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No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality

Judith Rich Harris

4.09 · Rating details · 309 ratings · 31 reviews

The author of the controversial book The Nurture Assumption tackles the biggest mystery in all of psychology: What makes people differ so much in personality and behavior? It can't just be "nature and nurture," because even identical twins who grow up together—same genes, same parents—have different personalities. And if psychologists can't explain why identical twins are ...more

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Paperback, 352 pages

Published June 17th 2007 by W. W. Norton Company (first published 2006)

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Mar 29, 2011 Mark rated it it was amazing

As a second grade teacher this book has probably had more of an effect on how I relate to my students than anything else I've read. It has freed me up to do what I can to help students become more successful without getting caught up in those things that I can't change: their genetic makeup and home lives.

I refer to it often in talking to parents, along with The Myth of Laziness and a couple of other books.

This book challenges our common thinking, a lot of recent 'research' and culturally accept ...more

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Feb 11, 2020 Meeri rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Good book

An interesting take on why we turn out the way we do. And a welcome respite for parents who seem to be blamed for everything and anything that goes wrong in people’s lives.

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Jul 22, 2011 Sam rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

In her first book, The Nurture Assumption, Judith Rich Harris presented evidence and analysis suggesting that parenting styles have little impact on long-term child development. No Two Alike has a different aim but in a way it more convincingly argues Nurture Assumption's case because it describes and rebuts criticism of the first book, and her critics support the factual basis of many of her claims.

The main point of this book, though, is Harris's speculation about what makes people so differen ...more

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Feb 22, 2011 Pamela rated it it was amazing

Judith Rich Harris, who broke into public consciousness over 10 years ago with her book The Nurture Assumption, has again assembled and analyzed countless studies on personality development in an attempt to answer the question: "What besides genetics shapes individual personality?" While it might seem obvious that the other factor is environment, Rich says not so fast. We tend to understand "environment" as "family environment," above all the way our parents raised us. According to Rich, the bes ...more

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Aug 07, 2019 Dennis Littrell rated it it was amazing

A masterful presentation of how we become who we are

This is an outstanding book on social and developmental psychology based primarily on evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology and neuroscience--the new paradigm that's revolutionizing academic psychology. It's engagingly written, authoritative, witty, ingeniously argued, and filled with information and wisdom. Judith Rich Harris is that rare, very rare, individual who is a top academic without a position at a major university, a professor A masterful presentation of how we become who we are

This is an outstanding book on social and developmental psychology based primarily on evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology and neuroscience--the new paradigm that's revolutionizing academic psychology. It's engagingly written, authoritative, witty, ingeniously argued, and filled with information and wisdom. Judith Rich Harris is that rare, very rare, individual who is a top academic without a position at a major university, a professor without portfolio, so to speak.

When I first picked this up I almost put it down again. The title "No Two Alike" sounds suspiciously like another feel good, shallow celebration of human diversity. Right. We're all wonderful. Thanks, I needed that. Furthermore, I kind of creeped out at the joined-at-the-heads twins that were the subject near the beginning of the book. In fact I stopped reading from the beginning and put the book aside. When I returned to it, I noticed that chapters six through nine were entitled, The Modular Mind, The Relationship System, The Socialization System, and The Status System. That rekindled my interest.

The idea of the modular mind comes from fairly recent advances in neuroscience and cognitive psychology as understood from an evolutionary perspective. I started reading on page 143 where the chapter on the modular mind begins. What I discovered is that Harris' understanding of who we are and how we got that way begins with evidence from genetics and ends with insights from social psychology. She sees the relationship system as the way we learn to form and maintain relationships with others. The infant begins with a relationship with its mother. Harris states that the child's first job is to get the mother to love her. I have seen this in children and they do it mostly by appealing to the mother's instincts. They are small and helpless with relatively big eyes and soft skin, etc., and so appear to the mother as irresistibly cute. Next they try to win the love of the father. Girls instinctively know that if they win the love of their father they are likely to be safe. They work hard at it. Then come the relationships with others.

And then comes the socialization system. Harris makes a distinction between learning to form relationships and socialization. In the former it's one on one. In the latter we don't so much relate to individuals as to the average of all others. We seek to become like the typical person in our group. We support the group and identify with its values and preoccupations.

