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Personal Intelligence: The Power of Personality and How It Shapes Our Lives
John D. Mayer, the renowned psychologist who co-developed the groundbreaking theory of emotional intelligence, now draws on decades of cognitive psychology research to introduce another paradigm-shifting idea: that in order to become our best selves, we use an even broader intelligence―which he calls personal intelligence―to understand our own personality and the personalities of the people around us.
In Personal Intelligence , Mayer explains that we are naturally curious about the motivations and inner worlds of the people we interact with every day. Some of us are talented at perceiving what makes our friends, family, and coworkers tick. Some of us are less so. Mayer reveals why, and shows how the most gifted "readers" among us have developed "high personal intelligence." Mayer's theory of personal intelligence brings together a diverse set of findings―previously regarded as unrelated―that show how much variety there is in our ability to read other people's faces; to accurately weigh the choices we are presented with in relationships, work, and family life; and to judge whether our personal life goals conflict or go together well. He persuasively argues that our capacity to problem-solve in these varied areas forms a unitary skill.
Illustrating his points with examples drawn from the lives of successful college athletes, police detectives, and musicians, Mayer shows how people who are high in personal intelligence (open to their inner experiences, inquisitive about people, and willing to change themselves) are able to anticipate their own desires and actions, predict the behavior of others, and―using such knowledge―motivate themselves over the long term and make better life decisions. And in outlining the many ways we can benefit from nurturing these skills, Mayer puts forward an essential message about selfhood, sociability, and contentment. Personal Intelligence is an indispensable book for anyone who wants to better comprehend how we make sense of our world.
In Personal Intelligence , Mayer explains that we are naturally curious about the motivations and inner worlds of the people we interact with every day. Some of us are talented at perceiving what makes our friends, family, and coworkers tick. Some of us are less so. Mayer reveals why, and shows how the most gifted "readers" among us have developed "high personal intelligence." Mayer's theory of personal intelligence brings together a diverse set of findings―previously regarded as unrelated―that show how much variety there is in our ability to read other people's faces; to accurately weigh the choices we are presented with in relationships, work, and family life; and to judge whether our personal life goals conflict or go together well. He persuasively argues that our capacity to problem-solve in these varied areas forms a unitary skill.
Illustrating his points with examples drawn from the lives of successful college athletes, police detectives, and musicians, Mayer shows how people who are high in personal intelligence (open to their inner experiences, inquisitive about people, and willing to change themselves) are able to anticipate their own desires and actions, predict the behavior of others, and―using such knowledge―motivate themselves over the long term and make better life decisions. And in outlining the many ways we can benefit from nurturing these skills, Mayer puts forward an essential message about selfhood, sociability, and contentment. Personal Intelligence is an indispensable book for anyone who wants to better comprehend how we make sense of our world.
282 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
35 people are currently reading
516 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
December 3, 2019
This is clearly intended for a lay audience but is quite academic in style. The chapters are fairly long and pretty dense with information. I think the points he makes would have been easier to follow if he had started out each chapter with a summary of what he intended to discuss, then separated main points under subheadings, and closed with a recap. Instead, he starts and just goes until the end. There are a couple of places where graphics might have been helpful. He also mentions some of the Big Five personality traits without defining them until much later, assuming perhaps that readers know more than they do. I also didn't see a clear definition of personal intelligence, contrasted with its subset emotional intelligence, until near the end of the book. I don't think I got much lasting knowledge from it, compared to Emotional Intelligence which, by the way, was this author's theory popularized by another author. So, obviously, he has a lot to impart to us.
Perhaps it didn't help that I do most of my reading in the couple of hours before bed, but more thoughtful editing and book design could have helped a lot, in my view.
Perhaps it didn't help that I do most of my reading in the couple of hours before bed, but more thoughtful editing and book design could have helped a lot, in my view.
July 11, 2018
It introduced some interesting ideas, but I don't fully understand why the author sees a need to introduce them in the context of a new theory as opposed to just including them as a part of emotional intelligence.
October 29, 2014
Full disclosure: I won a copy of this book in a Goodreads First Reads giveaway.
In Personal Intelligence: The Power of Personality and How it Shapes Our Lives psychologist and researcher, John Mayer expands his theory of emotional intelligence to a introduce a new theory which he calls personal intelligence. The basic premise is that people who are more attuned to reading other people are more successful in life. Also, closely related to that skill is the ability to "know thy self" which allows the individual to make decisions that are most appropriate for the individual in regard to their happiness.
The theories are interesting and Mayer does provide some minimal research in support of the ideas, but I was expecting more out of the book. I also thought some actionable ideas or exercises at the end of the book would have been helpful. Maybe my expectations were too high. Still, it was interesting and anyone who has an interest in this area should find some useful information here.
