The Social Animal

by David Brooks

  44 They seem to be growing David Halpern, The Hidden Wealth of Nations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010), 76.

  45 “Cultures do not exist” Thomas Sowell, Migrations and Cultures: A World View (New York: Basic Books, 1996), 378.

  46 Haitians and Dominicans share Lawrence E. Harrison, The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save It from Itself (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 2006), 26.

  47 In Ceylon in 1969 Thomas Sowell, Race and Culture: A World View (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 67.

  48 In Chile, three-quarters Sowell, Race and Culture, 25.

  49 By the time they enter kindergarten Margaret Bridges, Bruce Fuller, Russell Rumberger, and Loan Tran, “Preschool for California’s Children: Unequal Access, Promising Benefits,” PACE Child Development Projects, University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute (September 2004): 7, http://gse.berkeley.edu/research/pace/reports/PB.04-3.pdf.

  50 Roughly 54 percent of Asian Americans Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom, No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 85.

  51 The average Asian American in New Jersey David Brooks, “The Limits of Policy,” New York Times, May 3, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/opinion/04brooks.html.

  52 “Cultures of Corruption” Fisman, Raymond, and Edward Miguel, “Corruption, Norms and Legal Enforcement: Evidence from Diplomatic Parking Tickets,” Journal of Political Economy 115, no. 6 (2007): 1020–48, http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/rfisman/parking_20july06_RF.pdf.

  53 People in progress-prone Harrison, 53.

  54 People in trusting cultures Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free Press, 1996), 338.

  55 Germany and Japan have high Edward Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (New York: Free Press, 1967).

  56 The merging of these two idea spaces Richard Ogle, Smart World: Breakthrough Creativity and the New Science of Ideas (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2007), 8–10.

  57 Ronald Burt Ronald Burt, Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992).

  CHAPTER 10: INTELLIGENCE

  1 “The Dunsinane Reforestation” Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22 (New York: Twelve, 2010), 266. This exchange is based on a conversation the author witnessed between Hitchens and Salman Rushdie, two masters of these kinds of games.

  2 Male babies make less Matt Ridley, The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture (New York: Perennial, 2004), 59.

  3 a person’s emotional state Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships (New York: Bantam Dell, 2006) 139.

  4 verbal memory and verbal fluency John Medina, Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (Seattle, WA: Pear Press, 2008), 262.

  5 They don’t necessarily talk more Michael S. Gazzaniga, Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Human (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008), 96.

  6 Varieties of Capitalism Peter A. Hall and David W. Soskice, “An Introduction to the Varieties of Capitalism,” in Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage, eds. Peter A. Hall and David W. Soskice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 1–70.

  7 People who are really good Arthur Robert Jensen, The G Factor: The Science of Mental Ability (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1998), 34–35.

  8 The single strongest predictor Robin Karr-Morse and Meredith S. Wiley, Ghosts from the Nursery: Tracing the Roots of Violence (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997), 28.

  9 Dean Hamer and Peter Copeland Dean H. Hamer and Peter Copeland, Living with Our Genes: Why They Matter More Than You Think (New York: Anchor Books, 1999), 217.

  10 black children in Prince Edward County Richard W. Nisbett, Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 2009), 41.

  11 They have to divide their Bruce E. Wexler, Brain and Culture: Neurobiology, Ideology, and Social Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 68.

  12 Between 1947 and 2002 Nisbett, 44.

  13 “Today’s children” James R. Flynn, What Is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 19.

  14 They are not better David G. Myers, Intuition: Its Powers and Perils (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 35.

  15 “IQ predicts only about 4 percent” Richard K. Wagner, “Practical Intelligence,” in Handbook of Intelligence, ed. Robert J. Sternberg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 382.

  16 There is great uncertainty John D. Mayer, Peter Salovey and David Caruso, “Models of Emotional Intelligence,” in Handbook of Intelligence, ed. Robert J. Sternberg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 403.

  17 “What nature hath joined together” Nisbett, 18.