Finally comes the status system. This is in some sense at loggerheads with the socialization system. Instead of seeking to be like others, what we want is to be like them only a little better or at least a little better at something. Instead of imitating the styles of others we look at them to read how they rate us.

Harris sees these three systems with our genes interacting over time as forming our personalities. She makes it clear that it is our peer groups that we look to for both our identity and our status. She believes that the primary information we receive does not come from our parents. We adjust to and comform to the values, beliefs and mores of the larger society at the peer group level, not to the values, beliefs and mores of our parents, except insofar as their values are similar to those of the larger group. Furthermore, we tend to discount the opinions of our relatives when assessing our status. (They can be biased!) Instead we look to our peers to tell us how we stand. Harris calls this "mindreading," but what we do is not so much read the minds of our peers as read their behavior, especially their behavior toward us, and deduce our status accordingly. If everybody in the group suddenly turns to look at you when the tough question comes up--guess what? They probably think you are the best person to answer it. When it comes to deciding how to choose up teams for basketball, if their eyes turn to Basketball Jones, you can be fairly sure that they think Basketball Jones knows basketball, or at least she knows how to set up teams.

The complex interactions of these systems in addition to the genetic endowment ensures us that everybody is unique, even identical twins. Harris makes a point of showing how identical twins become differentiated over time through feedback from especially the status system. People need to form mental dossiers on everybody they know, and they do so even with twins; and in doing so they see fine distinctions, and then the distinctions grow. Not only that but one twin will, through happenstance or "environmental noise," as Harris terms it, be ever so slightly more assertive or more confident, and that difference, like a leak in a dike, will grow.

In short this is a terrific book, skillfully and even eloquently written, full of information and deep insights into human nature, well documented and argued in a most convincing manner. It is simply one of the best books on psychology that I have read in quite a while.

Here's a quote from Harris that demonstrates her skill and intelligence: "The desire for status begins early and lasts a lifetime. Old people in nursing homes, well past the point when Viagra can do them any good, still care about their status. In my view, status is an end in itself for humans. The fact that it buys access to desirable sexual partners in adulthood is no doubt one of the evolutionary reasons we are endowed with this motive, but evolution's reasons shouldn't be confused with people's motivations. Status also buys access to desirable things to eat and drink, but the drive to gain status isn't a side effect of hunger or thirst. If anything, hunger and thirst are likely to interfere with the quest for status. Sex can too. Ask Bill Clinton." (p. 256)

--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
...more

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Jun 27, 2019 Isaac rated it really liked it

The premise of this book is brilliant, instead of examining how similar identical twins are she turns things around and attempts to explain why two people with identical genes and almost identical environments are so different. Her investigation is thorough; she cites dozens of fascinating studies and picks apart as many bad ones.

Following her logic is occasionally challenging but for the most part the book is accessible. My biggest gripes were with her style, she occasionally came across quite ...more

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Jan 24, 2014 Rossdavidh rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: white

Subtitle: Human Nature and Human Individuality.

Once upon a time, a mother and housewife name Judith Rich Harris, with a business on the side writing psychology textbooks, lost her faith. Which is to say, she turned against the prevailing school of thought of mainstream psychology at the time, which believed that early parental behavior exerted profound influences over a child's behavior and personality, and would influence their development throughout the rest of their lives. She wrote a book, ' Subtitle: Human Nature and Human Individuality.

Once upon a time, a mother and housewife name Judith Rich Harris, with a business on the side writing psychology textbooks, lost her faith. Which is to say, she turned against the prevailing school of thought of mainstream psychology at the time, which believed that early parental behavior exerted profound influences over a child's behavior and personality, and would influence their development throughout the rest of their lives. She wrote a book, 'The Nurture Assumption', which said essentially that children have their own disposition, their own personality, and there are some fairly stringent limits on what a parent can do to impact that. She published the book, it was reasonably successful, and then all hell broke loose.

Psychology, as a field, has a tradition going back at least to Freud of saying that our early childhood experiences are key to understanding our adult abilities (and neuroses). As a field (which is to say with some individuals who disagree) psychology likes to tell parents that if they perform their role well their kids will be mentally healthy, but if they screw up (in any of countless ways) their kids will be mentally scarred for life. Harris said, in effect, that there is such a thing as good enough parenting, and even if you do everything right as a parent it's still hard to predict how they will turn out. Psychology did not like this, and Harris was pilloried for it.

