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.
Sample Chapter(s)
Preface
Chapter 1: What is Preserved?
Contents:
- About the Author
- Preface
- What is Preserved?
- Stages or Continuous Processes
- Behavioral Inhibition
- High and Low Reactive Infants
- Reflections on the Pursuits
- References
Readership: Academics/researchers, graduate students, and educated readers in the general field of Psychology, and the subfields of personality traits, emotion, and temperament.
"Jerome Kagan has been a towering figure in the science of human development for more than a half-century. In A Trio of Pursuits, Kagan takes us on a fascinating and informative tour of three critically important research efforts from his long career, each one addressing a fundamental question about the nature of development. Written with Kagan's characteristic wisdom and flair, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in the development of the human mind."
Daniel L Schacter
William R Kenan Jr. Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, USA
Fellow, National Academy of Sciences, USA
Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, USA
Fellow, Association for Psychological Science, USA
Fellow, Society of Experimental Psychologists, USA
"In this captivating book, Jerome Kagan argues for a Baconian approach to science untrammeled by theoretical presuppositions that can foreclose discovery. He urges psychologists to seek patterns among variables, to be aware of socioeconomic, cultural, and historical contexts that can dramatically influence our data, and to avoid extending concepts beyond their proper domain. To make his case, Kagan furnishes fascinating examples drawn from biology, physics, and history as well as from his own distinguished career as the world's preeminent developmental psychologist. A Trio of Pursuits is one of Kagan's finest books."
Richard J McNally
Professor and Director of Clinical Training, Harvard University, USA
Fellow, Association for Psychological Science, USA
Fellow, Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, USA
"Jerome Kagan has been a world leader in the field of developmental psychology for several decades, and the breadth and influence of his work is rare in our field. Most instructive, in his recount of his career, is his ability to change his mind, reverse course, and let evidence guide the way. He illustrates, in a personal account, that the path of scientific exploration is anything but linear and that an open mind often invites unexpected rewards. I think his followers will be quite interested in reading about how he brings it all together and reflects on his career accomplishments."
Marshall M Haith
Professor Emeritus and John Evans Chair of Psychology, University of Denver, USA
Fellow, American Psychological Association, USA
Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, USA
"In this book, Jerome Kagan provides rich historical and cultural context for the evolution of his program of research on temperament and individual differences, which has been, and will continue to be, a lasting legacy to developmental science. With a style that is reflective, philosophical, and personal, Kagan makes a convincing case for focusing on patterns among multiple sources of information as the building blocks of discovery, both within his research as well as for pressing contemporary issues. Kagan's first-person narrative offers a look back at a career defined by passion and dedication to studying the phenomena of being human, to which younger generations of scholars may aspire."
Elizabeth J Kiel
Associate Professor of Psychology, Miami University, USA
"Just like Jerome Kagan's earlier works, this volume was a joy to read and see his careful, yet brilliant thinking reflected across the course of his career. For those who despair about the replication crisis and plethora of unidimensional research in psychology, A Trio of Pursuits is the perfect tonic. Reading it brought me back to graduate school, where I read the work of great psychologists who were Renaissance scholars able to tie disparate information from different disciplines into a meaningful picture. In this short volume, Kagan has integrated developmental, behavioral, clinical psychology with genetics and brain science, creating a vivid picture of the interactions that create individual behavior."
Robert G Frank
Director, Center for Innovation in Health and Education
Professor, Population Health, Family & Community Medicine and Psychology
Former President, University of New Mexico, USA
Professor Jerome Kagan is Daniel and Amy Starch Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, USA. He is regarded as one of the fathers of development psychology, and was listed as the 22nd most eminent psychologist of the 20th century, out of more than 1 million psychology researchers worldwide. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. He has received numerous distinguished awards including the Hofheimer Prize of the American Psychiatric Association, the G Stanley Hall Award of the American Psychological Association, the C Anderson Aldrich Award of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Wilbur Lucuis Cross Medal of Yale University, as well as Distinguished Scientist Awards from Society for Research in Child Development, Child-Mind Institute, and the American Psychological Association. He has served on numerous committees of the National Academy of Sciences, the President's Science Advisory Committee, the Social Science Research Council, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Research Council. He has written more than 20 books and hundreds of articles.
Professor Kagan was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1929. He was influenced by his grandfather's interest in the mind to pursue the field, and graduated from Rutgers University in 1950 with a bachelor's before earning his PhD from Yale University in 1954. He spent a year as a psychology instructor at Ohio State University before being recruited to work in the US Army Hospital during the Korean War from 1955–1957. His next destination was the Fels Research Institute, where he spent merely seven years as a researcher. Kagan accepted a professorship in 1964 from Harvard, where he has remained since.
Professor Kagan's research has centered on the cognitive and emotional development of infants and children. His highly respected and groundbreaking work especially focuses on the origins of temperament. At a time when most psychologists believed that personal characteristics were determined by environmental factors rather than by inheritance, he tracked the development of inhibited and uninhibited children from infancy to adolescence and discovered that shyness and other temperamental differences in adults and children have genetic influences. His pioneering results were revealed in his landmark first book Birth to Maturity in 1962. He has not looked back since, writing another 20+ books in the intervening six decades. A Trio of Pursuits promises to be Professor Kagan's magnum opus.
