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Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by hrnnnnnn on Thursday September 27, 2018 @05:12AM (#18083009)
I read The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature a while ago and your numbers are pretty close to what Pinker says.

About 50% of personality from genetics, 50% from environment, and approximately 0% from parental influence.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by Arkight on Thursday September 27, 2018 @06:54AM (#18083367)
Quite an statement here, 0% from parenting, surely parent beating their child up does influence their upbringing.

One of the telling trait of serial killers are harsh parenting/tough childhood in general btw.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by annamargot on Thursday September 27, 2018 @07:45AM (#18083560)
Absolutely. Childhood trauma shapes adult behavior, can induce psychosis, and greatly affect health. [0]

But even before we even get to overt trauma, simple resentment is pretty powerful in my opinion as well. Resentment can build in lots of ways. Parents perceived to not treat children equally or to restrict child from persuing a particular interest including love interests.

If parents don’t respect a child it has consequences.

Edit: to add that resentment is normally a reciprocation. Meaning, parent resents child and therefore behaves in a manner that causes child to resent parent. Snowball that for a few years / decades = not good.

[0]- https://www.ted.com/talks/nadine_burke_harris_how_childhood_...

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by scirocco on Thursday September 27, 2018 @09:35AM (#18084294)
Read about this in a book recently, not sure which.. Parents who abandon/do not care about their child, will raise a child which believes no one values them. This causes them to believe they are not worth much, thus they will be afraid of going out and getting their voice heard as an adult - because deep inside, they believe their voice to be worthless. This person will avoid risk, avoid being heard as it may be "punished", according to previous experience..
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @07:52AM (#18083594)
I wonder did this research just look at the "normal range", with these kinds of instances treated as "outliers". I'd expect the results to be strongly qualified as such but these kinds of details often get lost in translation.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by emodendroket on Thursday September 27, 2018 @09:23AM (#18084176)
I don't know if Pinker is right or wrong but I have to imagine that parenting is part of what he's calling "environment."
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by candiodari on Thursday September 27, 2018 @02:31PM (#18087354)
I visited a cat convention first time 3 years ago, since me and my wife have gotten "a few" cats. It was incredibly striking just how similar cats can be. Every 10th booth there was a cat looking, and acting like one of our cats. Down to the looks, whether they sat straight or crooked, the sounds they made and what catches their attention and what they ignore.

It was almost scary that those cats didn't recognise us. I had to hold the "what have you done to my cat!" down more than a few times.

I often wonder if people are similar. That there's really only 1000 different humans or so, and the rest are copies that recognise different people and places. Because for cats, that's definitely the case.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by dan-robertson on Thursday September 27, 2018 @05:16AM (#18083024)
Surely parental influence falls under environment?
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by annamargot on Thursday September 27, 2018 @08:50AM (#18083924)
Yes. Parental influence would be tough to deny. Normally developing children use modeling (imitation) to instruct their behavior.

This is why kids like to pretend to play kitchen or use a broom. They see you do it.

Anecdotally, I have seen children who have ‘bad attitudes’ do a 180 when the parents make an effort to model calmness and positivity. Anxious, stressed out or negative emotions in parents affect the kids.

In most settings, mood is contagious and is set by the leader. The catch is you have to keep it up.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by bloak on Thursday September 27, 2018 @05:29AM (#18083082)
Yes, of course it does. Parents choose which school the children go to, for example.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by thorin on Thursday September 27, 2018 @05:38AM (#18083107)
Not just that: where you live, what kind of house, is there green space nearby, what toys are there, how many people are around in the house whether you spend a lot of time with friends/grandparents, whether there is a lot of interaction with the parent or they are just left by themselves or with the TV on.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rademacher on Thursday September 27, 2018 @06:39AM (#18083321)
I'd argue parental influence falls under genetics and environment, assuming your genes come from your parents.

I wonder if people who are more adept at creating and selective recall of memories tend to be happier individuals.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by watwut on Thursday September 27, 2018 @05:36AM (#18083104)
When parents change approach, kids behavior changes over time. I have seen that happen enough times already to their effect be 0%.

