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are cleverly designed and he insists on rigorous standards. His co-authored chap- ter on experimental methods in the second M. Wuschnig M. edition of the Handbook of Social Psychol- ogy (Addison-Wesley, 1968) helped to make the field credible as a science. Experimental social is often criticized for relying on deceit and theatri- cality. Its test subjects must not know the point of the enterprise. Aronson believes that such experimental design is justified because it gives real insight into human behaviour. He describes how social psychol- ogist Stanley Milgram discussed with him early plans for a con- troversial ‘obedi- ence to authority’ experiment, in which subjects were told to inflict what they thought were increas- ing levels of pain on other participants by Not by Chance administering fake Alone: My Life electric shocks. Mil- as a Social gram’s results — that Elliot Aronson most subjects inflicted Basic Books: 2010. ‘pain’ on others when 304 pp. £15.99 commanded — gener- ated ire from both the public and the scien- tific community. Aronson defends the tests as showing how ordinary citizens might have acted in the Nazi era. Much of the autobiography is devoted to Elliot Aronson has studied the psychology of how people cope with conflicting beliefs and experiences. Aronson’s career at several US universities, including , California; psychology the in Minneapo- lis; the University of Texas at Austin and the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he is an emeritus professor today. He A social animal also taught at Harvard for a couple of years, from 1959 to 1961, but he liked the place lit- tle more than the place liked him. He valued the quality of the Harvard students, but felt revealed that Ivy League elitism was not for him. As a Jewish academic, he was also realistic about the chances of getting tenure at a time when The inner strengths of psychologist Elliot Aronson are on formal quotas limiting admission of ethnic display in his honest autobiography, finds W. F. Bynum. minorities were still rife. He left Harvard before he had to. The fact that he got there at all is a trib- ocial psychologist Elliot Aronson people cope with conflicting beliefs and ute to his personal qualities. His family might not be a household name, but experiences by minimizing discrepancies, was dysfunctional. His father coped badly his work is. As author of the landmark thus reducing anxiety and tension. Building with the loss of his small shop during the Sbook The Social Animal, first published in on the theory of one of his teachers, Leon depression of the 1930s, and struggled with 1972, he experimentally demonstrated the Festinger, Aronson and his colleagues per- the dynamics of family life and the insecu- psychology behind Groucho Marx’s famous formed a series of classic experiments that rities of being an inadequate breadwin- line: “I refuse to belong to any club that extended its application. Most famously, ner. Aronson writes eloquently about the would have me as a member.” In Aronson’s they showed that the harder it is for people ambivalence within him that his father’s autobiography, Not By Chance Alone, he to become part of a group, the more they remoteness caused. He had to work hard applies his scientific insight to his life and value membership — no matter how trivial not to become like his father — prone to its dilemmas. the achievement needed to join. storming out of the house when nagged by Aronson is best known among social Aronson has investigated many human his wife, or to react with loud violence. The for his work on cognitive traits, including hypocrisy, efficiency, storming out, Aronson suggests, was prob- dissonance, the mechanism by which attraction and sexuality. His experiments ably calculated: his father had a gambling

32 | NATURE | VOL 468 | 4 NOVEmbER 2010 © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved BOOKS & ARTS COMMENT addiction and his departure allowed him to spend the evening with his cronies. Aronson’s achievements are remarkable Books in brief given the family’s poverty, the anti-Semitism and bullying he experienced, and his early The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life mediocre academic record. He describes on Earth his childhood in Revere, Massachusetts, Richard Conniff W. W. nO r t O n 464 pp. £19.99 (2010) with an eye for good stories and control- celebrating the explorers who have scoured the planet for new led recollection. His elder brother Jason — forms of life, naturalist and writer richard conniff highlights how outgoing, clever and socially graceful — was new discoveries generate scientific breakthroughs. he argues everything that the younger Aronson was that the same spirit of adventurous curiosity that drove swedish not, although his early hatred for him trans- botanist carl linnaeus to derive his nomenclature of species and muted into affection and then, after Jason’s that spurred charles Darwin to unearth evidence for evolution is in premature death from cancer, into wistful scientists today, as they hunt for creatures new to science in remote family reflections. Aronson’s younger sister corners of Earth. is largely absent from his account. Aronson keeps his youthful idealism closely under wraps, but his later career Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, offered many opportunities for socially and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories informed activity. While he was lecturing at Simon Winchester hA r P e r 512 pp. $27.99 (2010) the University of Texas in the 1960s, racial simon Winchester’s magisterial biography of the Atlantic ocean integration was of great significance and portrays it both as a planetary feature and as a human stage — the provoked high . Aronson and his “inland sea of Western civilization” along whose coasts humans colleagues devised in the early 1970s a new have settled and traded for millennia. From its early navigation by method of classroom teaching for school the norse and European sailors, to its setting for the slave trade children called the jigsaw technique. Small and warfare, he recognizes the ocean’s autonomous power. he also sets of students, containing children from notes how its waters are changing as a result of pollution, overfishing different racial and ethnic backgrounds, and climate change. and of different gender and ability, each cooperate in putting together part of the answer to a larger A Professor, a President, and a Meteor: The Birth of American “Aronson offers question that the Science a revealing whole class has been Cathryn J. Prince PrO m e t h e U s bOO k s 304 pp. $26 (2010) portrait both posed. The strategy A meteor that lit up the sky in Weston, connecticut, in 1807 sparked improved relations more than local consternation. it inspired Benjamin silliman, a of himself young chemistry professor at nearby Yale college, to analyse the and of social between children of different races meteorite’s minerals. the controversy surrounding his hypothesis psychology and backgrounds, that it came from space triggered the rise of rigorous science in the in the United and enhanced the . cathryn Prince describes silliman’s life, his brushes States during academic perform- with politics — including a spat with President thomas Jefferson — the past half- ance of the disad- and his other discoveries, among them the distillation of petroleum. century.” vantaged children. After the system was eventually appreciated by educational- The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: How Medical Imaging Is Changing ists, Aronson spent much time conducting Health Care classes for school teachers. Bruce Hillman and Jeff Goldsmith Ox f O r d Un i v. Pr e s s 264 pp. Today, macular degeneration has ren- £27.95 (2010) dered Aronson almost totally blind, with Medical imaging has transformed health care, but its diagnostic the consequence that this book was an oral value is balanced by its expense. hillman and goldsmith examine production. His greatest stated regret is that how scanning technologies such as magnetic resonance imaging he can no longer distinguish his grandchil- and computed axial tomography are transforming radiology and yet dren by sight, although he did help one of putting pressure on budgets. they raise questions about economic them to learn to read. incentives and the role of preventative medicine in promoting the Autobiographies are often carefully uptake of scanning technology above other clinical necessities. crafted, revealing only what the subject wishes to be known. Aronson, however, is happy to describe himself, warts and all. Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the In doing so, he offers a revealing portrait 21st Century both of himself and of Carl Schoonover Ab r A m s 240 pp. $35 (2010) in the United States during the past half- the human brain remains maddeningly . the intricacy of century. ■ its structures is revealed by the striking pictures in this collection by neuroscientist carl schoonover. From medieval sketches and W. F. Bynum is emeritus professor of the nineteenth-century drawings to state-of-the art scans, he explains history of medicine at University College how our depictions of brain regions, neurons, axons and dendrites London, UK. have developed throughout history. it is a fascinating visual insight e-mail: [email protected] into neuroscience.

4 NOVEmbER 2010 | VOL 468 | NATURE | 33 © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved