First, this is hands-down the best modern-day psychology book I have ever read (alongside Philip Johnson-Laird's How We Reason). I admire it for its discernment, wisdom, and careful methodology. It requires slow, careful reading; it is not the kind of book that gives you a quick "takeaway." In fact, it resists and questions "takeaways" as it goes along.
In this book, Jerome Kagan and Nancy Snidman describe, explain, and analyze their longitudinal study of high- and low-reactive infants. They sought to determine whether, how, and to what extent high- and low-reactive infants retained their basic profiles of inhibition and uninhibitedness over time. The findings are intricate and cannot be summed up in a single sentence. Overall, about a fourth of high-reactive infants and a fourth of low-reactive infants showed behavioral and biological profiles at age 11 that corresponded with those of infancy. (There's a lot more to this; the sentence oversimplifies things.) But only a small percentage showed the opposite profile. Thus, while infant temperament does not *predict* later temperament--the authors emphasize this repeatedly--there are signs of a persistent strain.
The best part of this book is its wisdom, which could help many budding psychologists (and writers on psychology) avoid common errors. Here are just a few examples.
On pp. 48-50, the authors point to some of the difficulty of understanding the relation between biological and psychological processes. The first is semantic; neuroscience and psychology use different vocabularies that invoke different concepts. In addition, any biological description of a mental state must also consider context--but it is difficult, if not impossible, to translate such context into biological vocabulary. Second, the current methodology does not allow for full examination of complex brain activity. They give the example of a snake: to simulate people's reactions to snakes, scientists might put people on an fMRI scanner and show them photos of snakes. But the experience of a photo of a snake is quite different from the experience of an actual snake.
On p. 51 and onward, there is a fascinating and important discussion of continua and categories. Most psychologists prefer to treat temperaments as continuous rather than discrete states--but this is largely due to the role of inferential statistics in social science. In fact, it seems that certain temperamental profiles are in fact discrete--that is, fundamentally different from the others. The controversy regarding continua and categories is ongoing--the authors do not claim the last word--but it helps to see this in perspective.
Within this discussion, on p. 57, the authors bring up the problematic nature of questionnaires. (Yay! Everyone should read this!) Here's a key point: "Because questionnaires rely on semantic networks, respondents vary in the particular schema that are linked to the words in the questionnaire item; hence individuals do not always extract the same meaning from a question." The authors make many more important observations; this section is so important that it deserves an article or book of its own.
I could go on and on--but I want to draw attention to an important question they raise near the end (on p. 233): "It is not clear why American and European social scientists maintain a preference for broad psychological properties for individuals that ignore the contexts in which they act." They suggest that it may have to do with some social scientists' "psychological biases that favor particular social arrangements and human qualities." (They make clear that not all social scientists hold such biases.) I have often wondered why social scientists insist on dividing humans into "introvert" and "extravert," for instance, when so many of our feelings and actions can only be defined in context. The authors do not address this particular issue, but they offer some insights into it.
The book's only drawback (in my view) is its abundance. It has so much for the researcher, general reader, and parent, and so many angles on each question, that some of the best passages can get lost. I wonder whether the topics of methodology and semantics might have done better in chapters of their own. On the other hand, I appreciate how the authors kept returning to these topics of the course of the text, thus insisting on a nuanced understanding of their own work and findings.
I admire this work for its integrity and accomplishment. It will never be dated; even if the authors' research is one day superseded (by their own or others' work), their insights and questions will continue to illuminate psychology and other fields. I look forward to rereading many passages over the years to come.
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- Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2016
- Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2016