Both in terms of how the kid reacts to situations around and what the kid likes, dislikes or value (consider good vs bad behavior).

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @06:27AM (#18083277)
yeah I think the 0% is questionable, but I am not familiar with the research or how this is parameterised.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by watwut on Thursday September 27, 2018 @07:18AM (#18083454)
I guess one major parameter will be how much the parent is present in kids life and whether they have good relationship. If the parent is not present, his or her impact will be smaller.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @07:45AM (#18083564)
I agree with you, but GP was citing studies where the control variable you describe was adjusted and no effect measured.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by watwut on Thursday September 27, 2018 @08:56AM (#18083960)
Unfortunately, I have no idea which studies GP has in mind and what exactly they measured (whether things related to what I observed or something entirely else), age of kids in question, whether parents had significantly different approaches etc.

I don't think there is scientific a consensus on this yet. I strongly doubt that there is reasonable study that would make the split 50%, 50%, 0%. It is too round, too nice to be true.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @09:31AM (#18084253)
Like I say, I agree with you in the broader sense but I was making a finer point here. i.e. not whether the premise is true, but just what the scope (or even how valid) was of the research that demonstrated the premise.

GP provides sources in a sibling thread where the discussion is further elaborated.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by watwut on Thursday September 27, 2018 @03:30PM (#18087813)
Ah, thanks. I did not seen sibling thread.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by bitexploder on Thursday September 27, 2018 @07:38AM (#18083535)
Personality is not behavior. I think we are just conflating those somewhat.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @07:44AM (#18083552)
Interesting ... personality strongly mediates behaviour. How else would you "measure" personality? A strict behaviorist (in the line of Watson or Skinner) would say personality doesn't matter or even exist. It's like the life of a subatomic particle - you only know of its effect but what actually goes on in there is forever a mystery.

Unless you want to go psychodynamic on things but you'll have to start making excuses for Freud then!

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by bitexploder on Thursday September 27, 2018 @07:49AM (#18083581)
I guess what I am proposing is not really testable. If behavior is the evidence of personality, maybe personality is always just a back-filled hand wavy explanation to describe the behavioral trends. I guess the reason I think that: there is evidence of that subatomic particle (personality) but it is very elusive.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @07:56AM (#18083616)
> personality is always just a back-filled hand wavy explanation

This is what Watson would have said (in a roundabout way) [0]. Perhaps it's not related but he's not considered to have been a very nice guy. [1] [2]

Skinner was a lot more fun.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson#Behaviorism

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson#"Little_Albert"...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson#Advertising

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by bitexploder on Thursday September 27, 2018 @08:06AM (#18083676)
Thanks for sharing — I am not very well read on psychology so I probably operate in ignorance a lot. Never enough time to read and learn everything I wish I could.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @08:22AM (#18083764)
The nice thing about psychology, is understanding a little bit about how the mind works, means you can optimise for increasing your capacity to learn all sorts of other things!
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by tomp on Thursday September 27, 2018 @05:30AM (#18083083)
> 50% of personality from genetics

What's the source of this? Given that siblings are often so different between each other, and from their parents, it could be that most of personality traits come from the environment, but we're still born with it (i.e. it could be influence in early development of the fetus, from the environment (womb, food mother eats and her hormones, sounds and movement from outside, ...) not from genes).

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by afpx on Thursday September 27, 2018 @05:48AM (#18083143)
“... Pinker relies on a 1998 book called "The Nurture Assumption," by Judith Rich Harris, which has been the object of some controversy in the field of developmental psychology. Harris claimed that "shared family environments"—that is, parents—have little or no effect on a child's personality.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/11/25/what-comes-nat...

As a parent, that seems about right. We may lay a foundation for helping them make good choices. But, a child’s identity ultimately seems to be formed by their predisposition and the types of peers that they seek out and befriend at around 12 years and onwards.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by DanBC on Thursday September 27, 2018 @06:36AM (#18083306)
We're not going to get any useful information from a pop sci book that uses other pop sci books as sources.