In Personal Intelligence: The Power of Personality and How it Shapes Our Lives psychologist and researcher, John Mayer expands his theory of emotional intelligence to a introduce a new theory which he calls personal intelligence. The basic premise is that people who are more attuned to reading other people are more successful in life. Also, closely related to that skill is the ability to "know thy self" which allows the individual to make decisions that are most appropriate for the individual in regard to their happiness.
The theories are interesting and Mayer does provide some minimal research in support of the ideas, but I was expecting more out of the book. I also thought some actionable ideas or exercises at the end of the book would have been helpful. Maybe my expectations were too high. Still, it was interesting and anyone who has an interest in this area should find some useful information here.
July 1, 2014
I'd like to have given this book three stars because the subject matter -- how we understand people, and the wide range of psychological experiments that have been done to find answers -- is inherently interesting, but Mayer is such a prosaic writer that I just couldn't bring myself to do it.
He should thank his lucky stars that former New York Times writer Daniel Goleman was the first to lay out Mayer's ideas in his best-seller, Emotional Intelligence. Mayer and his colleagues have now developed a new questionnaire and tool designed to expand on EQ and see how good people are not just at understanding their feelings and those of others, but in understanding how people work together in organizations and families, how people can understand themselves well enough to plan successful life outcomes and other such issues.
Interesting issues, dressed up in boring brown paper.
July 12, 2014
Thoroughly informative in practical detail. :)
May 14, 2015
الكتاب ممتع ومفيد للغاية. فهو عامر بالمعلومات عن الشخصيات الإنسانية يدعمها البحوث التجريبة وعلاقتها بالحياة الواقعية والعلاقات بين الناس.
December 17, 2017
The basic concept of this book, the result of John Mayer's work as a psychologist and researcher, is fairly straightforward to state. You know that (controversial, but unsuppressibly real) thing called IQ? The idea that some people's brains are just better at certain kinds of logical tasks? Mayer thinks that there is something analogous, but orthogonal (that is, being good at one does not make you necessarily good or bad at the other), which is about your ability to understand people.
Stated simply, it sounds like common sense, in a way analogous to how "IQ is a real thing" is really just a restating (with fancier wording) of the idea that some people are smarter than others. But what sound like simple statements to an outsider to this field, like myself, are apparently not so simple when you need to back it up with proof. Mayer's thesis really amounts to, "some people are just jerks, even when they're not necessarily trying to be, while other people are very good at being nice". But, what does that mean, exactly, and why does it matter?
One of the things that Mayer has worked on is, how does one quantify "that guy's a jerk"? Essentially, it's the same kind of question that resulted in the development of the IQ test, over a century ago. Then, there comes the inevitable questions of genetics vs. upbringing, with the inevitable answer (it depends, and they interact). Then, we come to the heart of the book, which is why we should care.
Much of Mayer's book is an attempt to illustrate, with anecdote and cited scientific study alike, why it matters (even to the person in question) to have a high personal intelligence, and what kind of things can go wrong if you don't. For example, the ability to have insight into the behavior of others, and the reasons for it, appears to be not unrelated to the ability to have insight into your own behavior, and the reasons for it. This is especially important if there's something about your own behavior you would like to change (for example, an addiction). It also relates to an ability to plan out what you want to do with your life, and then actually do what you planned; if you cannot figure yourself out well enough to do this, it is often the case that you're not so great at figuring others out, either.
If I have a quibble with Mayer's book (and by and large I don't, it was well written), it is that he is apparently so eager to avoid intimidating us with math that there is not so much as a single graph or diagram here (except in the notes at the end). For someone who has apparently gathered quite a lot of data on the topic, he has not a number to share with us, not even in pictographic form. Perhaps he is a very text-based thinker, but it would have been nice if he were aware enough of the variety of other types of readers to have included some more different ways of telling us about the (many, cited) scientific studies he mentions with something other than only a wall of text. But, this may be something that few readers would have a problem with, and it did not in any sense spoil the book for me.
Relative to books you might read on intelligence as conventionally defined, the topic of personal intelligence is still very much in its early days. This shows a bit in Mayer's book; much of it is trying to convince the reader that his topic exists, and is important, which is not something that researchers in a mature field normally have to do. Nonetheless, it is a useful survey of what is known at this point, and I hope that reading it has increased my own personal intelligence ever so slightly.
