Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment

by Susannah Breslin

Overview

A Belletrist Book Pick​ for December 2023

Lab Girl meets Brain on Fire in this provocative and poignant memoir delving into a woman's formative experiences as a veritable "lab rat" in a lifelong psychological study, and her pursuit to reclaim autonomy and her identity as a adult.

What if your parents turn you into a human lab rat when you’re a child? Will that change the story of your life? Will that change who you are?
 
When Susannah Breslin is a toddler, her parents enroll her in an exclusive laboratory preschool at the University of California, Berkeley, where she becomes one of over a hundred children who are research subjects in an unprecedented thirty-year study of personality development that predicts who she and her cohort will grow up to be. Decades later, trapped in what she feels is an abusive marriage and battling breast cancer, she starts to wonder how growing up under a microscope shaped her identity and life choices. Already a successful journalist, she makes her own curious history the subject of her next investigation. From experiment rooms with one-way mirrors, to children’s puzzles with no solutions, to condemned basement laboratories, her life-changing journey uncovers the long-buried secrets hidden behind the renowned study. The question at the gnarled heart of her quest: Did the study know her better than she knew herself?
 
At once bravely honest and sharply witty, Data Baby is a compelling and provocative account of a woman’s quest to find her true self, and an unblinking exploration of why we turn out as we do. Few people in all of history have been studied from such a young age and for as long as this author, but the message of her book is universal. In an era when so many of us are looking to technology to tell us who to be, it’s up to us to discover who we actually are.  

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306925993
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	11/07/2023
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	392,312
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Susannah Breslin is a freelance journalist and a Forbes.com senior contributor. From 2018 to 2019, she was the Lawrence Grauman Jr. Post-graduate Fellow at U.C. Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Program. Her reporting and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, Harper’s Bazaar, The Daily Beast, Salon, Newsweek, The Guardian, and Variety, among other media outlets. She holds a B.A. in English from U.C. Berkeley and an M.A. from the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

Editorial Reviews

★ 11/13/2023

Journalist Breslin’s fascinating debut memoir tackles the fallout from her enrollment in a psychological experiment as a child. Born in 1968 in Berkeley, Calif., to a poetry professor father and English instructor mother, Breslin sensed her mother’s resentment early on: “Instead of getting her Ph.D., my mother had gotten married... then she got pregnant... and as her career floundered, my father’s flourished.” To increase her own free time, Breslin’s mother enrolled a four-year-old Breslin in the Block Project at UC Berkeley, an experiment in which she “would be studied for the next 30 years in a groundbreaking psychological experiment that would predict who would grow up to be.” What began as a preschool with specific, data-collecting criteria gave way to regular psychological evaluations through one-way mirrors and home monitoring via parental reports—all agreed upon before Breslin could even conceptualize “consent.” At 15, Breslin began to numb her adolescent emotional pain with drinking, drugs, and sex, the latter of which became the focus of her career as a journalist covering the porn industry. By the time she hit middle age and found herself stuck in an abusive marriage, Breslin began to reflect on the Block Project’s impact on her trajectory. Unpicking thorny questions about determinism and the ethics of human experimentation, Breslin attacks her subject with verve and wit, resisting woe-is-me solipsism without defanging her critiques of the study that rocked her life. It’s gripping stuff. Agent: Mollie Glick, CAA. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Fascinating ... Unpacking thorny questions about determinism and the ethics of human experimentation, Breslin attacks her subject with verve and wit, resisting woe-is-me solipsism without defanging her critiques of the study that rocked her life. It’s gripping stuff.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"As she examines the dark side of experimentation on human subjects, Breslin also asks disturbing questions about the consequences modern data-gathering will have on future generations. An intelligently provocative memoir and investigation.”—Kirkus Reviews

“If, as Socrates contended, ‘the unexamined life is not worth living,’ then Breslin is living hers to the fullest. Lucky for us, she’s written a thought-provoking, ridiculously propulsive book about it.” —The Globe and Mail


“Data Baby is the riveting story of a long-term psychological study and its impact on Breslin’s life, a compelling story in itself. An utterly fascinating read.” —Elizabeth Crane, author of This Story Will Change: After the Happily Ever After

“Breslin's compelling memoir reminds us that psych data are made of people. Data Baby also brilliantly highlights how the making of data shapes the stories of the people being observed.” —danah boyd, author of It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“A thought-provoking commentary on the modern reality of constant surveillance and the ways in which our lives and choices are influenced by those who observe us, wielding power through the information they gather.” —Cybernews

“Susannah Breslin was indeed a data baby — twice, even. And her second time, she flaunts the role, resisting its implications and asserting her own control over it.”—Columbia Journal of Literary Criticism

From the Publisher

Data Baby is the riveting story of a long-term psychological study and its impact on Breslin’s life, a compelling story in itself. An utterly fascinating read.”

author of This Story Will Change: After the Ha Elizabeth Crane

Breslin's compelling memoir reminds us that psych data are made of people. Data Baby also brilliantly highlights how the making of data shapes the stories of the people being observed.

author of It's Complicated: The Social Liv danah boyd

2023-08-09
A freelance journalist explores how a 30-year scientific study in which she became involuntarily involved has impacted her life.

Breslin’s participation in the Block Project, a psychology experiment that aimed to predict the adult identities of its child subjects, began shortly after she was born in 1968. Just after her birth, her professor father enrolled her in a child-care program that doubled as a laboratory for researchers. Four years later, the author attended a preschool where investigators studied children from a hidden observation gallery and routinely probed teachers for insights. Breslin’s memories of being constantly observed during school hours contrasted with those she had of feeling “invisible” in a family that eventually broke apart. She remarks that the study made her feel “seen” and “special,” though it did little to assuage the turbulence that marked her adolescence. The author began her post-collegiate journalistic career by writing about the sex entertainment scene in San Francisco. From observed subject, she became “the voyeur,” which was “intoxicating.” She also lived in Los Angeles, where she wrote about the pornography industry, and New Orleans, where she became a freelance writer. Her marriage to an unexpectedly abusive man and a battle with breast cancer infused Breslin with the desire to investigate the Block Project and finally become “a serious journalist.” When divorce freed her to return to California, she restarted her career with a journalism fellowship. For all she uncovered about the project and its creators, her most significant discovery was personal. The experiment that had used her often painful life experiences in the pursuit of enlightenment had discarded all the information it gathered about and from her “like so much trash.” As she examines the dark side of experimentation on human subjects, Breslin also asks disturbing questions about the consequences modern data-gathering will have on future generations.

An intelligently provocative memoir and investigation.

Kirkus Reviews