  18 They were the ones who Daniel Goleman, “75 Years Later, Study Still Tracking Geniuses,” New York Times, March 7, 1995, http://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/07/science/75-years-later-study-still-tracking-geniuses.html?pagewanted=all and Richard C. Paddock, “The Secret IQ Diaries,” Los Angeles Times, July 30, 1995, http://articles.latimes.com/1995-07-30/magazine/tm-29325_1_lewis-terman.

  19 As Malcolm Gladwell demonstrated Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2008) 81–83.

  20 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth John Tierney, “Smart Doesn’t Equal Rich,” New York Times, April 25, 2007, http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/smart-doesnt-equal-rich/.

  21 “The tendency to collect information” Keith E. Stanovich, What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 31–32.

  22 distinctions between clocks and clouds Jonah Lehrer, “Breaking Things Down to Particles Blinds Scientists to Big Picture,” Wired, April 19, 2010, http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/04/st_essay_particles/.

  23 “Many different studies involving” Stanovich, 34–35.

  24 Firsthand Technology Value mutual fund Stanovich, 60.

  25 GED recipients are much James J. Heckman and Yona Rubinstein, “The Importance of Noncognitive Skills: Lessons from the GED Testing Program,” American Economic Review 91, no. 2 (May 2001): 145–49, http://www.econ-pol.unisi.it/bowles/Institutions%20of%20capitalism/heckman%20on%20ged.pdf.

  26 “The words of the language” Robert Scott Root-Bernstein and Michèle Root-Bernstein, Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People (New York: First Mariner Books, 2001), 3.

  27 Others proceed acoustically Root-Bernstein and Root-Bernstein, 53–54.

  28 Others do so emotionally Root-Bernstein and Root-Bernstein, 196.

  CHAPTER 11: CHOICE ARCHITECTURE

  1 Grocers know that shoppers “6 Ways Supermarkets Trick You to Spend More Money,” Shine, March 1, 2010, http://shine.yahoo.com/event/financiallyfit/6-ways-supermarkets-trick-you-to-spend-more-money-974209/?pg=2.

  2 the smell of baked goods Martin Lindstrom and Paco Underhill, Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 148–49.

  3 Researchers in Britain found Joseph T. Hallinan, Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average (New York: Broadway Books, 2009), 92–93.

  4 In department stores Paco Underhill, Call of the Mall: The Geography of Shopping by the Author of Why We Buy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 49–50.

  5 pairs of panty hose Timothy D. Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2002), 103.

  6 At restaurants, people eat more Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Ann Arbor, MI: Caravan Books, 2008), 64.

  7 Marketing people also realize Hallinan, 99.

  8 Capital Pacific Homes David Brooks, “Castle in a Box,” The New Yorker, March 26, 2001, http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/03/26/010326fa_fact_br
ooks.

  9 For all of human history Steven E. Landsburg, “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” Slate, March 9, 2007, http://www.slate.com/id/2161309.

  10 the owls John Medina, Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (Seattle, WA: Pear Press, 2008), 163.

  11 As Angela Duckworth Jonah Lehrer, “The Truth about Grit,” Boston Globe, August 2, 2009, http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/08/02/the_truth_about_grit/.

  12 M. Mitchell Waldrop Richard Bronk, The Romantic Economist: Imagination in Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 17.

  13 “If I were to distill one” Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (New York: HarperCollins, 2008) 243.

  14 Health officials in New York Anemona Hartocollis, “Calorie Postings Don’t Change Habits, Study Finds,” New York Times, October 6, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/nyregion/06calories.html.

  15 a series of words Ariely, 170–71.

  16 If you merely use the words John A. Bargh, “Bypassing the Will: Toward Demystifying the Nonconcious Control of Social Behavior,” in The New Unconscious, eds. Ran R. Hassin, James S. Uleman, and John A. Bargh (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 40.

