Making Sense of People: The Science of Personality Differences, Second Edition

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! Supplement your intuition Identify character strengths and weaknesses Make better decisions about whom to seek out and whom to avoid Find out how all personalities are shaped by two great chance events: the set of genes we happen to be born with, and the world we happen to grow up in Preface to Second Edition xi Introduction: When Intuition Isn't Enough 1 Part I: Describing Personality Differences 1 Personality Traits 7 2 Troublesome Patterns 33 Part II: Explaining Personality Differences 3 How Genes Make Us Different 65 4 Building a Personal Brain 87 Part III: Whole Persons, Whole Lives 5 What's a Good Character? 111 6 Identity: Creating a Personal Story 139 7 Putting It All Together 159 Endnotes 175 References 199 Acknowledgments 221 Index 227 Provides tools to assess a person's traits, character, and sense of identity to get along better, choose great friends, decide whom to trust, and avoid narcissists and sociopaths Samuel Barondes. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.