She came back with a second book. It is not exactly a peace offering.

It should be pointed out that not all of the big names in psychology condemned Harris. Evolutionary psychologists such as Steven Pinker have come to her defense. But Harris clearly delights in her role as heretic, as seen from the viewpoint of Freud or Skinner, and she take multiple opportunities to relate tales of heated exchanges between herself and her detractors.

The starting point for her current book is the phenomenon of conjoined (also sometimes called Siamese) twins. They are genetically identical, and obviously have had the same environment, or at least as close as parents can possibly arrange for. Why do they have distinctly different personalities? If the difference in "environment" between conjoined twins is large enough to impact personality, that is more or less the same as saying that personality and ability can be impacted by environmental differences too tiny for parents ever to keep track of, and it might as well be random.

Which would be one fair answer. Harris thinks we can do better than "it's random", though, and she sets out to determine (in light of every study she can find on twins, siblings, half-siblings, and step-siblings) what is going on in human development, besides genetics. The current rule of thumb (until recently controversial) is that something just under half of the variation in personality and ability between people, is due to genetics.

The first half of the book, Harris disposes of five "red herrings", as she calls them. This involves convincing the reader of such uncomfortable truths as the fact that parental control of the environment inside the home doesn't affect much other than how the child behaves inside the home. People wish to believe (whether they identify with the role of parent or grown-up child looking back) that how parents run their home shapes how the child raised there turns out. Aside from pathological cases of horrific abuse, there is little evidence that this is so, and much that it is not so.

The second half of the book involves Harris putting forth her model (hint: it's grounded in evolutionary psychology and game theory). I am not prepared to pronounce judgment on it at this point; it sounds plausible, and testable, but I'm not in a position to test it myself. Hopefully, the gauntlet she has thrown down to the psychology community will be picked up by a researcher or three (Harris has health issues which prevent her from doing the research herself, and in any event no one should be trusted to test their own publicly stated hypothesis).

So, how does it all read?

Despite the frequent references to research performed by others, Harris' personality definitely shines through. When a few hundred pages into the book, she says "as a child I flunked socialization", we are not surprised. If you like to read of the slaughtering of the sacred cows of the ivory tower (<-mixed metaphor), Harris is likely to please.

One quibble: she likes to quote from her favorite works of fiction (Arthur Conan Doyle, Sue Grafton, Josephine Tey), in a way which I'm sure she thinks is meant to illustrate but which I found distracting. Perhaps for the reader who is less tolerant of study citation after study citation, the occasional literature or pop culture reference is more welcome. I consider it a minor blemish.

Overall, "No Two Alike" is a thought-provoking and highly readable book. It's packed with references, with enough details in the main text to back up what she is saying is or is not so. She is taking on some fairly deep-rooted beliefs, things we WANT to be true, and showing us that they are not all true, and this is something I always respect (whether I agree in the end or not). Her work straddles the line between popular science and original work (because her models of human development yield testable predictions), in more than one way, because she is in many cases drawing psychology's attention to the consequences of its own researchers' work. It will take time (and further research) to see if Harris is a visionary or an entertaining crank, but in either case, her book is worth reading, and thinking about. ...more

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Oct 23, 2018 Eric Estrada rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Thought provoking

An interesting perspective on why humans differ in personality. In my opinion (and Charlie Munger’s I’m sure) what’s more interesting is the way she challenges conventional wisdom and applies logic to the data that has already been compiled.

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Mar 15, 2017 Amanda Lulewicz rated it did not like it

I found the book to be a bit defensive and self-indulgent. While I found her perspective interesting, I was often a bit distracted by her efforts to defend herself against and even tear down her contemporaries. Disproving their theories is one thing, but this seemed much more personal. Overall interesting data that could have been presented better!

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Aug 03, 2013 OD rated it really liked it

This is the first book of Harris' that I've read. (Although I've read so many books drawing on the ideas in the "Nurture Assumption" that I doubt if I ever get round to reading it, I'll find anything new there. Much in the vein of "Seinfeld is Unfunny" TVTropes).

