Three Seductive Ideas

New
Paperback
2000
$36.44

Do the first two years of life really determine a child's future development? Are human beings, like other primates, only motivated by pleasure? And do people actually have stable traits, like intelligence, fear, anxiety, and temperament? This text takes on the assumptions behind these questions, in an attempt to prove them mistaken. Scientists, as well as lay people, tend to think of abstract processes - like intelligence or fear - as measurable entities, of which someone might have more or less. This approach, in Kagan's analysis, shows a blindness to the power of context and to the great variability within any individual, subject to different emotions and circumstances. Infant determinism is another widespread and dearly held conviction that Kagan contests. This theory - with its claim that early relationships determine lifelong patterns - underestimates human resiliency and adaptiveness, both emotional and cognitive (and fails to account for the happy products of miserable childhoods, and vice versa). The last of Kagan's targets is the pleasure principle, which, he argues, can hardly make sense of unselfish behaviour impelled by the desire for virtue and self-respect - the wish to do the right thing.

Synopsis

Do the first two years of life really determine a child's future development? Are human beings, like other primates, only motivated by pleasure? And do people actually have stable traits, like intelligence, fear, anxiety, and temperament? This text takes on the assumptions behind these questions, in an attempt to prove them mistaken. Scientists, as well as lay people, tend to think of abstract processes - like intelligence or fear - as measurable entities, of which someone might have more or less. This approach, in Kagan's analysis, shows a blindness to the power of context and to the great variability within any individual, subject to different emotions and circumstances. "Infant determinism" is another widespread and dearly held conviction that Kagan contests. This theory - with its claim that early relationships determine lifelong patterns - underestimates human resiliency and adaptiveness, both emotional and cognitive (and fails to account for the happy products of miserable childhoods, and vice versa). The last of Kagan's targets is the pleasure principle, which, he argues, can hardly make sense of unselfish behaviour impelled by the desire for virtue and self-respect - the wish to do the right thing.

$36.44

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20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 240
Edition: New edition
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 03 Apr 2000
ISBN 10: 0674001974
ISBN 13: 9780674001978

Media Reviews

The downside to the exciting reports of new discoveries in cognitive science and neuroscience is that we are left almost no chance to think carefully about what it all means. Jerome Kagan's Three Seductive Ideas is thus a refreshing pause as well as a practical contribution to our scientific sanity. If you enjoy reflecting on science--how it is made, how it is presented, what it solves--and if you really like philosophy in the true and best sense of the word, you should read this delightful book.--Antonio R. Damasio, University of Iowa
Three Seductive Ideas isn't merely a book about how all people think; it's about how psychologists think about what they do. Kagan argues that the consequences of their ill-considered and misplaced enthusiasms--in favour of infant determinism, the pleasure principle and the stability of emotions and intelligence (the three seductive ideas)--trivialize their discipline and retard the progress of knowledge. His erudite text, quietly assured whenever possible and quietly skeptical when necessary, lacks both vanity and false modesty. Kagan is always polite, even when deflating hyperbole, redirecting ill-considered ascription or fleshing out abstraction...Kagan has provided nothing less than a thorough critique of psychological discourse and method. His colleagues will ignore it at their peril; lay readers will gain from it both wisdom and delight.--Ted Whittaker Globe and Mail
It takes a mature scientist to recognize the truly basic problems in his science, and to offer inspiring solutions. Jerome Kagan's accomplishment of these difficult tasks is masterful. Controversial as his arguments will be, they are indisputably on target. Three Seductive Ideas brings a fresh vision not just to psychology but to all the social sciences.--Robert Cairns, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Neuroscientific and psychological research findings have too often been hyped into a social-developmental theory of everything. In this passionately argued book, Jerry Kagan demolishes inflated claims for the irreversible effects of very early experience, or the inability of people to change. Three Seductive Ideas addresses fundamental questions for anyone interested in child development, or in psychology's claim to be a science. It could not be more timely.--John T. Bruer, President, James S. McDonnell Foundation
The expression seductive ideas is Jerome Kagan's euphemism for popular fallacies in the behavioral sciences, and he overturns far more than three of them in this brilliant and provocative book. Kagan, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, is a near-legendary figure in the field of child development. It is accurate, but superficial, to describe Three Seductive Ideas as a critique of some baneful errors committed by social scientists, which are unmasked by one of psychology's most erudite and rigorous experimentalists: Accurate because Kagan's treatise is a contravention written by a master of the trade. Superficial because the book deserves to be read more deeply. Kagan offers a candid defense of the moral and spiritual nature of human beings, written in opposition to several powerful intellectual currents, including evolutionary psychology, computational neuroscience, and cognitive ethology.--Richard A. Shweder Science
In the field of psychology, Jerome Kagan stands out as a distinguished and eloquent champion of conceptual pluralism. His newest book, Three Seductive Ideas, provides an insightful unmasking of some of the most influential psychological myths and misconceptions by which we live. Kagan's compelling conclusions constitute an indispensable road map for all who seek to understand the story of human development.--Frank J. Sulloway, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Three Seductive Ideas has all the sweep and grandeur of a symphony. Kagan, being the grand conductor he is, brings together ideas from philosophy, anthropology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience, to provide this reader with an important and persuasive critique.--Nathan Fox, University of Maryland at College Park

Author Bio

Jerome Kagan is Daniel and Amy Starch Professor of Psychology at Harvard University.