Making Sense of People: Decoding the Mysteries of Personality (FT Press Science) [Kindle Edition]

Samuel Barondes (Author)

Book Description

Every day, we evaluate the people around us: It's one of the most important things we ever do. Making Sense of People provides the scientific frameworks and tools we need to improve our intuition, and assess people more consciously, systematically, and effectively.

Leading neuroscientist Samuel H. Barondes explains the research behind each standard personality category: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness. He shows readers how to use these traits and assessments to do a better job of deciding who they'll enjoy spending time with, whom to trust, and whom to keep at a distance. Barondes explains:

• What neuroscience and psychological research can tell us about how personality types develop and cohere.
• The intertwined roles of genes, nurture, and education in personality development.
• How to recognize troublesome personality patterns such as narcissism, sociopathy, and paranoia.
• How much a child's behavior predicts their adult personality, and how personality stabilizes in young adulthood.
• How to assess integrity, fairness, wisdom, and other traits related to morality.
• What genetic testing may (or may not) teach us about personality in the future.
• General strategies for getting along with people, with specific tactics for special circumstances.

Kirkus Reviews

A succinct look at personality psychology.

As a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at the University of California, Barondes (Molecules and Mental Illness, 2007, etc.) has spent years studying human behavior, and this book reflects his systematic, scientific approach for personality assessment. The average person isn't likely to have time to research a difficult boss or potential love interest, but the author supplements intuition with a useful cornerstone for gauging human behavior: a table of the "Big Five" personality traits, among them Extraversion vs. Introversion and Agreeableness vs. Antagonism. To learn how to apply the Big Five, Barondes supplies a link for a professional online personality test, in addition to a basic introduction of troubling personality patterns–e.g., narcissism and compulsiveness. While genetics may play a heavy hand in influencing personality, Barondes writes, it's awareness of a person's background, character and life story that is paramount in unearthing reasons for adult behavior. Readers might like to see the author weave more everyday examples into the text–his exercise in fostering compassion by imagining an adult as a 10-year-old child is a gem–but there is plenty here to ponder.

Those looking for traditional "self-help" advice won't find it here, but this book clearly lays the groundwork for deeper human interaction and better life relationships.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

“This pioneering book does for our mental life what the periodic table did for chemistry; it breaks the mind down into elementary constituents and their interactions--thereby transforming personality research into science. In addition to being a rich treasure-trove of insights into human nature, it can potentially enrich your relationships with people. Barondes has written a masterpiece.”

--V.S. Ramachandran, author of Phantoms in the Brain and The Tell-Tale Mind

 

“We’re a fantastically social species, constantly taking the measure of everyone’s personality. In this wise, enjoyable book, the esteemed biological psychiatrist Sam Barondes considers ways to build up this vital skill. The book is clear, entertaining, and educational, and will not only make you a more adept social primate, but a more self-reflective one as well.”

--Robert Sapolsky, Professor of Biology, Stanford University; author of A Primate’s Memoir and Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers

 

“Making Sense of People is a marvelous guided tour through the infinitely variable landscape of personality. Barondes truly illuminates how genes and environment shape human behavior, and he tells the story with an engaging armchair style that makes the book hard to put down!”

--John Oldham, President, American Psychiatric Association; author of The New Personality Self-Portrait

 

“Human beings judge personalities every day, but often in an unconscious muddle. Sam Barondes has taken a daunting research literature on personality and has made it remarkably accessible as well as useful. I suspect that many psychiatrists will find this book as valuable as lay readers will.”

--Steven E. Hyman, Professor of Neurobiology and Provost, Harvard University; former Director, National Institute of Mental Health

 

“In Making Sense of People, Sam Barondes, a superb teacher and writer, creates his own schema to help us better understand each other and make the right decisions about who to share our lives with. A highly readable and enjoyable introduction to the psychology of everyday life.”

--Eric Kandel, University Professor, Columbia University; Nobel Laureate; author of In Search of Memory

 

What really bothers you about your boss--or your daughter’s boyfriend? Could the person you’re dating really become your life partner? Can you really rely on your intuition about people? This book will help you find out.

 

Drawing on extensive research, renowned psychiatrist and neuroscientist Samuel Barondes gives you powerful, easy-to-use tools for understanding what people are really like and how they got to be the way they are. These tools will provide you with a system for assessing the person’s traits, character, and sense of identity, and then putting these elements together into a unified picture. Learning to think of people in this way will help you choose more satisfying relationships, recognize telltale signs of dysfunction and danger, and savor the complexity and uniqueness of everyone you meet.

 

Supplement your intuition!

•  Learn a system for understanding anyone

•  Identify character strengths and weaknesses

•  Make better decisions about whom to seek out and whom to avoid

•  Find out how all personalities are shaped by two great chance events:
   the set of genes we happen to be born with, and the particular world 

   we happen to grow up in

 

About the Author

Samuel Barondes is the Jeanne and Sanford Robertson Professor and Director of the Center for Neurobiology and Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. A leading psychiatrist and neuroscientist, he is a member of the Institute of Medicine and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His books include Mood Genes, Better Than Prozac, and the Scientific American Library title Molecules and Mental Illness. He lives in Sausalito, California.

