What do you think?
Rate this book
Nature's Thumbprint: The New Genetics of Personality
Discusses the genetic forces that shape our personalities, and identifies inborn inclinations such as adaptability, timetable of maturation, and susceptibility to environmental factors
- GenresPsychology
223 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 1990
2 people are currently reading
78 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 18, 2021
This should be required reading for anyone in the field of psychology or cognitive science. It is seldom that you will you find an author so willing to play both sides and articulate such a well rounded, holistic perspective.
As we continue to make developments in the fields of neuroscience, genetics and so on, and as our cultural attitudes towards mental health shift, maintaining this balanced perspective is vital in understanding the human experience.
We’re in an era where we have the ability to look at things in isolation, and often do - say, treating symptoms instead of underlying causes; or breaking larger truths into their constituent parts and contemplating them in isolation. It seems that Neubauer struggled with this too. His work is a reminder of the cyclical nature of being: the whole is the sum of one’s parts, which has an affect on and by one’s surroundings, all of which modulates those sums. Order and flexibility, nature and nurture - the ideas are not in competition but in a very fine balance with one another: and context is key.
While the book touches on the longitudinal twin studies which in and of itself is ethically ambiguous; the resulting observations and conclusions are great feats of perspective. It is a shame that the personal experiences of those involved in Neubauer’s study will overshadow the key takeaways that were drawn from those experiments.
I hope to revisit Neubauer’s work in the future - some of which he chose not to publish in fear of the public’s reception.
As we continue to make developments in the fields of neuroscience, genetics and so on, and as our cultural attitudes towards mental health shift, maintaining this balanced perspective is vital in understanding the human experience.
We’re in an era where we have the ability to look at things in isolation, and often do - say, treating symptoms instead of underlying causes; or breaking larger truths into their constituent parts and contemplating them in isolation. It seems that Neubauer struggled with this too. His work is a reminder of the cyclical nature of being: the whole is the sum of one’s parts, which has an affect on and by one’s surroundings, all of which modulates those sums. Order and flexibility, nature and nurture - the ideas are not in competition but in a very fine balance with one another: and context is key.
While the book touches on the longitudinal twin studies which in and of itself is ethically ambiguous; the resulting observations and conclusions are great feats of perspective. It is a shame that the personal experiences of those involved in Neubauer’s study will overshadow the key takeaways that were drawn from those experiments.
I hope to revisit Neubauer’s work in the future - some of which he chose not to publish in fear of the public’s reception.
September 30, 2024
Unethical researcher. The lead psychologist who violated the right of children and treated them as subjects without consent.
Why was the Triplet study unethical?
BASIC RULES OF ETHICAL RESEARCH
The second rule is that you may not harm people. The first basic rule was clearly violated with the study of these triplets, as they were unaware and not even capable of giving consent when they were used as test subjects.
Citation: https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2018/1...
Why was the Triplet study unethical?
BASIC RULES OF ETHICAL RESEARCH
The second rule is that you may not harm people. The first basic rule was clearly violated with the study of these triplets, as they were unaware and not even capable of giving consent when they were used as test subjects.
Citation: https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2018/1...
February 8, 2021
This book made a big impression on me when I read it back in 1998. Did this connect into epigenetics? Was his theory denounced or accepted? I might want to revisit it and find updates to the concept.
2021: Holy Cow. Disturbing news about how this study was facilitated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_B...
2021: Holy Cow. Disturbing news about how this study was facilitated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_B...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews