Nearly two thousand years ago a physician named Galen of Pergamon suggested that much of the variation in human behavior could be explained by an individual's temperament. Since that time, inborn dispositions have fallen in and out of favor. Based on fifteen years of research, Galen's Prophecy now provides fresh insights into these complex questions, offering startling new evidence to support Galen's ancient classification of melancholic and sanguine adults. Integrating evidence and ideas from biology, philosophy, and psychology, Jerome Kagan examines the implications of the idea of temperament for aggressive behavior, conscience, psychopathology, and the degree to which each of us can be expected to control our deepest emotions.

"A Young Mind in a Growing Brain" summarizes some initial conclusions that follow simultaneous examination of the psychological milestones of human development during its first decade and what has been learned about brain growth. This volume proposes that development is the process of experience working on a brain that is undergoing significant biological maturation. Experience counts, but only when the brain has developed to the point of being able to process, encode, and interact with these new environmental experiences.
This book's aim is to acquaint developmental biologists and neuroscientists with what has been learned about human psychological development and to acquaint developmental psychologists with the biological evidence. The hope is that each group will gain a richer appreciation of both knowledge corpora. The authors hope to appeal to neuroscientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, pediatricians, and their students.
The idea for this book was born in 1993 when the authors--a leading developmental psychologist and a pediatrician--met for the first time and recognized the complementarity of their backgrounds and the utility of a collaboration. The reception of their first two papers motivated this attempt to synthesize the available information over a longer developmental era. Learning a great deal over the past decade, the authors hope that their enthusiasm provokes an equally intense curiosity in readers.

"A Young Mind in a Growing Brain" summarizes some initial conclusions that follow simultaneous examination of the psychological milestones of human development during its first decade and what has been learned about brain growth. This volume proposes that development is the process of experience working on a brain that is undergoing significant biological maturation. Experience counts, but only when the brain has developed to the point of being able to process, encode, and interact with these new environmental experiences.
This book's aim is to acquaint developmental biologists and neuroscientists with what has been learned about human psychological development and to acquaint developmental psychologists with the biological evidence. The hope is that each group will gain a richer appreciation of both knowledge corpora. The authors hope to appeal to neuroscientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, pediatricians, and their students.
The idea for this book was born in 1993 when the authors--a leading developmental psychologist and a pediatrician--met for the first time and recognized the complementarity of their backgrounds and the utility of a collaboration. The reception of their first two papers motivated this attempt to synthesize the available information over a longer developmental era. Learning a great deal over the past decade, the authors hope that their enthusiasm provokes an equally intense curiosity in readers.

"Developing Cultures: Essays on Cultural Change "is a collection of 21 expert essays on the institutions that transmit cultural values from generation to generation. The essays are an outgrowth of a research project begun by Samuel Huntington and Larry Harrison in their widely discussed book Culture Matters the goal of which is guidelines for cultural change that can accelerate development in the Third World. The essays in this volume cover child rearing, several aspects of education, the world's major religions, the media, political leadership, and development projects.
The book is companion volume to "Developing Cultures: Case Studies."(0415952808).

Nearly two thousand years ago a physician named Galen of Pergamon suggested that much of the variation in human behavior could be explained by an individual's temperament. Since that time, inborn dispositions have fallen in and out of favor. Based on fifteen years of research, Galen's Prophecy now provides fresh insights into these complex questions, offering startling new evidence to support Galen's ancient classification of melancholic and sanguine adults. Integrating evidence and ideas from biology, philosophy, and psychology, Jerome Kagan examines the implications of the idea of temperament for aggressive behavior, conscience, psychopathology, and the degree to which each of us can be expected to control our deepest emotions.