Harris proposes an interesting way to think about personality - as something formed through the interaction of three systems - the relationship, socialization and the status systems. A large chunk of the book is spent in eliminating the ...more

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Mar 27, 2013 Hugh Fallon rated it it was amazing

Judith Rich Harris "No Two Alike" provided for me the second half of understanding becoming a person, also referred to as building a self. This work, written during her life-threatening illness, uses the detective story model to understand how personality is build to temperament: the first part (chapter 7! is basic socialization: a supportive mothering! (Check Blum, Deborah. Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection. Perseus Publishing, 2002. ISBN 0-7382-0278-9)
In chapter 8, s ...more

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Jun 08, 2008 Rebekka Istrail rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: developmental psychologists

Shelves: science, psychology

I don't think that Judith Rich Harris is the final authority on her topic, but she does an impressive job of synthesizing research on the development of personality. She also piercingly explains specific statistical techniques and research methods (and points out instances of others' sloppy work!). Harris builds a compelling case that individuals' personality differentiation results from our pursuit of status through whichever niches fit us and are available. She contends that our status-seeking ...more

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Jan 07, 2008 Steve rated it really liked it

The first 2/3 of the book is great; Harris rips into current theories explaining variance in personality, including birth order (and other environmental differences) and gene-environment correlations. The last 1/3 of the book, in which Harris attempts to construct her own theory to determine the cause of the currently-unexplained variance in personality is not entirely convincing.

I especially liked the section in which Harris discusses the problem of the generalization assumption held by nurtur ...more

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Aug 24, 2014 R rated it it was amazing

An outsider challenges the orthodoxy on child development is how I read this book. Humans are different 45% due to genetics and 55% due to unknown causes. But no known input of the form "Do x to your child and you'll be more likely to get y." is valid for social traits or personality. An interesting point is that if a child is bad today, that's deemed bad parenting where 100 years ago it might have just been seen as the parents being unlucky for "the child they got."

So parents should avoid hubr ...more

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Oct 30, 2011 Ellen Snyder rated it really liked it

It took me a long time to read this book, but it was interesting. More investigation by the author of the Nurture Assumption, this time why people turn out differently, including identical twins. People undergo different paths of development - socialization which makes us more the same and status seeking, which makes us different. According to Harris, there is also a relationship system - providing us with allies in life.

Harris has some ideas on how research in these areas has been misleading. ...more

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May 17, 2013 Dannie rated it it was amazing

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Feb 04, 2016 Maren Vanderkolk rated it really liked it

Reading "No Two Alike" made me look at certain relationships, such as parent-child relationships, differently than before. I found some of the reading to be a little tedious, it seemed as if she wrote the book for two audiences; she included many studies, sources and detail for people in her field but also included some humor in it which made it a little more enjoyable for an audience such as myself. Am I convinced? Partly, I guess I would say I'm a little surprised too. In the end I say it defi ...more

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Jul 12, 2007 Jared rated it really liked it

Judith Rich Harris is a champion of the scientific method. I admire her for working so hard at her research in spite of her physical limitations. I think her formal descriptions of three main systems in our brains that are responsible for making us all so similar, unique, and competitive is pretty compelling. Her digressions are also pretty entertaining.

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Feb 29, 2012 Tamarah rated it really liked it

I found it very interesting, but did not like the style at all. Too much superiority, nastiness.
I am not sure I really agree to the whole of the hypothesis -- my gut is that the family is more important that Harris says -- but I did find her ideas challenging and refreshing. Definitely have made me question my own assumptions.

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May 10, 2014 Dave Peticolas rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Harris elaborates her theory on how and why each person develops a unique personality (even identical twins). But first she pauses to consider, then demolish, rival theories. The pause takes up the first two-thirds of the book and makes for great reading. The theory itself seemed somewhat light on the details.

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Nov 06, 2011 Nathan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science, non-fiction

A very convincing and engrossing analysis. Harris's take definitely rings true to my experience as a human who is often tripped up by the instinct to balance conformity with setting myself apart, all in an attempt to "impress" peers (be they real or imagined). ...more

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Jan 11, 2011 Jonathan Gledson rated it it was amazing

A light goes on. A penny drops! If you are bored and frustrated by arguments over nature or nurture and genetic determinism or social conditioning, then this may resolve your conflicts.

