by John L. Locke ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998
Two largely disconnected books in one: a phenomenology of talk and conversation, and a broad-based if not very convincing presentation of the thesis that interpersonal conversation is dramatically on the decline in modern Western society. Neurolinguist Locke (Human Communication Sciences/Univ. of Sheffield, England), is fascinating on the history and nature of language, talk, and conversation. He delves into human speech’s evolutionary biology, biochemistry, and neurology, and the nature of “vocal, facial and gestural clues.” Among the many dimensions of human communication he explores are “verbal performing,” the usually inverse relationship between pitch and power, and the hierarchical nature of gossip and self-disclosure (individuals almost always engage in each with someone of greater or at least equal status). Locke’s argument in the second half, that intimate social conversation is progressively declining in modern Anglo-American society, may be correct but is presented here in a diffuse, largely anecdotal way. His writing contains much of the rhetoric of anomie found in such earlier, better books as David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd and Philip Slater’s The Pursuit of Loneliness and is marred by self-evident generalizations (“individuals with few close relationships generally report feeling less socially supported than those awash in intimacy—) and an often overwrought neo-Luddite tone (“Internet Addiction Syndrome, or IAS . . . is apparently affecting hundreds if not thousands of the cyber-crazed”) that presumes that if people weren—t online for hours each day, they would otherwise be engaged in meaningful interpersonal contact. Locke seems certain that the Internet (and E-mail in particular) necessarily diminishes social intimacy. It doesn—t seem to occur to him that it and other new technological facets of contemporary life may undermine certain traditional mechanisms for achieving social closeness while offering new ones in their place. (First serial to Psychology Today)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-684-84333-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1998
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by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 13, 2012
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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by Daniel Kahneman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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