Stated simply, it sounds like common sense, in a way analogous to how "IQ is a real thing" is really just a restating (with fancier wording) of the idea that some people are smarter than others. But what sound like simple statements to an outsider to this field, like myself, are apparently not so simple when you need to back it up with proof. Mayer's thesis really amounts to, "some people are just jerks, even when they're not necessarily trying to be, while other people are very good at being nice". But, what does that mean, exactly, and why does it matter?
One of the things that Mayer has worked on is, how does one quantify "that guy's a jerk"? Essentially, it's the same kind of question that resulted in the development of the IQ test, over a century ago. Then, there comes the inevitable questions of genetics vs. upbringing, with the inevitable answer (it depends, and they interact). Then, we come to the heart of the book, which is why we should care.
Much of Mayer's book is an attempt to illustrate, with anecdote and cited scientific study alike, why it matters (even to the person in question) to have a high personal intelligence, and what kind of things can go wrong if you don't. For example, the ability to have insight into the behavior of others, and the reasons for it, appears to be not unrelated to the ability to have insight into your own behavior, and the reasons for it. This is especially important if there's something about your own behavior you would like to change (for example, an addiction). It also relates to an ability to plan out what you want to do with your life, and then actually do what you planned; if you cannot figure yourself out well enough to do this, it is often the case that you're not so great at figuring others out, either.
If I have a quibble with Mayer's book (and by and large I don't, it was well written), it is that he is apparently so eager to avoid intimidating us with math that there is not so much as a single graph or diagram here (except in the notes at the end). For someone who has apparently gathered quite a lot of data on the topic, he has not a number to share with us, not even in pictographic form. Perhaps he is a very text-based thinker, but it would have been nice if he were aware enough of the variety of other types of readers to have included some more different ways of telling us about the (many, cited) scientific studies he mentions with something other than only a wall of text. But, this may be something that few readers would have a problem with, and it did not in any sense spoil the book for me.
Relative to books you might read on intelligence as conventionally defined, the topic of personal intelligence is still very much in its early days. This shows a bit in Mayer's book; much of it is trying to convince the reader that his topic exists, and is important, which is not something that researchers in a mature field normally have to do. Nonetheless, it is a useful survey of what is known at this point, and I hope that reading it has increased my own personal intelligence ever so slightly.
February 6, 2019
Mayer used the academic writing style, which wasn't easy for me to read. I like writings with a storyline or a clear objective that I can relate to. This book is descriptive and scientific, especially in the beginning. The insights are interesting but difficult for me to digest and relate to my own life. However, the chapter on Personal Intelligence in Adulthood was particularly relevant to me. It was helpful to know the statistics of others like me - how they felt in this part of their life journey, how they behaved and made decisions, how those choices impacted the later part of their life journey, etc. I would recommend reading this as an academic paper rather than a self-help book. Critique Mayer's interpretations and find your answer on what you want to lead your life.
June 29, 2017
It inspires me to know what my original personality is....
September 10, 2017
Storytellers need to know personality.
Read
September 3, 2019Educational.
Very good tool for people who wanted to be adaptable and useful to understand other people.
Very good tool for people who wanted to be adaptable and useful to understand other people.
January 25, 2015
Personal Intelligence: The Power of Personality and How It Shapes Our Lives
I won Personal Intelligence in a GoodReads Giveaway. I received an handsome hardback with a matted jacket cover of traditional professional design, and 268 pages of light, easy-to-read serifed font including 60 pages of reference notes and indexes.
Personal Intelligence by John D. Mayer is an introduction of a concept of intelligence engaged in the understanding of personality. John D Mayer, the co-developer of the theory of emotional intelligence, ups the ante by suggesting that we possess another realm of our intelligence, one that manages our own personality, and divines the intentions, motivations, and behaviors of others by understanding their personality. Those with higher understandings of personality traits' causes and effects have higher “personal intelligence”.
Personal Intelligence the book is focused on establishing Personality Intelligence as a theory and validating the concept’s ideas and premise. This is not infotainment, this is not a self-help book; This is a serious presentation of academic work that often reads as a textbook. Which is not to say that it is not a good read - Personal Intelligence is a great and important book - it is simply a lot of work to read.
And in the same way that we read it with the understanding that it does require effort, we read it with the understanding that many of the audience will be skeptical of the base science to begin with, that others of the audience will be practitioners of the science but skeptical of the new concepts, and that the rest of us will be left to work through information that is geared for the peers of the spectrum of the subject.
Personal Intelligence is well written book of brilliant work in a realm that requires serious consideration. And it is a book that is no small task to read and will find itself hard to be appreciated by those outside its realm of discipline and those unwilling to put effort into acquiring new knowledge.
I won Personal Intelligence in a GoodReads Giveaway. I received an handsome hardback with a matted jacket cover of traditional professional design, and 268 pages of light, easy-to-read serifed font including 60 pages of reference notes and indexes.