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Apr 01, 2011 Stephanie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: parenting

Judith Rich Harris is brilliant.

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Aug 09, 2011 Jeff Gagne added it

Love the snark and the skepticism here. Plus she's a big fan of genetics research. ...more

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Jul 09, 2014 Kaethe Douglas rated it really liked it

Shelves: science, nonfiction

too much Simon Baron-Cohen; but a good, cohesive theory of personality development

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Aug 22, 2016 Mahesh rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Charile Munger recomended,
a gem of book.
salute to Judith Rich Harris for eye opener

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Jan 04, 2013 InYourFaceNewYorker rated it it was amazing

A very interesting theory of what makes everybody different.

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Aug 15, 2017 SeaShore added it

It all depends on when you read a book and why you're reading it. I'm re-reading this book now after so much research has done for my interest.
...more

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Jul 02, 2018 Robert Bogue rated it really liked it · review of another edition

“Why am I me?” is an important – and unanswered – question that George Dyson asked his father, Freeman Dyson, at age 8. It’s at the heart of Judith Rich Harris’ work in No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality. It’s the essence of the tension between our desire to be like others and our need to have status amongst our peers. I’ve read and reviewed Harris’ previous work, The Nurture Assumption (written in 1998), so in many ways her work here builds on her theories, which I’ve previously ...more

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Jan 18, 2019 mm marked it as to-read

α - Charlie Munger recommends via Shane Parrish of Farnam Street blog ...more

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About Judith Rich Harris

Judith Rich Harris

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Judith Rich Harris was born February 10, 1938, and spent the first part of her childhood moving around with her family from one part of the country to another. Her parents eventually settled in Tucson, Arizona, where the climate permitted her father (invalided by an autoimmune disease called ankylosing spondylitis) to live in reasonable comfort. Harris graduated from Tucson High School and attende Judith Rich Harris was born February 10, 1938, and spent the first part of her childhood moving around with her family from one part of the country to another. Her parents eventually settled in Tucson, Arizona, where the climate permitted her father (invalided by an autoimmune disease called ankylosing spondylitis) to live in reasonable comfort. Harris graduated from Tucson High School and attended the University of Arizona and Brandeis University. She graduated magna cum laude from Brandeis in 1959 and was awarded the Lila Pearlman Prize in psychology. In 1961 she received a master's degree in psychology from Harvard University.

Harris has been married since 1961 to Charles S. Harris; they have two daughters, born in 1966 and 1969, and four grandchildren, born in 1996, 1999, 2001, and 2004. Before her children were born, Harris worked as a teaching assistant in psychology at MIT (1961-1962), and as a research assistant at Bolt Beranek and Newman (1962-1963) and the University of Pennsylvania (1963-1965).

Since 1977, Harris has suffered from a chronic autoimmune disorder called mixed connective tissue disease - an "overlap" combination of lupus and systemic sclerosis. This disorder can affect virtually any organ in the body. One of its more serious complications is a heart-lung condition known as pulmonary arterial hypertension. Harris was diagnosed with this condition in 2002.

While bedridden for a period of time in the late 1970s, Harris worked out a mathematical model of visual search; this work was published in two articles in the journal Perception and Psychophysics (see publication list below). From 1981 to 1994 she was a writer of textbooks in developmental psychology. She is senior author of The Child (Prentice-Hall, 1984, 1987, 1991) and Infant and Child (1992).

In 1994 Harris had begun work on a new development textbook, without a co-author this time, when she had an idea that led her to formulate a new theory of child development. She abandoned the textbook and instead wrote an article for the Psychological Review. Work on The Nurture Assumption began in 1995; the book was published three years later (Free Press, 1998). But the theory continued to evolve. The final version was presented in No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality (Norton, 2006).

Harris is a member of the Association for Psychological Science and Phi Beta Kappa. In 1998 she received the George A. Miller Award from the American Psychological Association for her article entitled "Where Is the Child's Environment? A Group Socialization Theory of Development" (Psychological Review, 1995). This award is given to an outstanding article, particularly one that makes linkages between diverse fields of psychology. In 2007 she received the David Horrobin Prize for Medical Theory for her article "Parental selection: a third selection process in the evolution of human hairlessness and skin color" (Medical Hypotheses, 2006). ...more