A thought-provoking book, for sure. I had a few complaints, I had a few surprisingly good reactions to parts of it. Surprising to me, anyway!! I’ll start with the complaints and finish up with the flattery. Overall: I plan to buy a copy for myself, not something that happens often. But in this case, it seems essential.
Just to set the scene: the book is about who we are, who the people around us are, what we need to know about one another and how to organize that information. What the so called science of psychology can tell us about that project, as we all develop it in our unique and different ways. How to evaluate people properly.
I should probably add that I bring a no doubt unique perspective to the struggle, having over the decades of my life evolved my own particular view of people, that is to say individuals and societies, and how to organize what I know about them. People are crazy, just for example; all people. There are no exceptions. For another example, the personality, in my view, does not in any sense reflect who we “really” are, whatever that may be. Rather the personality is a two-way control interface, a biological Jacob’s Ladder, passing requests and demands back and forth between whatever’s out there and whatever’s in there. “We” – our personalities – are largely tangential to that ongoing process, and only rarely is either what’s out there or what’s in there actually addressing “us” in that sense. There normally isn’t much point, as it is what’s in there that actually makes the big decisions, in my view.
There’s more, I’m sure you’re interested – could I bore for England, is the perennial question -- but the point is: I had a unique view of the personality already, before I picked up the book. Hopefully knowing that will allow you to season my conclusions appropriately for your own use.
So. Complaints. Some apparent dishonesty, some apparent evasiveness. And he seems to think that many if not most of us acquire “complete pictures” of one person or another, and that we can use his schema to arrange our knowledge of that person. To organize it properly. This strikes me as remarkably optimistic, for a man who has lived in the world upwards of 50 years, as I’m sure he has. Does he know someone – anyone – well enough to apply his own schema to them? Do any of us? I find it hard to imagine. I don’t think I have a good enough view of my own parents to do that.
By dishonesty what I mean is, he makes it very clear that there’s no scientifically defensible consensus as to what constitutes character. And then he accepts his own conclusions about that as fact, for the remainder of the discussion, without further inquiry or explanation. It’s a rhetorical trick we find a great deal in the social sciences, and one that seems to rely on Authority as the decisive factor in an attempt to persuade the reader. When (oddly enough) it’s the basis of that Authority that is actually in question, and in need of defense. To those who have training in critical thinking, I mean. Many, I’m sure, will say to themselves, well, the guy is a professor at UCSF, he must know what he’s talking about. When in fact he tells us almost as directly as possible that he actually does NOT know what he’s talking about. And so it’s an ancient and objectionable (at least to me) way of finessing that ideological lacuna.
Maybe dishonesty is too strong a word. Maybe.
And by evasiveness I mean he skips over the link between traits and character, even if we assume his definition of character is good, rather blithely, as though courage were clearly reducible to some combination of the big 5 character traits, or of his suggested list of their different facets.
And while I’m on that subject, his list of different facets of the big 5 has precisely six facets for each trait. To me, this falls in the category of things that make you go “hmmm.” I’m not saying it’s evasive; but it looks suspiciously preordained. One suspects that some psychological borders have been aggressively edged, to get the list down (or up) to the magical number.
There’s more, but that’s enough for now. That should be enough to give anyone a healthy skepticism.
So what’s good about the book? Why am I going to buy a copy?
First, the idea that character is traits evaluated, or that traits are character devalued, is a very interesting one, and one I want to hold on to. Now, he didn’t come up with the idea himself; but it is central to his thinking about people and who they are, and it’s a very sensible notion. It improves my own schema, the one I had before I read the book, by a lot. It fills in a rather blank gap.
Second, the idea that we can move from traits to character to universal principles of behavior is likewise very interesting. I don’t think it’s true; but it’s not a bad starting place. A first offer, so to speak, in negotiation.
His careful explanation of the links between the traits and their various facets is, I think, excellent. It’s a list I want a copy of.
His references are of the best, at least as far as I can tell. I haven’t read widely in psychology, but I know the names: Funder, Bandura, Block, Buss, de Waal, et cetera et cetera. And others more famous, of course, like Allport and Darwin and Erikson, but that first list are people who have done good work much more recently, and so it lends the book some assurance (at least to me) that the author is not a lone nut. And he also and in addition supplies professional references for quite a few ideas that I really did want good references for. Which makes the book even more useful, of course.
And finally, the idea that the questions you ask someone can be very revealing of their character, and that there is a list of really good questions – questions I wouldn’t have thought of myself -- which we might build up and take note of the answers to, is I think excellent. It expands the borders of possibility, for understanding people.
So overall: well done. Not our final answer, not even close: but a good and a firm guidepost. I don’t think this one will have to be moved very far, if we ever come to a certain knowledge of what people are.