Personal Intelligence by John D. Mayer is an introduction of a concept of intelligence engaged in the understanding of personality. John D Mayer, the co-developer of the theory of emotional intelligence, ups the ante by suggesting that we possess another realm of our intelligence, one that manages our own personality, and divines the intentions, motivations, and behaviors of others by understanding their personality. Those with higher understandings of personality traits' causes and effects have higher “personal intelligence”.
Personal Intelligence the book is focused on establishing Personality Intelligence as a theory and validating the concept’s ideas and premise. This is not infotainment, this is not a self-help book; This is a serious presentation of academic work that often reads as a textbook. Which is not to say that it is not a good read - Personal Intelligence is a great and important book - it is simply a lot of work to read.
And in the same way that we read it with the understanding that it does require effort, we read it with the understanding that many of the audience will be skeptical of the base science to begin with, that others of the audience will be practitioners of the science but skeptical of the new concepts, and that the rest of us will be left to work through information that is geared for the peers of the spectrum of the subject.
Personal Intelligence is well written book of brilliant work in a realm that requires serious consideration. And it is a book that is no small task to read and will find itself hard to be appreciated by those outside its realm of discipline and those unwilling to put effort into acquiring new knowledge.
March 7, 2018
I received this book as part of a Goodreads giveaway.
“’Personal intelligence,’ as I mean it here, is shorthand for an intelligence about personality.”
This is an interesting book. Building on previous work by Goldman and others, Mayer further develops the concept to focus on individual personality awareness and awareness and intelligence about motivations.
“The theory of personal intelligence I employ suggests that there are several areas of reasoning that are key to understanding personality. The middle chapters of the book address these areas. To begin with, each of us regularly identifies and gathers information about ourselves and others. I’ll discuss the most helpful clues to personality that psychologists presently have identified. But gathering information is just the beginning of understanding someone; we also combine that information into a more complete representation of the individual: we understand that if a person is highly sociable, for example, she is also likely to be lively and to enjoy taking a few risks. To understand ourselves, we use many of the same principles we employ to understand other people, yet there are some differences when it comes to self-understanding, as I’ll also point out. For example, we obtain feedback about ourselves, and when we do, we feel the judgments of ourselves; these evaluations contain the hot information…that roils us, attracts our attention, and sometimes disturbs our equilibrium. People high in ‘PI” (as I sometimes call it) develop rules for understanding their own needs and styles, and when the make choices, they take their personal qualities into account.”
In short, one’s PI impacts every aspect of life as Mayer conceives of it. The book is filled with examples and use cases. Good read.
See my other reviews here!
“’Personal intelligence,’ as I mean it here, is shorthand for an intelligence about personality.”
This is an interesting book. Building on previous work by Goldman and others, Mayer further develops the concept to focus on individual personality awareness and awareness and intelligence about motivations.
“The theory of personal intelligence I employ suggests that there are several areas of reasoning that are key to understanding personality. The middle chapters of the book address these areas. To begin with, each of us regularly identifies and gathers information about ourselves and others. I’ll discuss the most helpful clues to personality that psychologists presently have identified. But gathering information is just the beginning of understanding someone; we also combine that information into a more complete representation of the individual: we understand that if a person is highly sociable, for example, she is also likely to be lively and to enjoy taking a few risks. To understand ourselves, we use many of the same principles we employ to understand other people, yet there are some differences when it comes to self-understanding, as I’ll also point out. For example, we obtain feedback about ourselves, and when we do, we feel the judgments of ourselves; these evaluations contain the hot information…that roils us, attracts our attention, and sometimes disturbs our equilibrium. People high in ‘PI” (as I sometimes call it) develop rules for understanding their own needs and styles, and when the make choices, they take their personal qualities into account.”
In short, one’s PI impacts every aspect of life as Mayer conceives of it. The book is filled with examples and use cases. Good read.
See my other reviews here!
April 7, 2014
Personal Intelligence offers some real gems, such as the observation that statistical methods may have led us to inaccurately discount the role of personality in human behavior. Mayer points out that although statistical averages are useful for predicting overall performance, they are next to useless to predict behavior in a single event. Thus, studies that looked at correlation between personality and performance on a single test of honesty may have vastly underestimated the importance of a person's overall honesty when many people failed to be honest in a single test. This is a great insight.
Unfortunately, insights like this are embedded in a lot of talk about biographies.I found the frequent reference to biographies too anecdotal and too open to interpretation. It would have been nice if the author had, at least, included case studies of people he'd met and treated, or case studies from other physicians, as opposed to his heavy reliance on biographical information about people he's never met. Personal Intelligence is a good book for psychologists who'd like to speculate about a new intelligence, a cognitive "organ of personality," but the theory still appears rough and conjectural.
