The Norton Psychology Reader
Marcus (Gary)
This Page provides (where held) the Abstract of the above Book and those of all the Papers contained in it.
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Amazon Book Description

  1. Offering a sampling of psychology's diversity, Marcus (psychology, New York U.) includes two or three reprinted selections in each of 17 sections he introduces, from the field's pioneers and methods to current drug and cognitive therapy.
  2. Other topics covered include the mind and brain, motivation, stress, personality and culture.
Book Comment

N W Norton & Company; 2006. Paperback.


"Angier (Natalie) - Woman: An Intimate Biography (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 12 ("Emotion")

Paper Comment

1999


"Baker (Mark) - The Atoms of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules of Grammar (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 6 ("Language")

Paper Comment

2001


"Beck (Aaron) - Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 17 ("Treatment")

Paper Comment

1976


"Bloom (Paul) - Descartes' Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 8 ("Cognitive Development")

Paper Comment

2004


"Brown (Donald E.) - Human Universals (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 15 ("Culture")

Paper Comment

1991


"Chomsky (Noam) - A Review of B.F.Skinner's Verbal Behavior"

Source: Block - Readings in Philosophy of Psychology - Vol 1


Paper Comment

Write-up3 (as at 14/03/2015 11:36:58): Chomsky - A Review of B.F.Skinner's Verbal Behavior

This note provides my detailed review of "Chomsky (Noam) - A Review of B.F.Skinner's Verbal Behavior".

Currently, this write-up is only available as a PDF. Click File Note (PDF). It is my intention to convert this to Note format shortly.

… Further details to be supplied4



In-Page Footnotes ("Chomsky (Noam) - A Review of B.F.Skinner's Verbal Behavior")

Footnote 3:
  • This is the write-up as it was when this Abstract was last output, with text as at the timestamp indicated (14/03/2015 11:36:58).
  • Link to Latest Write-Up Note.


"Cialdini (Robert) - Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 13 ("Social Psychology")

Paper Comment

1993


"Csikszentmihalyi (Mihaly) - Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 11 ("Motivation and Stress")

Paper Comment

1990


"Damasio (Antonio) - Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 4 ("The Brain")

Paper Comment

1994


"Ekman (Paul) - Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 12 ("Emotion")

Paper Comment

2003


"Freud (Sigmund) - The Unconscious (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 1 ("Pioneers")


"Gladwell (Malcolm) - Personality Plus"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 14 ("Personality")


This paper is a discussion of how personality can be evaluated rapidly (eg. as part of a recruitment process) without the production of random results. The test case is of a Clark Kent type (Alexander Nininger) who turned out to be a Rambo type in the war against Japan (though, as this is real life) a dead Rambo. How could this unexpected trait have been predicted?

Several tests are reviewed (Gladwell has had himself tested by them all):
  1. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI): the test divides subjects into Introvert/Extrovert; Intuition/Sensing; Thinking/Feeling; Judging/Perceiving. According to Gladwell, it is a half-baked misinterpretation of Jung’s Psychological Types. I’ve taken this multiple forced-choice test at HSBC, but forget how I was classified. Like Gladwell, I considered the categorisations to fail the “stability test” – ie. be too much relative to the situation you found yourself in immediately prior to the test. However, I think I took a modified version whereby you were placed in a range in each of the 4 dichotomies, hence allowing for the subject being “a bit of both”.
  2. Spoof take-off of the MBTI devised by Gladwell.
  3. Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): developed in the 1930s by Henry Murray. The subject rambles on about what various pictures mean to him, and a psychologist explains what this reveals about his personality.
  4. Day-long roll-playing sessions at assessment centres - eg. Development Dimensions International (DDI).

Helpful Quotes:
  1. “We have a personality in that we have a consistent pattern of behaviour. But that pattern is complex and that personality is contingent: it represents an interaction between our internal disposition and tendencies and the situations that we find ourselves in”. Along the lines that Heinrich Himmler might have lived out his life as a harmless chicken-farmer, if it hadn’t been for Adolf, who might have lived out his life as a second-rate artist, had it not been for his dad, the Great Depression and provocation by Ludwig Wittgenstein.
  2. Conclusion: (if we had applied all these tests to Nininger …) “We will know all sorts of things about him then. His personnel file will be as thick as a phone book, and we can consult our findings whenever we make decisions about his future. We just have to acknowledge that his file will tell us little about the thing we’re most interested in. For that, we have to join him in the jungles of Bataan.”