The scientific study of mental disorder is exciting today because of discoveries in molecular genetics, cognitive processes, neurochemistry and neuroanatomy. The study of mental disorder has evolved from a primarily descriptive discipline into a mature science that encompasses both biological underpinnings and social and developmental work. Psychopathology combines these fields of research to present a comprehensive picture of psychosis. In this important volume, distinguished investigators from these fields present findings from their laboratories, as well as perspectives on areas of rapid growth and change. The editors also provide thoughtful overviews of four major topics in psychopathology research: brain mechanisms, thinking, development and genetics. This book will appeal to graduate students, clinicians and researchers in the fields of psychiatry, cognitive science and neuroscience.

The scientific study of mental disorder is exciting today because of new discoveries in molecular genetics, cognitive processes, neurochemistry and neuroanatomy. Psychopathology combines these fields of research to present a comprehensive picture of psychosis. In this important volume, distinguished investigators from these fields present new findings from their laboratories, as well as perspectives on areas of rapid growth and change. The editors also provide thoughtful overviews of four major topics in psychopathology research: brain mechanisms, thinking, development and genetics.

""The Emergence of Morality in Young Children" is one of very few scholarly books concerning the development of moral tendencies in the early years. In its pages, a diverse group of eminent social and behavioral scientists address this fascinating topic and struggle with issues of inquiry that have persistently plagued this field."--Nancy Eisenberg, "Harvard Educational Review"
"This is a welcome and immensely provocative book. For those of us who favor ethical theorizing done in close proximity to psychology and anthropology, it provides new and illuminating theory and research relevant to perennial debates about the origins of moral sense, its psychological organization, and the objectivity and unity of the moral."--Owen Flanagan, "Ethics"
The contributors are Augusto Blasi, Lawrence Blum, Judy Dunn, M. Ann Easterbrooks, Carolyn Pope Edwards, Robert Emde, Carol Gilligan, Charles C. Helwig, William F. Johnson, Jerome Kagan, Melanie Killen, Sharon Lamb, Manamohan Mahapatra, Joan G. Miller, Edward Mueller, Richard A. Shweder, Catherine Snow, Elliot Turiel, and Grant Wiggins.

Additional Editors Are Nelson B. Henry And Herman G. Richey.

Additional Editors Are Nelson B. Henry And Herman G. Richey.

This relevant and influential book is the analysis of a longitudinal study of eighty-nine individuals who were assessed at birth and again at regular intervals; observational, psychometric, and interview data were collected for each child and his family until the child reached adolescence, and seventy-one of the subjects were reassessed when they became adults. The book emphasizes the relationship between early experiences and adult characteristics, and has remained throughout the years a forceful argument for and illustration of the continuity thesis.

This relevant and influential book is the analysis of a longitudinal study of eighty-nine individuals who were assessed at birth and again at regular intervals; observational, psychometric, and interview data were collected for each child and his family until the child reached adolescence, and seventy-one of the subjects were reassessed when they became adults. The book emphasizes the relationship between early experiences and adult characteristics, and has remained throughout the years a forceful argument for and illustration of the continuity thesis.

The second year is that daunting time when the previously docile and adorable infant inevitably develops a mind of her own. In this book, Jerome Kagan takes a provocative look at the mental developments underlying the startling transitions in the child's second year.

It is Kagan's premise that the roots of self-awareness emerge in the second half of the second year of life. He also suggests that the underlying cause may be more biological than social. His book develops these ideas through a series of brilliant observations on the behavior of two-year-olds.

Kagan charts, for example, the emerging sense of standards (the possibility of right and wrong) that reveals itself positively when the child suddenly begins to smile after a successful action, and negatively when the child starts to become concerned about flaws in objects and mistakes in her own behavior. When this concern with standards spreads to the child's irresistible impulse to imitate adults, Kagan observes a remarkable phenomenon: the twenty-month-old child suddenly begins to show signs of distress before she even tries to imitate an action that is beyond her ability. Kagan argues that this distress could arise only from the child's growing sense of what she can and can't do--her awareness of herself.

