An enjoyable, breezy treatment of a provocative subject.
Psychopaths who commit violent crimes are at one end of a spectrum that also includes solid citizens.
That’s the contention of Dutton (Split-Second Persuasion, 2010, etc.), a research psychologist at Cambridge. Psychopathic killers have the “consummate ability” to disguise their true nature, he writes, while “behind the façade—the brutal, brilliant disguise—beats the refrigerated heart of a ruthless, glacial predator.” The capability to act under stress with cool determination is a characteristic they share with “surgeons, soldiers, spies, entrepreneurs [and] lawyers.” Dutton hazards the guess that a small helping of one particular psychopathic quality can confer surprising benefits for society as well as the individual. The quality in question is the ability to detach from one's emotions in order to make purely rational decisions. Willingness to take calculated risks, coupled with a charming demeanor, can lead to success in the boardroom as well as the bedroom. The author distinguishes between the “hot empathy” of the I-feel-your-pain average personality and the “cold empathy” that sniffs out levers by which to manipulate people’s vulnerabilities. He cites research using psychological profiling tests and fMRI brain scans, which establish a ranking of individuals by profession and personality type, to make his case that there is a “neuropsychological continuum.” Dutton interviewed con men and killers in prison, top surgeons and a childhood friend who works for MI5, among others. He also submitted himself to an experiment that damped down a region of his brain linked to emotional response, leaving him with what he describes as a “subjective moral swagger” that he associates with a psychopathic mindset. Arguing that society today overemphasizes winner-take-all competitiveness, Dutton worries that this may push more people toward the psychopathic end of the spectrum and lead to a greater rate of violence.
An enjoyable, breezy treatment of a provocative subject.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-374-29135-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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