There's almost no fact checking and they usually mangle the science. http://www.danielbor.com/lehrerandsciencewriting/

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by afpx on Thursday September 27, 2018 @06:48AM (#18083352)
Sorry, I would have cited specific chapters and paragraphs if I had more time. I don’t even know where my copy of the book is, at the moment (somewhere around here).

I figured a ‘pop sci’ reference could at least help guide the way. My bad.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by emodendroket on Thursday September 27, 2018 @09:28AM (#18084229)
I can't see what was wrong with your post; whatever we might say of any of the books in question, it seems to me like you're answering a question and helping us understand where Pinker's claims come from. If someone is going to carp that the sources of "pop-sci," let them cite what they feel is a higher-quality source.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @09:35AM (#18084295)
No, but it's just that controversial claims require more rigor in how they are substantiated.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by emodendroket on Thursday September 27, 2018 @09:36AM (#18084314)
I see zero rigor in any side of this discussion. Physician, heal thyself.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @09:40AM (#18084344)
I think that's kind of harsh.

I'd go so far as you're just trying to hurtful.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by emodendroket on Thursday September 27, 2018 @09:41AM (#18084349)
I'm not trying to hurt anyone; I just don't see why you've singled out this one guy, who at least had a citation, for a lack of rigor.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @09:47AM (#18084406)
Because 0% parental influence is a pretty extravagant claim.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by emodendroket on Thursday September 27, 2018 @10:13AM (#18084635)
It seems obvious to me that "environment" includes parental influence; your reading strikes me as eccentric.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @10:22AM (#18084746)
No. The statement was that "parental influence accounts for 0%".

If parenting is a part of the environment, then that's not 0%.

The conclusion purposely mangles the numbers for the sake of sensationalism, and that is the kind of thing that gets picked up on and becomes myth.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by emodendroket on Thursday September 27, 2018 @10:37AM (#18084913)
Sorry, you are right; I got confused about the claims with the multiple threads of the discussion. You are right: Harris claims family is essentially irrelevant.

Nonetheless, I don't think it's fair to jump straight to "sensationalism" to explain why he has different findings than yours. Perhaps your sense of influencing your children is more illusory than you think. It wouldn't be the first time a widely-acknowledged phenomenon with children turned out to be in the imagination of parents (consider "sugar high," for instance, which does not really exist).

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @10:48AM (#18085012)
No mate, he's totally spinning the results to stir up a buzz. I'm not just speaking from my own lived experience either, I've an academic grounding in developmental psychology.

The influence of parents is very much a factor in development. Just other factors influence a lot more than other people might expect.

You're making assumptions I'm some sort of uneducated whimsical pixie-head and that's your failure. Not mine.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by emodendroket on Thursday September 27, 2018 @10:52AM (#18085060)
Why not lead with that instead of telling me how great anecdotal evidence is?
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @07:59AM (#18083635)
I think there's an emerging etiquette around this kind discourse that where "research" conflicts with personal experiences that attempts be made to cross-check and reconcile that. These days with all the bad science around we have to be a lot more careful about what we accept as fact.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by emodendroket on Thursday September 27, 2018 @09:29AM (#18084234)
A pop-sci book seems like it's at least as good as personal anecdote, which is used on HN to claim all sorts of bizarre things.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @09:34AM (#18084281)
I would rate personal anecdote higher.

Pop-sci often adopts sensationalism at the expense of rigour in order to shift volumes.

At least personal, lived experience can be taken at face value, if accepted in good faith as a truthful account, and can be cross-examined.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by emodendroket on Thursday September 27, 2018 @09:38AM (#18084324)
I'd say the opposite, because pop-science books at least represent an effort to collate multiple examples in support of some thesis and do not exclusively rely on the experiences of one individual. Of course we can see this used maliciously all the time (I think people are finally starting to turn on Malcolm Gladwell), but to me that just suggests both are fairly low-quality sources.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @09:45AM (#18084389)
Except, you can't deny personal experience. The onus on science is to explain experience, not the other way round.