How malleable is human nature? Can an individual really change in meaningful ways? Or, are there immutable limits on the possibilities of human growth set in place by the genes and by the early experiences of childhood? These are questions which touch our deepest political and personal concerns; and they have long been a matter of fierce debate in the behavioral sciences.

"Constancy and Change in Human Development" takes a thorough inventory of the growing body of research which now bears upon these questions. Editors Brim and Kagan have assembled an outstanding group of specialists in human growth and commissioned them to assess questions of change and continuity in physical, mental, and emotional development throughout the life span. Beginning with three general chapters which place the ideas of continuity and discontinuity in historical and philosophical perspective, the book moves across a broad spectrum of developmental issues, ranging from the basic adaptability of the human central nervous system to the effects of social institutions which seek to promote individual change. There are chapters on physical growth, health, cognitive development, personality, social attitudes and beliefs, occupational careers, psychosis, and criminal behavior. Throughout these chapters, the recurring question is whether development can be seen as a continuous process in which early stages reliably predict subsequent events, or whether instead there are sharp discontinuities which render individual development essentially unpredictable. The variety and richness of the answers to this question provide a summary of human development which is unparalleled in any other single volume.

The culmination of almost seven decades of research, A Trio of Pursuits: Puzzles in Human Development is the magnum opus of the career of Dr. Jerome Kagan, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, USA. This book summarizes three of the author's major research themes during a career that spanned from 1954 to present: preservation of individual traits, maturation of cognition and emotions, and the influence of two temperamental biases on personality. An introspective chapter on the deeper lessons learned by the author in research is also included, covering narratives such as the need to specify the context in which data are gathered, the need to supplement all self-reported data, studying puzzling observations rather than confirmation of a priori hypotheses, and avoiding the error of attributing psychological predicates to brain evidence. This book is a must-have for students and academics of Psychology and Cognitive Science, and may also be of interest to social scientists.

A leading psychologist takes a hard look at his profession today and argues for important changes in practices and attitudes This book is the product of years of thought and a profound concern for the state of contemporary psychology. Jerome Kagan, a theorist and leading researcher, examines popular practices and assumptions held by many psychologists. He uncovers a variety of problems that, troublingly, are largely ignored by investigators and clinicians. Yet solutions are available, Kagan maintains, and his reasoned suggestions point the way to a better understanding of the mind and mental illness. Kagan identifies four problems in contemporary psychology: the indifference to the setting in which observations are gathered, including the age, class, and cultural background of participants and the procedure that provides the evidence (he questions, for example, the assumption that similar verbal reports of well-being reflect similar psychological states); the habit of basing inferences on single measures rather than patterns of measures (even though every action, reply, or biological response can result from more than one set of conditions); the defining of mental illnesses by symptoms independent of their origin; and the treatment of mental disorders with drugs and forms of psychotherapy that are nonspecific to the diagnosed illness. The author's candid discussion will inspire the debate that is needed in a discipline seeking to fulfill its promises.

We have seen these children--the shy and the sociable, the cautious and the daring--and wondered what makes one avoid new experience and another avidly pursue it. At the crux of the issue surrounding the contribution of nature to development is the study that Jerome Kagan and his colleagues have been conducting for more than two decades. In "The Long Shadow of Temperament," Kagan and Nancy Snidman summarize the results of this unique inquiry into human temperaments, one of the best-known longitudinal studies in developmental psychology. These results reveal how deeply certain fundamental temperamental biases can be preserved over development.

Identifying two extreme temperamental types--inhibited and uninhibited in childhood, and high-reactive and low-reactive in very young babies--Kagan and his colleagues returned to these children as adolescents. Surprisingly, one of the temperaments revealed in infancy predicted a cautious, fearful personality in early childhood and a dour mood in adolescence. The other bias predicted a bold childhood personality and an exuberant, sanguine mood in adolescence. These personalities were matched by different biological properties. In a masterly summary of their wide-ranging exploration, Kagan and Snidman conclude that these two temperaments are the result of inherited biologies probably rooted in the differential excitability of particular brain structures. Though the authors appreciate that temperamental tendencies can be modified by experience, this compelling work--an empirical and conceptual tour-de-force--shows how long the shadow of temperament is cast over psychological development.