Unfortunately, insights like this are embedded in a lot of talk about biographies.I found the frequent reference to biographies too anecdotal and too open to interpretation. It would have been nice if the author had, at least, included case studies of people he'd met and treated, or case studies from other physicians, as opposed to his heavy reliance on biographical information about people he's never met. Personal Intelligence is a good book for psychologists who'd like to speculate about a new intelligence, a cognitive "organ of personality," but the theory still appears rough and conjectural.
July 30, 2017
I personally think this book is worth more than 3 stars...quite informing, particularly for those who are interested in human mind and psychology.
The reason that it score 2 point something might be because the author focused too much on making his statement convincing...actually I'm completely willing to believe him and I imagine many of the reader shared the feelings in the process of reading it. But he kind of missed something -- that we readers expect to learn some know-how or what-to-do in addition to theories. I imagine this book could score higher if the author put some of his personality test or formulaes at the end of the book. People could feel they could practice something and consider the book more related to their lives.
Finally I'd like to re-score this book from 4 to 5 star because I honestly think this book is undervalued by people who lack imagination.
The reason that it score 2 point something might be because the author focused too much on making his statement convincing...actually I'm completely willing to believe him and I imagine many of the reader shared the feelings in the process of reading it. But he kind of missed something -- that we readers expect to learn some know-how or what-to-do in addition to theories. I imagine this book could score higher if the author put some of his personality test or formulaes at the end of the book. People could feel they could practice something and consider the book more related to their lives.
Finally I'd like to re-score this book from 4 to 5 star because I honestly think this book is undervalued by people who lack imagination.
January 28, 2015
i won a copy of this book in a goodreads first reads giveaway.
it took me a while to get through this book. i found the author's anecdotal style interesting, but biased. his writing style was too personal for me to take this seriously.
i completely understand his point about statistical data not taking behavior into account, however, he should have provided anonymous case studies instead of personal accounts. the majority of his support read like a biography.
there's a reason therapists don't treat themselves - they want a fresh perspective on things. his theories would hold more clout if the research provided was less personal.
it took me a while to get through this book. i found the author's anecdotal style interesting, but biased. his writing style was too personal for me to take this seriously.
i completely understand his point about statistical data not taking behavior into account, however, he should have provided anonymous case studies instead of personal accounts. the majority of his support read like a biography.
there's a reason therapists don't treat themselves - they want a fresh perspective on things. his theories would hold more clout if the research provided was less personal.
October 16, 2014
Goodreads win. Will read and review once received.
I will admit going into this book I wasn't expecting to enjoy this book, but by the end of the book I found myself to really enjoy it. This was a very detailed and informative read. I usually don't read books like this, but I was happy to have given this book a try. This is a book for people who have an interest in the human mind and psychology. This was a great read and I hope it gets the attention it deserves.
I will admit going into this book I wasn't expecting to enjoy this book, but by the end of the book I found myself to really enjoy it. This was a very detailed and informative read. I usually don't read books like this, but I was happy to have given this book a try. This is a book for people who have an interest in the human mind and psychology. This was a great read and I hope it gets the attention it deserves.
December 28, 2014
If you interest in personal physchology this is a welcoming book to understand why this topic is important for ordinary people like most of us.İt is written by an expert language where i felt it is done on purpose to distinguish from popular science books.All links and references made me feel bored in many ways.As a summary i recommend the book before diving deep to Hogan's literature.
February 2, 2021
I kept reminding myself what this book was about. It seemed undecided about whether to focus on practical information, studies, or just hearing itself talk. It had a lot of data, but I'm honestly not sure what I read. It could have easily gone a direction of encouraging or motivating the reader, but it didn't quite do that at all. It ended abruptly. Not recommended.
February 22, 2015
It was interesting book but felt the information was definitely at the micro-level instead of macro-level. I recommend it those who are really interested to learn more about personality/emotional intelligence from the micro-level. If not, then I would recommend Emotional Intelligence 2.0.
September 15, 2015
This is purely an academic look at personality.
If you are interested in how your personality develops and how it impacts your life it is an interesting read.
This research is in the early stages so there is not a lot of information on making changes.
If you are interested in how your personality develops and how it impacts your life it is an interesting read.
This research is in the early stages so there is not a lot of information on making changes.
July 11, 2014
This was a great read I think he's definitely on to something, this has certainly helped me dealing with other types of personalities that are out there
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September 19, 2014155.2 M4684 2014
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