TheOnlyFlorence wrote:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc … re/303534/

Did no one like/read-any-of this?

It's a very interesting article, but I cannot fully agree with Lykken's point of view.

First of all, dogs aren't like people. There are monogamous animals, there are non-monogamous animals. There are highly sexual bonobos that are closely related to us, but I don't think people really want to have sex 10 hours per day. I mean - is culture controlled our sex drive so much, we would be masturbating all the time. I'm pretty sure it example shows that studying animal behaviour won't give you answers about human nature. Sure, there are patterns, but when it comes to psychology there are still blank pages to fill.

This saddens but doesn't surprise Lykken, a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota; his work, some of it conducted with subjects behind bars, convinces him that "the psychopath and the hero are twigs of the same branch."

Actually, there are psychologyst and neurobiologyst that say that being a psychopath has to do with the lack of emotions, very often related to the brain damage. A psychopath doesn't feel empathy, doesn't feel remorse, is egocentric. Heroes are sociocentric, they risk their own good for the others. I don't think we're born sociocentric, kids aren't really focused on giving. Sure, they are sweethearts, but try to convince them to give their favourite toy to their sibling. Very not sociocentric-like. I don't consider it the same branch, because one of them is mainly biological and the second one comes from social experiences.

In a postindustrial culture that holds up a workaholic Mr. Nice Guy as its temperamental ideal, the heroic spirit defined by Alexander the Great has fallen from grace. Time and technology have shrunk the number of acceptable outlets for the daring, aggressive nature that swung the sword and mapped the unknown, until it has come to be associated primarily with criminals.

I guess Americans still have the spirit of their ancestors - the spirit of curiosity. You have so many scientists from States and scientists come to U.S.A. and then have kids there so you have so many gifted people there. Curious people. People who are ambitious and believe they can make all their dreams true. Isn't an american dream about it? The greatest issue for ambitious people is failure - when they fail, they feel frustration because they have always heard they are destined to success. That's how Everyman turns Villain. It doesn't have a lot to do with agression, because all people feel anger sometimes. We just have to find a good outlet for that - sports, for instance. Unfortunately, some people choose violence. It happens everywhere, not only in States.

As America reels from a wave of lawlessness, research on the temperamental underpinnings of violence has become increasingly controversial. Because black men compose only six percent of the general population but about half of the imprisoned one, the issue particularly concerns the black community, which is understandably suspicious of biological explanations for behavior.

I don't see a biological factor here. There are no studies to show that black men feel anger more often than white men, there are only studies that show that black men go to jail more often. If you think about it more, you'll notice it has much more to do with social stigma than with other factors. A halo effect explains why stereotypes come true.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect

Lykman suggests he knows which people should breed based on their skin colour. The country with the higher percentage of serial killers is U.S.A., serial killers who are usually white men. According to Lykman's logic, Americans shouldn't breed. Did I explain why his point of view is totally absurd?

Then the article ponders about temperament which has nothing to do with being prone to be a criminal. There's a long path between being short-tempered and killing people. We learn to cope with certain emotions following the behavioristic patterns we see everyday. A kid exposed to violence at home, at school, while watching TV will have difficulty in finding a good outlet to express anger in a good way. Once again, it has to do with enviroment, not biology.

The study described later totally ignores the fact that the human brain can be shaped by us - for example playing the piano increase the amount of white matter. To determine genetics, they should study siblings' brains who parted ways very soon and was raised in different adoptive families. That's how you could measure the biological factor.

Lykken illustrates the flip side of the point with anecdotes from the University of Minnesota research on identical twins reared separately from birth. Such pairs are eerily alike not only in IQ and traits such as inhibition, boldness, and aggressiveness, but also in idiosyncrasies, such as the way two sisters count themselves to sleep, or the way two brothers have come to prefer the same cologne, hair cream, and imported toothpaste.

So.. yeah, biology isn't the main factor.

I mostly agree with the last part:

Partly because the genesis of aggressiveness is more complex than that of inhibition or boldness, Jerome Kagan is uncomfortable with the notion that there is an aggressive temperament per se. In his view, aggressive children are fundamentally characterized by fearlessness; they're bold but badly brought up, so that they become bullies. (...) "This biological-predisposition business has become ridiculous," Kagan says. "Even if there's a genetic component to a person' s behavior, that doesn't mean he has no control over it."

So to sum up: it depends on how you channel your emotions. How you channel your anger, your sadness, your creativity. You can't control what happens to you, but you can - and should - make the best out of it. There are no bad emotions, there are only bad coping patterns.