When we are startled by the new, confronted with discrepancies, our knowing gives way to uncertainty and changes. In the distinctive manner that has made him one of the most influential forces in developmental psychology, Jerome Kagan challenges scientific commonplaces about mental processes, pointing in particular to the significant but undervalued role of surprise and uncertainty in shaping behavior, emotion, and thought.

Drawing on research in both animal and human subjects, Kagan presents a strong case for making qualitative distinctions among four different types of mental representation perceptual schemata, visceral schemata, sensorimotor structures, and semantic networks and describes how each is susceptible to the experience of discrepancy and the feeling of surprise or uncertainty. The implications of these findings are far-reaching, challenging current ideas about the cognitive understandings of infants and revealing the bankruptcy of contemporary questionnaire-based personality theory. More broadly, Kagan's daring, thoroughly informed, and keenly reasoned book demonstrates the risks of making generalizations about human behavior, in which culture, context, and past experience play such paramount and unpredictable roles.

An international cast of the top names in developmental research explore how researchers can use group data to understand individual patterns and pathways over time. Since the dominant statistical models and sampling methods do not accurately reflect and capture the way in which individuals change, but rather statistically treat the individual as an unchanging constant (e.g., as if a 2-year-oldÆs personality is identical to a 30-year-oldÆs). After an introduction to this methodological dilemma, the book shows how empirical procedures can be employed in a stepwise progression to permit a focus on individual children. The next chapter explains how individuals versus variables are not stable over time and how to adjust analysis to reflect this. This is followed by a discussion that outlines some of the key technical details and illustrates the choices that confront researchers in the application of these procedures to longitudinal data sets. Subsequent chapters cover such issues as the value of methodological focus on extreme groups, such as fearful and very exuberant children; ways to analyze personality changes over time, how to combine the strengths of variable-oriented and categorical procedures to achieve a focus on individuals; how to correlate retrospective reports with actual events, and how developmental methods can be brought into line with the study of individual pathways. Each chapter is followed by a commentary and discussion by Marian Radke Yarrow. Methods and Models for Studying the Individual offers readers a guide for evaluating the methodological merits of the different strategies for studying individuals.

In this provocative book, now updated, the renowned psychologist Jerome Kagan challenges many of psychology's most deeply held assumptions-arguing, for example, that early experience does not inexorably shape our lives and that the influence of the family is more subtle than has been supposed.

In 1959 C. P. Snow delivered his now-famous Rede Lecture, The Two Cultures, a reflection on the academy based on the premise that intellectual life was divided into two cultures: the arts and humanities on one side and science on the other. Since then, a third culture, generally termed social science and comprised of fields such as sociology, political science, economics, psychology, and anthropology, has emerged. Jerome Kagan s book describes the assumptions, vocabulary, and contributions of each of these cultures and argues that the meanings of many of the concepts used by each culture are unique to it and do not apply to the others because the source of evidence for the term is special. The text summarizes the contributions of the social sciences and humanities to our understanding of human nature and questions the popular belief that biological processes are the main determinant of variation in human behavior.

In 1959 C. P. Snow delivered his now-famous Rede Lecture, The Two Cultures, a reflection on the academy based on the premise that intellectual life was divided into two cultures: the arts and humanities on one side and science on the other. Since then, a third culture, generally termed social science and comprised of fields such as sociology, political science, economics, psychology, and anthropology, has emerged. Jerome Kagan s book describes the assumptions, vocabulary, and contributions of each of these cultures and argues that the meanings of many of the concepts used by each culture are unique to it and do not apply to the others because the source of evidence for the term is special. The text summarizes the contributions of the social sciences and humanities to our understanding of human nature and questions the popular belief that biological processes are the main determinant of variation in human behavior.