2011 TheSocialAnimalAStoryofHowSucce

• (Brooks, 2011) ⇒ David Brooks. (2011). “The Social Animal: A Story of How Success Happens." Short Books. ISBN:1780720009

Subject Headings: Social Human, Human Unconscious, Human Moral Sense, Wisdom.

Notes

• Google Books Page: http://books.google.com/books?id=IHYS0hpQ9CgC

Cited By

• http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22The+Social+Animal%3A+A+Story+of+How+Success+Happens%22+2011

Quotes

Abstract

This is the happiest story you will ever read. It’s about two people who led wonderfully fulfilling, successful lives. The odd thing was, they weren’t born geniuses. They had no extraordinary physical or mental gifts. Nobody would have picked them out at a young age and said they were destined for greatness. How did they do it? In the past thirty years we have learnt more about the human brain than in the previous 3000 – a scientific revolution has occurred. The unconscious mind, it turns out, is most of the mind – the place where the majority of the brain’s work gets done, where our most important life decisions are made, where character is formed and the seeds of accomplishment grow. In this illuminating and compelling book, David Brooks weaves a vast array of new research into the lives of two fictional characters, Harold and Erica, following them from infancy to old age. In so doing, he reveals a fundamental new understanding of human nature. Most success stories are explained at the surface level of life. They describe academic ability, hard work and learning the right techniques to get ahead. This story – the story of Harold and Erica – is told one level down, at the level of emotions, intuitions, biases, genetic predispositions and deep inner longings. The result is a new definition of success, highlighting what economists call non-cognitive skills – those hidden qualities that can’t be easily counted or measured, but which in real life lead to happiness and fulfilment. The Social Animal is a moving and nuanced intellectual adventure. Impossible to put down, it is an essential book for our time – one that will have a broad social impact and change the way we see ourselves and the world. « Less

Chapter 20: The Softer Side

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p326. The real engine of change, Harold believe, was a change in the cognitive load. Over the past few decades, technological and social revolution had put greater and greater demands on human cognition. People are now compelled to absorb and process a much more complicated array of information streams. They are compelled to navigate much more complicated social enviornments. This is happening in both localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening if you tore up every free-trade deal ever inked.

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Chapter 21: The Other Education

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p340 Gender roles being to merge as people age. Many women get more assertive while many men get more emotionally attuned. Personalities often become more vivid, as people become more of what they already are. Norma Haan of Berkeley conducted a fifty-year follow-up of people who had been studies while young, and concluded that the subjects had become more outgoing, self-confident, and warm with age.

There's no evidence to suggest that people get automatically wiser as they get older. The tests, such as they are, that try to assess “wisdom” (a combination of social, emotional, and informational knowledge) suggests a kind of plateau. People achieve a level of competence on these tests in middle age, which holds steady until about age seventy-five. …

..."By the time we reach age fifty," University of Pennsylvania neuroscientist Andre B. Newburg has written, "we are less likely to elicit the kinds of peak transcendent experiences that can occur when we are young. Instead, we are more inclined to have subtle spiritual experiences and refinements of our basic belief."

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References

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	Author	volume	Date Value	title	type	journal	titleUrl	doi	note	year
2011 TheSocialAnimalAStoryofHowSucce	David Brooks			The Social Animal: A Story of How Success Happens