Last edited by dlaire (07-13-2013 02:46:42 AM)

Dlaire, I love your insight. I do wonder, though, just exactly how much control Nurture has over temperament. Satyr's statements are true, especially regarding the twin studies. The Twin studies are phenomenal in this aspect, showing that genetics do dictate much, much more our temperament than does a sociological aspect.




What did you all think of this portion here?:

W. Gallagher wrote:

"A party animal doesn't dash off a Paradise Lost. The same high-strung families much afflicted by moodiness and depression are more likely than others to include writers and dancers, painters and composers. Happily, this strain is hypersensitive not only to stress and danger but also to art and nuance: as Byron wrote, 'Of its own beauty is the mind diseased.' Hagop Akiskal, after investigating (in collaboration with his wife Kareen Akiskal) what he calls 'the romantic idea that mental illness is related to creativity,' discovered a link not with disease per se but with a variation on the reactive disposition which he calls the 'cyclothymic temperament.' People of this type alternate rapidly between high and low levels of mood and activity which are far less marked than those of manic depressives. The 'down' spells foster contemplation and reflection; during the 'up' spells surging energy, ambition, confidence, and mental puissance drive hard work."

dlaire wrote:

Lykman suggests he knows which people should breed based on their skin colour.

Quoting Lykken, Gallagher wrote:

"My grandsons are going to be big African-American males, so they're going to face a high risk of attracting violence themselves and of frightening other people. Because of them, and the fact that crime is threatening to destroy all the great improvements in race relations that have come about in my lifetime, I get kind of steamed up about this problem." He concedes that "there's not a prayer in the world" that the solution he favors—the licensing of people for biological parenthood according to the same criteria that are used for adoption—will be tested in the near future: "My purpose in making an extravagant suggestion is to start a discussion. The problem is so real, and nobody is talking about the solution."

Ah, I see where you're getting it.  No, it's not about skin color.  Lykken is in favor of issuing licenses to become a parent -- a point of view I instinctively find odious -- but that's not because he thinks some races are better than others, but because he thinks that racial prejudice will continue as long as minority children are disproportionately brought up in household environments that push them towards crime.  He wants parent licenses so that children of all races are brought up in the stable, loving households they deserve, so that maybe someday we won't see a big black man and think "uh-oh, better cross the street."  How Lykken intends to decide who gets to become a parent I don't know, and the dystopian novel writes itself, but it's not racism that's motivating him.

dlaire wrote:

On Nature vs. Nurture: Nurture is more powerful when we're not aware of its impact, I suppose. Being aware of our temperament may lower its influence on us, or it may adapt to our needs. Being optimistic was totally against my temperament. Imagine a person who is aware of being short-tempered. This person is more likely to do something about it and, for example, tries "postpone" his or her reaction. To many people it's easier to find a new job instead of learning how to cope with stress in the job they have.

A great point, and definitely a place where -- at least for some people -- being born with a certain temperament, and becoming aware of its drawbacks, might lead folks to spend their lives playing against type.  When I was little, my fight-or-flight decisions tended towards fight.  But after I took things much too far, I clamped down on that shit permanently, and killed my anger towards other people as much as I could.  I am not the same person now that I was then.  And I guess that does weaken Gallagher's point; events didn't just change how I expressed my disposition, but even whether I did.

TheOnlyFlorence wrote:

Satyr's statements are true, especially regarding the twin studies. The Twin studies are phenomenal in this aspect, showing that genetics do dictate much, much more our temperament than does a sociological aspect.

No, I don't think they've shown that.  Off the top of my head, most twin studies that examine people's behavior estimate that genetics account for maybe 30% to 60% of the variation in behavior, depending on what's being studied.  And even these studies are sometimes plagued by a lack of attention to epigenetics, a newish field of study that exists at the nexus of nature and nurture; and on top of everything there is likely to be publication bias, wherein studies that show less influence of genetics on behavior are deemed less interesting and are thus less likely to be published.  Twin studies are an awesome idea, and it's probably fair to say that they've shown that genetics is more important than we used to think -- but it would be exaggerating to say that they show that nature is more important than nurture, much less "much, much more" important.

The part about cyclothymic temperament and artistry put me in mind of Kay Redfield Jamison's book Touched With Fire, where she tries to make the same connection with mixed success.  She relies a lot on anecdotal evidence, but as they say, the plural of anecdote is data, and she sure does find a lot of artists and writers who fit or sort-of-fit the pattern.

My feelings exactly, dlaire.