Why Are People Different? A Scientific Look at Human Individuality

All people are different from one another. This fact seems so obvious that we rarely wonder why, in fact, it is so. Why is someone an owl and someone a lark? Why does someone love sweets and someone bitter tastes? Why do some like men, others women, and a third group feels cramped within the usual gender categories? Neurobiologist David Linden assessed the extent of human diversity by studying questionnaires on a dating website. As it turned out, people especially readily describe their traits there—from hair color to food and sexual preferences, from everyday habits to allergies. “Why people are different” is an attempt to capture all facets of our uniqueness at once. Linden talks about genetic variability and the influence of environment—from the womb to adulthood; about learning and individual experience; about immunity and chemical receptors, due to which, in taste and color, there really are no comrades. And although you’ve probably never doubted your own uniqueness, you will still be fascinated to learn how complex and unpredictable the path you had to take for it was.