Product Details

• File Size: 487 KB
• Print Length: 241 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0132172607
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Up to 5 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits
• Publisher: FT Press; 1 edition (June 21, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0050JKCI6
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,861 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #8 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Personality Disorders
  • #9 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Psychology & Counseling > Personality
  • #12 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Internal Medicine > Neurology > Neuroscience

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

84 of 88 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Read, but Short, and Not Exactly What I Expected June 30, 2011

By David Bennett VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Humans are psychologically complicated, and it would be nice if there was a way to classify people in a way that is both broad (making it convenient) and yet somewhat specific (making it accurate). Samuel Barondes provides the solution with this book - kind of.

This book focuses on two main points, classifying human personality, and how personality is formed. Barondes breaks down basic personality into what he calls the "Big Five." They are extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness. We all have varying degrees of each trait. For example, in terms of extroversion, some people are very outgoing, while others prefer being alone. Barondes classifies extremes in each category as a personality disorder. For example, an extremely extroverted person might have histrionic personality disorder, while someone who is an extreme loner might be schizotypal (like chess champion and misanthrope Bobby Fischer). After covering the "Big Five" in some depth, Barondes explains the interaction of nature (genetics) and nurture in forming personality, brain plasticity (the brain makes new connections even to adulthood, so personality is never rigidly fixed, although the adult brain is much less plastic than a child's brain), moral character, and ways we create our own stories.

I enjoyed this book, and I believe it did live up to its subtitle, i.e. it tries to "decode the mysteries of personality." The "Big Five" are helpful when sizing people up, including ourselves. The book provides a link to an online test that classifies where you (or someone else, if you fill it out with them in mind) fall under each category. I scored high on extroversion, openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. However, being too agreeable is often correlated with lower pay. Many leaders are not really agreeable. Steve Jobs, according to the book, scores low in agreeableness (he is a bit of an unpredictable jerk at times). Thus, the book provides reasons for altering your personality (although it doesn't provide tools to do so).

I should note this book is not a step-by-step "how to" guide about reading people or people's personalities. Decoding personality is a different concept than being a people reader. This book explores the complexity of human personality, and how each person's unique personality is formed, by both nature and nurture. The first two chapters, and last chapter, are related to sizing people up, but the middle chapters are more academic and theoretical. I found the contents fascinating, even though it did seem a bit random at times, since the opening material implies a more practical use for the book, even though the long middle chapters are more theoretical and academic in nature.

One major drawback is this book's size. Even though it is listed as 240 pages (my review copy ended before the index, so I will take Amazon's word it is 240 pages), the end notes begin on page 151. That is almost a hundred pages of end notes, references, and index material. I am glad the book is well-researched, but the price seems steep for the amount of actual material.

Overall, I enjoyed this book about a very fascinating topic. Even though the topic is academic, Barondes explains it in an easily understood manner. The book is too short for the price, and the material seems a bit disconnected at times (is it an academic book about personality development, or a book about sizing people up?), but I am more effective at classifying different personalities because I have read it.

59 of 62 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Rosetta Stone for Personality July 17, 2011

By Jena Pincott

Format:Hardcover

This book is an utterly fascinating and accessible tour of everything science reveals about personality. It gives us the tools to "decode" the people we meet: how to identify personality patterns and traits, gain insight into how genes influence personality, and learn how one's background and context might affect his/her brain and behavior.

At the end of this gem is a quote from Eisenhower: "In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." Similarly, in life, the ability to "decode" other people -- our spouses, partners, kids, colleagues, bosses, and so on -- is indispensable, even if how to act on this knowledge is open-ended. This is no "how-to" book, but readers will surely figure out how to apply it to their own situations and relationships.

After absorbing this book, this reader found herself wiser, more understanding, and more effective in dealing with people. Here are tools for life.

62 of 69 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent, brief overview of personality types, but no "how to" book for dealing with them June 27, 2011

By Ursiform TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

In this book the author gives a brief overview of how people think, and why they are believed to think that way. Despite the marketing copy, however, this book doesn't lay out an approach to evaluating and dealing with people you encounter.

The first part of the book explains the different personality types psychologists have defined, and also the personality flaws they have defined. The second part discusses the nature and nurture (my words, not the author's) of peoples' psychologies. To somewhat oversimplify, the author takes the common view that genes provide proclivities, and stimuli trigger, or don't trigger, those proclivities. These chapters make for a decent, short overview of the subject, but if you have been following research in this area at all you won't find any surprises here.

The final part has three chapters, the first two of which deal with character and with peoples' development of their life stories. As in the earlier parts, the author uses famous people as examples of how the categories identified by psychologists can be used to develop insight into why people act as they do.

Only in the last ten pages of the book does the author provide an outline of how he uses this material to understand the people he encounters. While the entirety of the book is useful for this purpose, the marketing copy makes it sound much more like a how to book than it is.

Were this book advertised as an overview of the psychological characterization of personality types, I might have given it four stars. But judging it against the product description I can't go beyond three.

More About the Author

Samuel Barondes was born in Brooklyn and educated at Columbia, Harvard, and the National Institutes of Health. He joined the University of California in 1970 and is now Jeanne and Sanford Robertson Professor and Director of the Center for Neurobiology and Psychiatry at its San Francisco campus (UCSF) where he works to bring together modern biology and psychiatry. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His new book, Making Sense of People: Decoding the Mysteries of Personality, will be published in May 2011.He lives in Sausalito,CA.