Making Sense of People: The Science of Personality Differences

by Samuel Barondes

A NEW, MORE PRACTICAL EDITION OF THE POPULAR SCIENTIFIC GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING OTHER PEOPLE What really bothers you about your boss—or your daughter’s boyfriend? Why are you so attracted to the person you’re dating? Can you rely on your intuition about people? This book will help you find out. Drawing on extensive research, renowned psychiatrist and neuroscientist Samuel Barondes gives you powerful tools for understanding what people are really like and how they got that way. Now improved with easy, step-by-step “practical summaries,” these tools will help you quickly assess anyone’s tendencies, patterns, character, and sense of identity. You’ll learn how to combine these into a unified picture of who that person is. With these insights, you can choose more satisfying relationships, recognize telltale signs of dysfunction and danger, and savor the complexity and uniqueness of everyone you meet. A quick, easy system for understanding anyone!

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Personal Growth

236 pages, Hardcover

First published October 13, 2014

Reviews

[Mari · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good book that defines and describes different personality traits along with how to understand people's character and sense of identity. I enjoyed its dive into using the big five personality traits because it helped me to clearly identify and define the core objectively observable aspects of an individual’s personality. It was also helpful to provide more information on the top ten personality disorders, which are basically examples of reaching extremes in one or more of the big five personality traits. The author's suggested method of organizing one's impression of an individual using the Big Five seems helpful, and I believe it will be useful to me when meeting new people and deciding whether I want them in my life or if I'm better off without them. I appreciate the author distinguishing character and identity from personality traits because of the presence of bias and subjectivity in such aspects of personality. It is also in these aspects that the author encourages us to measure these traits in more ways than one (morality measured by both universal standards and more culturally specific guidelines, and sense of self measured by the individual's interpretation vs how it holds up to reality). The author also provides a methodical way of learning about a person's character and sense of identity, specifically through a mental ordered list as well as observing what people display and emphasize when they tell their life experiences and stories about themselves.
In addition to identifying the defining aspects of personality, the author includes scientific studies and background behind the brain and how personality is formed, delving into hereditary personality traits and the idea of nurture vs nature. This science behind personality was intriguing for me to read about and gave me a better picture of how personalities are formed and whether or not certain problematic personalities can change for the better.

Overall, this book does offer a helpful way to make sense of people more clearly and in an organized way. Along with scientific research and real-life examples, this book also provides guide questions that may help us in painting a more accurate and vivid picture of people's personalities. The science behind personality and the guide that this book offers led me to give this book a high rating, and I would suggest this book to anyone who's interested in dabbling in this topic.

[Christopher Mocella · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a brief, but dense, foray into one system of evaluating and deconstructing an individual's personality through a four-fold pattern:
-Analyze their behavior through the OCEAN system: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
-Identify any "troublesome patterns" through the top 10 from the psychological diagnostic and statistical manual (DSM) such as avoidant, compulsive, narcissistic, etc.
-Analyze their personality based on the six societal character virtues: temperance, courage, humanity, justice, wisdom, and transcendence.
-Take stock of the personal identity of the individual, that is, the personal myth that they have created to explain themselves.

The author also takes a sidetrack foray into gene makeup and brain construction in the realm of personality, to help give some insight depth as to why we are all exactly alike, somewhat alike, and nothing alike one another.

I found this book useful to give me a primer on one system of personality analysis and understanding, and mostly to now have a lexicon and vocabulary to explain personality. I haven't taken the writer's prompt to find a person "P" to analyze through the system, thought I can see how that might be helpful to at least clearly identify, or have words to use on, other people to get a grasp of others. This also helps us become aware of OUR issues and biases, makes us more thoughtful and less morally judgemental about others actions in light of their personality.

[JP · Rating 5 out of 5]

What’s the best way to critically assess others’ personalities? First impressions matter. Demonstrated behaviors matter and often affect us directly. Family history and formative experiences certainly matter. Making Sense of People provides a practical, manageable framework for putting all available data points together. One key benefit of the approach is that it counterbalances any the emotional lenses we might bring based on our own tendencies or previous experiences with a person. For someone looking to improve how they size up others, or to develop emotional intelligence in general, this book is an excellent starting point.

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book on a few more tools in understanding and making sense of people. What I really enjoyed was the short and concise explanation of several great ways to size people up, such as the Big 5 Personality traits, moral traits, and how to combine them all with the story a person tells. I've added a few of these ideas to my documents on understanding my employees better and the added effort and knowledge has really paid off in working with different types of people. I would recommend this book to any new and seasoned manager in any company.

[Ogi Ogas · Rating 2 out of 5]

My ratings of books on Goodreads are solely a crude ranking of their utility to me, and not an evaluation of literary merit, entertainment value, social importance, humor, insightfulness, scientific accuracy, creative vigor, suspensefulness of plot, depth of characters, vitality of theme, excitement of climax, satisfaction of ending, or any other combination of dimensions of value which we are expected to boil down through some fabulous alchemy into a single digit.

[Manuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es de los primeros libros que leo sobre estos temas. Es un buen libro, todo lo que dice el autor está basado en estudios que se han hecho, y sustenta todas las ideas que se hablan.

Aunque en partes fue un poco difícil de leer, es un libro corto donde puedes conocer un poco más sobre la personalidad de las personas, de dónde sale, cómo se desarrolla durante la vida, entre otras cosas

[Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a good book - better than many on personality as it avoids the more bogus ones like Myers-Briggs in favor of 5 Factors, but its sufficiently short, shallow, and devoid of actionable information that it doesn't really deserve more than 3 stars. A bit of a missed opportunity.

[Charlie · Rating 2 out of 5]

A light tome

I wanted something to help me type people. The book had some of this but spent waaaay too much time on Psych 101 cliffs notes.

[Federico Alatorre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fácil y rápido de leer pero con una profundidad increíble en psicología que te ayudará a mejorar tus relaciones interpersonales

[Charles Portland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good for clinical write-ups and to justify administrative actions. If you want to help or otherwise change somebody including yourself, see "Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini.