ANYONE who still believes that our psychological dispositions are due largely to our genes will learn a lot from this book. The same goes for those who think they are predominantly shaped by our environment. Jerome Kagan, an emeritus professor of psychology at Harvard University, has spent much of his career unpacking the complexities behind human personality and behaviour. In The Temperamental Thread he navigates a path through the conflicting evidence with great skill and eloquence.
The thesis behind the title is that everyone is born with a biologically based temperamental bias that is evident in infancy and influences our…