Useful References:
  1. The Cult of Personality by Annie Murphy Paul. Scrutinises the tests, especially the MBTI. 2004. Approved of by Gladwell, but surely controversial, and given a good drubbing by aficionados of the test – eg. by Peter Geyer at Geyer - Glibly Attractive: Reading Annie Murphy Paul's "The Cult of Personality" and by Steve Myers (no relation? The author of "Myers (David) - Psychology") at Myers - "The Cult of Personality" or "The Cult of Journalism"?.
  2. Strangers to Ourselves by Timothy D. Wilson. The contradictions between the (non-Freudian) “adaptive subconscious” and our “constructed self”. A less controversial book, by the sound of things.

Notes:
  1. I originally expected this article to relate to my recently-purchased "Gladwell (Malcolm) - Outliers: The Story of Success", but it doesn’t.
  2. The article originally appeared in the New Yorker , 20th September 2004.

Paper Comment

2004


"Goleman (Daniel) - Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More than IQ (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 10 ("Intelligence")

Paper Comment

1995


"Gopnik (Alison), Kuhl (Patricia) & Meltzoff (Andrew) - The Scientist in the Crib: Minds, Brains and How Children Learn (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 8 ("Cognitive Development")

Paper Comment

1999


"Grandin (Temple) - Thinking in Pictures, and Other Reports from My Life with Autism (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 16 ("Disorders")

Paper Comment

1995


"Harris (Judith Rich) - The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 14 ("Personality")

Paper Comment

1998


"Hauser (Marc D.) - Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 7 ("Learning")


"Herrnstein (Richard J.) & Murray (Charles) - The Bell Curve - Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 10 ("Intelligence")

Paper Comment

1994


"Hoffman (Donald D.) - Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 5 ("Sensation and Perception")

Paper Comment

1998


"Huff (Darrell) - How to Lie with Statistics (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 2 ("Methods")

Paper Comment

1954


"Hughes (Howard) - Sensory Exotica: A World beyond Human Experience (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 5 ("Sensation and Perception")

Paper Comment

1999


"James (William) - The Principles of Psychology (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 1 ("Pioneers")


"Jamison (Kay Redfield) - An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 16 ("Disorders")

Paper Comment

1995


"Kagan (Jerome) - Galen's Prophecy: Temperament in Human Nature (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 14 ("Personality")

Paper Comment

1994


"Kramer (Peter) - Listening to Prozac: A Psychiatrist Explores Antidepressant Drugs and the Remaking of the Self (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 17 ("Treatment")

Paper Comment

1993


"LeDoux (Joseph) - The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 12 ("Emotion")

Paper Comment

1996


"Marcus (Gary) - The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Create the Complexities of Human Thought (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 3 ("Evolution and Genes")

Paper Comment

2004


"Nasar (Sylvia) - A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 16 ("Disorders")

Paper Comment

1998


"Nisbett (Richard) - The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently … and Why (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 15 ("Culture")

Paper Comment

2003


"Pinker (Steven) - How the Mind Works (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 3 ("Evolution and Genes")

Paper Comment

1997


"Pinker (Steven) - The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 6 ("Language")

Paper Comment

1994


"Richerson (Peter) & Boyd (Robert) - Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 15 ("Culture")

Paper Comment

2004


"Sacks (Oliver) - The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 4 ("The Brain")

Paper Comment

1980


"Sapolsky (Robert) - Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: An Updated Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 11 ("Motivation and Stress")

Paper Comment

1994


"Schacter (Daniel L.) - Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind and the Past (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 9 ("Memory and Cognition")

Paper Comment

1996


"Stanovich (Keith) - How to Think Straight about Psychology (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 2 ("Methods")

Paper Comment

2004


"Taylor (Shelley) - The Tending Instinct: How Nurturing Is Essential to Who We Are and How We Live (Extract)"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 13 ("Social Psychology")

Paper Comment

2002


"Watson (John B.) & Rayner (Rosalie) - Conditioned Emotional Reactions"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 7 ("Learning")

Paper Comment

1920


"Wegner (Daniel) - The Illusion of Conscious Will - Extract"

Source: Marcus (G.) - The Norton Psychology Reader, Chapter 9 ("Memory and Cognition")

Paper Comment

2003


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  1. Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025
  2. Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)


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