If you have an observer giving a truthful account that conflicts with an established fact then surely something must account for that discrepancy.

See for instance radio-waves vs Kirchoffs law. It's not that Kirchoff was wrong, it's just that he didn't account for frequency as a variable, which was solved by Maxwell.

Now, that's for established facts. If you're talking about commercially adulterated science then you have an even higher burden to bear.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by emodendroket on Thursday September 27, 2018 @10:15AM (#18084656)
Of course you can, or I'd have to accept all sorts of wild claims about alien abductions and near-death experiences. Even discounting such extreme examples, personal experience, as presented by anecdote, is colored by the person's perceptions and beliefs, both before and after the experience they relate.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @10:24AM (#18084765)
ah you're just being facaetious now. We are discussing a very specific phenomenon where prevalent observer experience can't just be chalked down to fantasy.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by emodendroket on Thursday September 27, 2018 @10:35AM (#18084890)
People rejected the germ theory of disease because, among other reasons, they didn't feel it was in accord with their personal experience. Personal experience is the root of baseless superstition. Tell me what's wrong with these different examples, which fit the new criteria you've added.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @10:56AM (#18085100)
We're discussing the experience of educated, and critical truthful observers, vs sensationalistic scientism and you throw up alien abductions, life-after-death experience and something about germ theory. I don't know which people you're talking about but it's been known for time immemorial among many cultures that cleanliness is a good way to avoid disease. You are cherry-picking narratives to suite your rhetoric.

We need to be beyond a level of discourse where "because science" or "a study said" is considered a fait acompli. Science often contradicts herself and studies are often debunked.

Just because "some guy wrote it", doesn't make it so.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by emodendroket on Thursday September 27, 2018 @11:00AM (#18085139)
> We need to be beyond a level of discourse where "because science" or "a study said" is considered a fait acompli. Science often contradicts herself and studies are often debunked.

I don't disagree. But I don't think personal anecdote is a sufficient answer. You could criticize the quality of the research (in more specific terms than "pop-sci") or present contradictory evidence and I'd have no problem with it. Simply attacking a guy in a casual discussion that is not particularly rigorous for posting a citation you deem insufficiently rigorous without further explanation I do not think is fair.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @11:20AM (#18085321)
Huh?

Initially, I merely proposed that in the modern world we need to be more rigorous in our evaluation of scientific propositions.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18083635

That's where you joined in.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by emodendroket on Thursday September 27, 2018 @02:15PM (#18087214)
I had wrongly attributed the DanBC comment to you. Sorry.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by naasking on Thursday September 27, 2018 @08:01AM (#18083650)
> Given that siblings are often so different between each other

But most identical twins are not so different from each other. Read up on twin studies, where twins were separated at birth. They tend to have very similar personalities and outlooks on life, despite never having had contact until the study was conducted.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by tomp on Thursday September 27, 2018 @08:36AM (#18083839)
That still wouldn't separate genetics vs. common pre-birth environmental influences (e.g. mother's hormones and nutrition).
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by TheOtherHobbes on Thursday September 27, 2018 @08:47AM (#18083905)
There's not much known because it's almost impossible to research, surely? You'd have to have one identical twin developing naturally, and the other brought to term inside a surrogate mother.

This probably doesn't happen very often. (TBH I don't know if it's even possible.)

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by naasking on Thursday September 27, 2018 @09:53AM (#18084468)
> That still wouldn't separate genetics vs. common pre-birth environmental influences (e.g. mother's hormones and nutrition).

Sure it would, if you study enough of them.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by lurquer on Thursday September 27, 2018 @09:33AM (#18084275)
That isn't sufficient, unfortunately. A third-party's treatment of an individual depends a lot on the appearance of the individual. (i.e., beautiful people are treated differently than ugly people.) That is, one's appearance can have a causal effect on one's 'environment.'

