 (November/December 2001): http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3327601.html.

  12 It’s very hard to build Clive Thompson, “Are Your Friends Making You Fat?” New York Times, September 13, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/magazine/13contagion-t.html?pagewanted=all.

  13 “One of the most enduring” Timothy D. Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2002), 212.

  14 expert players experience sports Carl Zimmer, “Why Athletes Are Geniuses,” Discover Magazine, April 16, 2010, http://discovermagazine.com/2010/apr/16-the-brain-athletes-are-geniuses.

  15 Daniel J. Siegel calls “mindsight” Daniel J. Siegel, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation (New York: Bantam Books, 2010).

  16 “[T]he whole drama of voluntary life” Jeffrey M. Schwartz and Sharon Begley, The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 262–64.

  CHAPTER 9: CULTURE

  1 Geoff Cohen and Greg Walton Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. (New York: Bantam Books, 2009), 110–11.

  2 The sense of identity Coyle, 102–104.

  3 top performers devote five David Dobbs, “How to Be a Genius,” New Scientist, September 15, 2008, http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19125691.300-how-to-be-a-genius.html.

  4 John Hayes of Carnegie Mellon Geoff Colvin, Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else (New York: Portfolio, 2008), 152.

  5 If somebody nearby can hear Coyle, 85.

  6 At the Spartak Tennis Club Coyle, 82.

  7 Benjamin Franklin taught himself Colvin, 106.

  8 “Which CEO Characteristics” Steven N. Kaplan, Mark M. Klebanov, and Morten Sorensen, “Which CEO Characteristics and Abilities Matter?” Swedish Institute for Financial Research Conference on the Economics of the Private Equity Market, July 2008, faculty.chicagobooth.edu/steven.kaplan/research/kks.pdf.

  9 Good to Great Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t (New York: HarperCollins, 2001).

  10 Murray Barrick, Michael Mount, and Timothy Judge Murray R. Barrick, Michael K. Mount, and Timothy A. Judge, “Personality and Performance at the Beginning of the New Millennium: What Do We Know and Where Do We Go Next?” International Journal of Selection and Assessment 9, nos. 1–2 (March/June 2001): 9–30, http://www.uni-graz.at/psy5www/lehre/kaernbach/doko/artikel/bergner_Barrick_Mount_Judge_2001.pdf.

  11 Ulrike Malmendier and Geoffrey Tate Ulrike Malmendier and Geoffrey Tate, “Superstar CEOs,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 124, no. 4 (November 2009): 1593–1638, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.146.1059&rep=rep1&type=pdf.

  12 When people around the world Tyler Cowen, “In which countries do kids respect their parents the most?” Marginal Revolution, December 5, 2007, http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/12/in-which-countr.html.

  13 “A man has as many social” Judith Rich Harris, The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do (New York: Touchstone, 1998), 56.

  14 By the third generation David Brooks, “The Americano Dream,” New York Times, February 24, 2004, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/opinion/the-americano-dream.html?ref=davidbrooks.

  15 The core lesson Richard Nisbett, The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently … and Why (New York: Free Press, 2003), 90.

  16 “Thus, to the Asian” Nisbett, 100.

  17 Korean parents emphasize Alison Gopnik, Andrew N. Meltzoff, and Patricia Kuhl, The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind (New York: Perennial, 2001), 89.

  18 Asked to describe video Nisbett, 95.

  19 Chinese students are more Nisbett, 140.

  20 American six-year-olds make Nisbett, 87–88.

  21 Chinese subjects were more Bruce E. Wexler, Brain and Culture: Neurobiology, Ideology, and Social Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 149.

  22 Americans tend to exaggerate Timothy D. Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2002), 38.

  23 choose between three computers Nisbett, 185.

  24 The Chinese eyes perform John Roach, “Chinese, Americans, Truly See Differently, Study Says,” National Geographic News, August 22, 2005, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0822_050822_chinese.html.

  25 East Asians have a tougher time Rachel E. Jack et al., “Cultural Confusions Show that Facial Expressions Are Not Universal,” Current Biology 19, no. 18 (August 13, 2009), 1543–48, ht
tp://www.cell.com/current-biology/retrieve/pii/S0960982209014778.

  26 “The country of my childhood” Wexler, 175.

  27 As Michael Tomasello Roy F. Baumeister, The Cultural Animal: Human Nature, Meaing, and Social Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 31.

  28 You can teach a chimpanzee Baumeister, 131.

  29 “What sets him off most graphically” Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 46.

  30 “We build ‘designer environments’ ” Andy Clark, Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 191.

  31 Human brains, Clark believes Clark, 180.

  32 If the culture adds Baumeister, 53.

  33 Children born without sight Wexler, 33.

  34 Donald E. Brown lists traits Donald E. Brown, Human Universals (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991).

  35 Plays written and produced Wexler, 187–88.

  36 Half of all people in India David P. Schmitt, “Evolutionary and Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Love: The Influence of Gender, Personality, and Local Ecology on Emotional Investment in Romantic Relationships,” in The New Psychology of Love, eds. Robert J. Sternberg and Karin Sternberg (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 252.

  37 Nearly a quarter of Americans Helen Fisher, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2004), 5.

  38 Craig MacAndrew and Robert B. Edgerton Craig MacAndrew and Robert B. Edgerton, Drunken Comportment: A Social Explanation (Clinton Corners, NY: Percheron Press, 2003).

  39 couples having coffee Dacher Keltner, Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 2009), 195.

  40 But if you bump Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Penguin Books, 2002), 328.

  41 Cities in the South Marc D. Hauser, Moral Minds: The Nature of Right and Wrong (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006), 134.

  42 A cultural construct Guy Deutscher, “You Are What You Speak,” The New York Times Magazine, August 26, 2010, 44.

  43 Her head was filled Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 177.