  17 If you remind African American students Claude M. Steele, “Thin Ice: Stereotype Threat and Black College Students,” The Atlantic, August 1999, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/08/thin-ice-stereotype-threat-and-black-college-students/4663/1/.

  18 Asian American women Margaret Shih, Todd L. Pittinsky, and Nalini Ambady, “Stereotype Susceptibility: Identity Salience and Shifts in Quantitative Performance,” Psychological Science 10, no. 1 (January 1999): 80–83.

  19 Genghis Khan’s death Hallinan, 102.

  20 The manager of a Brunswick pool-table Robert E. Ornstein, Multimind: A New Way of Looking at Human Behavior (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996), 86.

  21 high Social Security numbers Dan Ariely, “The Fallacy of Supply and Demand,” Huffington Post, March 20, 2008, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-ariely/the-fallacy-of-supply-and_b_92590.html.

  22 People who are given Hallinan, 50.

  23 “Their predictions became” Jonah Lehrer, How We Decide (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2009), 146.

  24 They just stick with Thaler and Sunstein, 34.

  25 The picture of the smiling Hallinan, 101.

  26 In the aroused state Ariely, 96 and 106.

  27 Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky Jonah Lehrer, “Loss Aversion,” The Frontal Cortex, February 10, 2010, http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2010/02/loss_aversion.php.

  CHAPTER 12: FREEDOM AND COMMITMENT

  1 In Guess culture Oliver Burkerman, “This Column Will Change Your Life,” The Guardian, May 8, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/may/08/change-life-asker-guesser.

  2 Thirty-eight percent of young Americans “Pew Report on Community Satisfaction,” Pew Research Center (January 29, 2009): 10, http://pewsocialtrends.org/assets/pdf/Community-Satisfaction.pdf.

  3 In Western Europe William A. Galston, “The Odyssey Years: The Changing 20s,” Brookings Institution, November 7, 2007, http://www.brookings.edu/interviews/2007/1107_childrenandfamilies_galston.aspx.

  4 postponing marriage William Galston, “The Changing 20s,” Brookings Institution, October 4, 2007, http://www.brookings.edu/speeches/2007/1004useconomics_galston.aspx.

  5 finish their education Galston, “The Changing 20s.”

  6 In 1970 only 26 percent Robert Wuthnow, After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 29.

  7 “I am certain that someday” Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens through the Twenties (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 16.

  8 In 1950 a personality test Jean Twenge, Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before (New York: Free Press, 2006), 69.

  9 young people today Wuthnow, 62.

  10 subsidies from Mom and Dad Wuthnow, 32.

  11 Michael Barone argues Michael Barone, “A Tale of Two Nations,” US News & World Report, May 4, 2003, http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/030512/12pol.htm.

  12 This inequality doesn’t seem Elizabeth Kolbert, “Everybody Have Fun,” The New Yorker, March 22, 2010, http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/03/22/100322crbo_books_kolbert.

  13 Winning the lottery produces Elizabeth Kolbert, “Everybody Have Fun.”

  14 “fulfill all their dreams” Derek Bok, The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn from the New Research on Well-Being (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 13.

  15 People in long-term marriages Bok, 17–18.

  16 being married produces David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald, “Well-Being Over Time in Britain and the USA,” Journal of Public Economics 88 (July 2004): 1359–86, http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/oswald/wellbeingnew.pdf.

  17 joining a group Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 333.

  18 People who have one recurrent David Halpern, The Hidden Wealth of Nations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010), 26.

  19 People who have more friends Tara Parker-Pope, “What Are Friends For? A Longer Life,” New York Times, April 21, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/health/21well.html.

  20 the daily activities Bok, 28.

  21 professions that correlate Halpern, 28–29.

  22 “Whether someone has” Roy F. Baumeister, The Cultural Animal: Human Nature, Meaning, and Social Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 109.

  CHAPTER 13: LIMERENCE

  1 Adrian Furnham of University College, London Joan Raymond, “He’s Not as Smart as He Thinks,” Newsweek, January 23, 2008, http://www.newsweek.com/2008/01/22/he-s-not-as-smart-as-he-thinks.html.

