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  • Published: 1 March 2011
  • ISBN: 9781864713046
  • Imprint: William Heinemann Australia
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $32.99

Quirk

Brain Science Makes Sense Of Your Peculiar Personality




Funny, insightful and clever book about our personality quirks and how most of them lies between our ears

Funny, insightful and clever book about our personality quirks and how most of them lie between our ears!

Are you neurotic, eager to please, and honest? Or cheerful, gregarious, and disorganized? Whatever you're like, with the tweak of a couple of genes, scientists can make a mouse just like you. And mice, and the scientists who study them, can tell us a lot about ourselves.

Hannah Holmes shows us by humorously examining her own personality and those of her friends and family members, almost everything comes from our genes, from how much we talk to how we vote and how we eat our M&Ms. Using what psychologists call the Five Factor Model, Holmes explains all five (Neuroticism, Extroversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Openness) and how each manifests itself in real people. Just some of the fascinating things you'll learn … - Why people, and all animals, need personality to survive. - Your score on the factors (Neuroticism, Extroversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Openness) that make up a personality. - What roles your type evolved to fill. - Which parts of your personality leave you vulnerable in the modern world. - Your risk for alcohol or drug addiction. - How anxiety helps us to survive. - Why you're compatible with specific types of people, and why other types of people drive you crazy. …and much more!

  • Published: 1 March 2011
  • ISBN: 9781864713046
  • Imprint: William Heinemann Australia
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $32.99

About the author

Hannah Holmes

Hannah Holmes is the author of widely-praised The Well-Dressed Ape which reviewers called "deeply informed but whimsical" (Booklist), and "illuminating...interesting...funny" (The Washington Post). She writes for National Geographic and various other magazines, and is based in Maine.

She spends her days in a small, orange office, accompanied by two large dogs and one very naughty mouse.

Praise for Quirk

“What an amazing book. I don't often use the term ‘life-changing,’ but Quirk is. I read this book and a light went on. Suddenly, I understand the people around me. To learn that we are motivated by the same basic brain chemicals and structures as mice is oddly, profoundly, liberating.”