How To Improve Humans

In Steven Covey's classic, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he famously described how the "success" and "self-help" literature of earlier American generations had focused on character (principles for developing us into who we are), where more recent offerings had focused on personality (techniques for developing our image).  Seven Habits was an attempt to get back to forgotten ideals about the importance of character.

Tom Wolfe has written of his belief that the 21st Century will be characterized as a time of a "Great Relearning" of principles that had been ejected by 20th Century revolutionaries, who were so anxious to overcome the ills they saw everywhere around them that they sought to "start from zero" in building a new society.  In the process they forgot the wisdom of earlier generations on matters which will now have to be "relearned" for the upcoming generation who missed out on their transmission.

Three new "self-help" style books I recently completed would, I think, be met with approval from both Covey and Wolfe, focusing as they do on old-fashioned character traits.  But they are also based on the latest psychological evidence on the techniques that can help us develop those traits.

In How Children Succeed, Paul Tough argues that grit and persistence and tenacity are just as important, if not more so, than IQ, for building a solid foundation in life. 

He also spends alot of time talking about "character", what it means (the traits which will help a person perform well in life, or is it something higher: the traits which will help a person reach out to others in life?) how it can be taught, and why it matters. 

Some compelling ideas and, for the most part, a helpful read. Could have been called "How People Succeed".  In addition to being a good source for information on the importance of factors other than IQ (such as grit and persistence and optimism) for success in life the book also contains helpful information on the role played by adverse childhood experiences (such as an unstable home) in preventing the formation of those qualities.

Could have been a much better book though, but for the author's choice to focus most of his attention on opposite ends of the economic spectrum, comparing inner city schools attended by the childen of the very poor to elite private schools, which prevented large swaths of the book from being of much use to the rest of us who live and raise our children somewhere between those two extremes.

I worried, towards the end of Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit, that it would be one of those books that ultimately argued people have no agency or (therefore) accountability, as he described the travails of a compulsive gambler.  But, ultimately, he doesn't go there, suggesting instead that we are responsible for the actions which develop into our habits, good or bad.  Better yet, his book is a powerful tool for understanding how habits work, and what is going on psychologically when we find ourselves in their power.  Lots of very helpful information, well worth reading, both for individuals and organizations, on how to replace bad habits with good, and our accountability (there's an old fashioned word that needs relearning) for doing so.

That leads to the most practical book in the bunch:  The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal,  explains that willpower resides in our prefrontal cortex, which doesn't fully develop until we are adults, but which, like a muscle, can be increased through use.  Her insights into how to strengthen that muscle make this a must read for anyone trying to build the good habits discussed in Duhigg's book.  I found the information on social viruses and ironic rebound to be especially helpful.  This isn't a book to read once and then set aside, it's a reference to go back to again and again for ideas and insights into how we can overcome any willpower challenges we might currently be wrestling with in our life.

Overall, three great books that complement and reinforce each other when read together.

If I had any concern with these three books, it would be the same concern I had with Jonathan Haidt's book on The Righteous Divide, or, indeed, with every book on social or behavioral studies I've read over the past several years.  Even diet books.  They are all much too eager to offer up theories of human behavior based on "evolutionary psychology."  Instead of merely describing what modern psychological tests reveal about the human condition, they insist on explaining how that condition came to be, allegedly based on the course of our ancestors' existence in the primordial savannahs. 

I find this absurd. 

No, I don't find it absurd because, as a person of faith, I think evolutionary psychology is bad religion.  (Questions surrounding the extent to which the Book of Genesis can or cannot be reconciled with modern scientific notions about the age and formation of the earth or the development of the physical body of man have never interested me very much.  I assume that someday, as stated in Doctrine and Covenants 101:33, we'll be given more information about how the earth was made, including information that "no man" -scientist or theologian- previously knew, and we'll figure it all out then.) 

Rather, I find much of evolutionary psychology to be absurd because it's bad science.  Or at least highly dubious, sloppy, and overstated and oversimplified science.  Last I checked, the scientific method still required at least two steps: (1) hypothesis; (2) testing.  Evolutionary psychology is all hypothesis, and since there's no way to design and run a million year lab experiment, that's all it can ever remain.  Nor is there a great deal of evidence from archaelogical conditions with which to fill in that gap.  If we were to gather in one place all of the bones and artifacts and other indicia of what life was like for ancient man, . . . we wouldn't need a very big place.  We just don't know that much, and so too much of evolutionary psychology remains a pat, just-so story:  "Humans happen to have character trait X.  Therefore, X must have given them some survival advantage in the distant past.  Let's make up a story about what that advantage was and how it worked, the beauty of which story is that it is untestable and therefore no one will ever be able to challenge us on it." 

Nevertheless, the science that tells us about how our brains work now (as opposed to how they came to so work) is compelling, and helpful.  And these are three good books to learn practical applications of that science, including applications that go beyond technique and can help build character.