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Born To Be Good: The Science Of A Meaningful Life (2009)

by Dacher Keltner(Favorite Author)

3.44 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

039306512X (ISBN13: 9780393065121)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

review 1: I bought this book and started reading it because it was advertized as a sociological study of how people are inherently good. The first chapter introduced the concept of jen, which comes from Eastern philosophy and means all the positive social interactions, and positive social capital. The first chapter was amazing and I thought I was going to read a boo about Buddhist philosophy, or media analyses, or a sociological critique that we're all motivated for good.But that's not what I got. I instead received a chapter on the evolutionary and neurological basis for embarrassment. Then another chapter on smiles. Then laughter. Then teasing.By this point I had learned that the author is a Psychology professor who specializes in facial feature analyzes. These chapters all contai... morened lengthy discussions and details about tiny facial movements and how to distinguish between genuine and false smiles. There was lots of heavy discussions of psychology methodology and how to set up research studies, and lots of technical, scientific details. At some points, you completely forgot you were supposedly reading a book about why people are good - it felt like a psychology textbook on emotional development. I was greatly disappointed that I did not have an existential book that argued how we're do good things for society and world. However, I just magically happen to be a psychology PhD student. In any other circumstance, I think the long scientific rants would have made me close the book. But once I accepted this was a psychology book and turned on my "work" brain, I really enjoyed it. It was written at a much more accessible and interesting level than a scholarly article, and the long discussions on emotional development was quite complementary to my field of study in social development. When shyness and Jerome Kagan was mentioned I giggled with joy. I have cited Kagan in both my MA and PhD theses, and the deeper understanding of vagal tone was much appreciated. And of course, I loved the interesting discussions of research methods. The Darwinian rants and longwinded "histories" of smiles and teasing was still boring. And if you are not a PhD student in psychology, then the entire book is likely going to be boring. The end of the book began to combine the psychology and the sociology a bit. The final chapters were on love, compassion and awe. These chapters redeemed the book and the awe chapter made me realize that although I have experience many moments of awe, I have never really thought about them (or the emotion) before - so that was trippy. However, the ending was terrible. A few chapters at the end of the awe chapter attempted to wrap things up and did it quite poorly. Given the wonderful introductory chapter, this was a definite let down.
review 2: Totally biased, simplistic, and overly optimistic, but some of the studies presented were interesting. There are much better accounts of our evolutionary nature than this, including Michael Shermer's Science of Good and Evil and anything by Steven Pinker. Barbara Oakley's Evil Genes also gives a different perspective.This guy has an agenda, and he doesn't want to present any evidence or interpret any evidence contrary to it. He would make a great guest on Oprah. Adam Smith was unfairly disparaged in the book, but Smith's armchair philosophy in The Theory of Moral Sentiments is more on target than all of Keltner's starry eyed conclusions based on his selected "scientific" studies. less

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