Newsgroups: bit.listserv.psycgrad
Date:         Sun, 13 Sep 1992 22:47:36 -0800
              <PSYCGRAD@UOTTAWA.BITNET>
From:         Tor Neilands <tbn@UTXVM.CC.UTEXAS.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Genetic Determinants of Behavior

> 4 Discussion
>     4.1 Three Issues on Personality
>
>From: ADLIN@UTKVX.BITNET
>Subject: Three Issues on Personality
>Date: 11 Sep 92 02:00:00 GMT
>
>        A few issues have been troubling me for a while now and I
>thought it would be a good idea to present them to the users on
>this list.  I'm hoping that they stimulate discussion (I'm certain
>they will).  I will give each issue a title for easy reference.
>
>"Personality":
>
>        I was speaking to a professor the other day who made a
>comment to the effect that no personality variable exists that
>hasn't been accounted for by genetics, the data primarily from twin
>studies.  I've read about this before (I'll have to dig through my
>files) but I never confronted the issue.  I mentioned to this
>professor that adult attachment researchers have proposed many
>personality variables to be related to attachment style (with some
>support, if I remember correctly).  Attachment style IS strongly
>influenced primarily by the quality of caregiving.  He maintained
>that the qualities of the caregiver merely interact with an already
>existing personality structure (presumably temperament or other
>latent personality charactersitics that will evetually blossom from
>a biological predetermination).  Furthermore, he said that an adult
>attachment researcher (possibly Bretherton) wrote a book and stated
>that adult attachment researhers have had a hard time relating
>personality variables from attachment style.
>
>        Lately, I thought of self-esteem.  It hardly seems that
>self-esteem can be accounted for by genetics.  I'm not aware of any
>twin studies on self-esteem.  Self-esteem, although I'm not well
>acquainted with the research, is highly related to environmental
>and personl history variables.  Moreover, self-esteem is highly
>related to attachment style; security is related to high self-
>esteem and insecurity to low self-esteem.  Attachment style, and
>self-esteem I presume, are related to different kinds of coping
>styles (eg, support-seeking, problem oriented, avoidant).  It
>hardly seems that these variables, which are so much a part of
>personality, can be accounted for by genetics.  So, please comment
>or add to this argument.  What I'd really appreciate is some
>information on twin studies.  Are there possible confounds? I'm
>aware that none of the concordance rates obtained were ever
>perfect, but I'm inclined to believe that "nurture" has more to do
>with the developing individual than "nature."
>"Rorschach":
>

>Rich Adlin
>University of Tennessee, Knoxville
>ADLIN@UTKVX

My understanding of the self-esteem literature is that it primarily
concerns itself with environmental factors. Morris Rosenberg has been a
pioneering force in this field with his _Society and the Adolescent
Self-Image_ (1965). A lot of researchers in the field of social psychology
had moderate success in the 1960's in actually manipulating self-esteem
temporarily in laboratory contexts--Aronson's work comes to mind here.
Sounds pretty environmental to me!

As for environmental vs. genetic components, someone (I think it was
Bowers, 1973) did a
lit. review where he added up the chunks of variance explained by
personality and environmental factors (social psychologists have endless
"tastes great!/less filling!" arguments about which counts for variance in
human behavior, "error variance" (personality variables) or "situational
noise" (environmental variables)). Bowers found that both contributed about
equally. The notion that strong situations can influence human behavior is
absolutely irrefutable--look at the studies by Milgram and Haney, Banks,
and Zimbardo, for example. If someone is exposed to a strong situation
often enough, one could see how there routinized behavior could be encoded
as part of the personality structure through classical and/or operant
conditioning, if nothing else....

As for Rick's direct question about the validity of twin studies, my vague
understanding of them is that they're valid enough, but they are
correlation based because few researchers are willing to wait around and do
longitudinal studies to do causal variable studies.

My personal opinion is that sometimes genetics play a role, especially in
terms of secondary variables like an unattractive or especially attracrtive
phenotype as a function of a certain genotype--an attractive person will
have more social opportunities to develop an extraverted personality based
on his/her attractive phenotype which is based on his/her genotype, etc,
etc. However, c'mon, geneticists, at least admit that social morays,
custom, and yes, just blind luck, can influence personality development
just as much as genetics can! I'm sorry if this sounds really wishy-washy,
but I think both nature and nurture contribute to human behavior.....

>From: HOPE@UKANVM.BITNET (Mike Babyak)
>Subject: Re: Three Issues on Personality
>Date: 11 Sep 92 13:27:14 GMT
>
>
>As for the genetics issue, much of the work of Plomin has shown
>that genetics indeed account for a surprising amount of variance
>even in variables that look entirely psychosocial (e.g. stressful
>life events). But as Plomin takes great pains to point out over and
>over, this is in no way a deterministic model -- rather, it is a
>probabilistic one. In other words, genes make certain dispositions
>more likely, they don't doom one to be a certain way.
>
>MIKE BABYAK UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS         *THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE
>HOME* HOPE@UKANVM
>*****************************************************************

Good Point--some genetics may predispose individuals to act a certain way,
but only if the correct environmental conditions obtain...sort of like the
"interaction term" of genes X environment.

Tor
Tor Neilands, Systems Analyst
Statistical and Support Services
                                          													              	
Internet: TBN@Utxvm.cc.utexas.edu
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