Thus, even if raised separately, the 'environment' to which each identical twin is exposed will be more similar than the 'environments' of two non-identical people.

Simple example....

Adam and Bob are raised separately. Yet, both develop to be confident and strong leaders. Is this leadership quality 'genetic'? Or, is it because Adam and Bob are each 6'5" and handsome?

It would be very difficult indeed to statistically tease out these things.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @09:49AM (#18084430)
Well if you take a single instance yes, it's hard to claim. But the effect is born out by thousands upon thousands of instances.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by lurquer on Thursday September 27, 2018 @09:56AM (#18084495)
Thousands?

That is incorrect.

The number of identical twins that have been raised separately (and studied) is tiny.

With a sample size that small, it is difficult to get statistically significant results. Obviously. I was just pointing out that one of the issues with which a researcher must grapple is the fact that not only is one shaped by one's environment, but one's environment is shaped -- to some degree -- by one's appearance... a tricky issue when dealing with two subjects who are identical in every outward respect.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by naasking on Thursday September 27, 2018 @10:13AM (#18084632)
Hundreds of such twins have been studied, and hundreds more of fraternal twins. Combined with data from thousands of other twins which have contact (UK twin registry alone tracks 12,000 twins), this enables significant comparative analysis. You're seriously underestimating the amount of data available.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @11:29AM (#18085402)
A single twin-study cited in this article [0] surveyed 8,280 twins.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4653279/

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by lurquer on Thursday September 27, 2018 @01:13PM (#18086549)
That is incorrect. The sample consisted of 8,280 monozygotic (identical) and dizygotic (fraternal) twins. Twins separated at birth were not involved, if I'm reading the study correctly. In any case, it's nothing worth arguing about. (I will say, though, that if there are 8,280 pairs of identical twins in Denmark who were raised separately, there is something very strange happening in Denmark.)
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by barry-cotter on Thursday September 27, 2018 @08:00AM (#18083647)
http://humancond.org/papers/turkheimer00_three_laws_behavior...

The author proposes three laws of behavioral genetics which summarize results across a wide range of behaviors:

All human behavioral traits are heritable. The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of genes. A substantial portion of the variation in complex human behavioral traits is not accounted for by the effects of genes or families.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by wenc on Thursday September 27, 2018 @11:58AM (#18085705)
> What's the source of this?

Yes, I wonder about this too.

> Given that siblings are often so different between each other, and from their parents, it could be that most of personality traits come from the environment, but we're still born with it.

In terms of genetics, the reason there's variation between siblings and parents, even though it is true that as children we inherit 50% of our genes from our father and 50% from our mother, is due to randomness in terms of which parts get inherited. Our siblings are inherits different combinations of genetics, but we all inherit 50%/50%.

This doesn't answer the question of how much of our personality is inherited vs environmental, but that siblings/parents are so different from each other doesn't argue against heritability.

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by grandpa on Thursday September 27, 2018 @07:55AM (#18083615)
You could test this by looking at whether pairs of fraternal twins are as similar on personality traits as pairs of identical twins. If they are more different, then genes are the cause.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @08:00AM (#18083645)
There's been lots of these twin studies. Most of what we know about genetic influences has been determined this way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_study

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by callesgg on Thursday September 27, 2018 @08:22AM (#18083758)
You cant objectively measure the difference between two people.
Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by rusk on Thursday September 27, 2018 @06:30AM (#18083289)
> influence in early development of the fetus, ... womb, food mother eats and her hormones, sounds and movement from outside

I actually do think this counts for a lot. Certainly there are genetic and epigenetic factors, but scant attention is paid to gestative influence (an area it seems few know much about).

It does seem there is an eagerness to label all personality traits from the date-of-birth as "genetic".

Re:The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth by tudorconstantin on Thursday September 27, 2018 @06:19AM (#18083249)
So, if I beat my wife in front of my kids regularly, I can have a clear conscience if they'll beat theirs or accept abuses from their husbands in the future?