  2 Women underestimate their IQ Joan Raymond, “He’s Not as Smart as He Thinks.”

  3 “Below the surface-stream” Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: University of Harvard Press, 1972), 5.

  4 “Fires run through my body” Helen Fisher, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2004), 1.

  5 Faby Gagné and John Lydon Kaja Perina, “Love’s Loopy Logic,” Psychology Today, January 1, 2007, http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200612/loves-loopy-logic.

  6 “What I have called crystalization” Stendhal, Love, trans. Gilbert Sale and Suzanne Sale (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), 45.

  7 Norepinephrine Fisher, 53.

  8 Phenylethylamine Ayala Malakh Pines, Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We-Choose (New York: Routledge, 2005), 154.

  9 “The caudate is also” Fisher, 69.

  10 Arthur Aron Sadie F. Dingfelder, “More Than a Feeling,” Monitor on Psychology 38, no. 2 (February 2007): 40, http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb07/morethan.aspx.

  11 Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships (New York: Bantam Dell, 2006) 192.

  12 A person in love Helen Fisher, “The Drive to Love: The Neural Mechanism for Mate Selection,” in The New Psychology of Love, eds. Robert J. Sternberg and Karin Weis (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 92–93.

  13 A crucial answer came P. Read Montague, Peter Dayan, and Terrence J. Sejnowski, “A Framework for Mesencephalic Domanine Systems Based on Predictive Hebbian Learning,” Journal of Neuroscience 16, no. 5 (March 1, 1996): 1936–47, http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/reprint/16/5/1936.pdf.

  14 The main business Read Montague, Your Brain Is (Almost) Perfect: How We Make Decisions (New York: Plume, 2007), 117.

  15 Dennis and Denise Brett W. Pelham, Matthew C. Mirenberg, and John T. Jones, “Why Susie Sells Seashells by the Seashore: Implicit Egotism and Major Life Decisions,” Journal of Personalit
y and Social Psychology 82, no. 4 (2002): 469–87, http://futurama.tistory.com/attachment/ck10.pdf.

  16 As Bruce Wexler argues Bruce E. Wexler, Brain and Culture: Neurobiology, Ideology, and Social Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 143.

  17 “The child will love a crusty” C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1988), 33.

  18 Within two weeks James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense (New York: Free Press, 1997), 124.

  19 Austrian physician René Spitz Bruce D. Perry, Born For Love: Why Empathy Is Essential—and Endangered (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 51.

  20 It takes the average college student Elaine Hatfield, Richard L. Rapson, and Yen-Chi L. Le, “Emotional Contagion and Empathy,” in The Social Neuroscience of Empathy, eds. Jean Decety and William John Ickes (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), 21.

  21 neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni notes Marco Iacoboni, Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008), 4.

  22 “When your friend has become” Lewis, 34.

  23 “free from all duties” Lewis, 77.

  24 Solomon Asch conducted Andrew Newburg and Mark Robert Waldman, Why We Believe What We Believe: Uncovering Our Biological Need for Meaning, Spirituality, and Truth (New York: Free Press, 2006), 143–44.

  25 Dean Ornish surveyed Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon, A General Theory of Love (New York: Vintage, 2001), 80.

  26 “Words are inadequate” Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 237.

  27 “Animals have sex” Allan Bloom, Love and Friendship (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 19.

  28 “Love you? I am you.” Lewis, 95.

  29 “We are one” John Milton, Paradise Lost, book 9, lines 958–59.

  CHAPTER 14: THE GRAND NARRATIVE

  1 “There is no craving” David Hume, “Of Interest,” in Selected Essays, eds. Stephen Copley and Andrew Edgar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 182.

  2 Long-term unemployment Don Peck, “How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America,” The Atlantic, March 2010, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/03/how-a-new-jobless-era-will-transform-america/7919/.