More variety than a field of snowflakes

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, psychology, sociology, human personality

I've heard debates over Nature versus Nurture all my life. Everyone has, though mostly we tune them out. Even if we're interested, the interest seldom lasts long. I long ago concluded "it's both," not as a copout, but from observation. However, I didn't think much about what "Nurture" means.

Almost a decade ago, I wrote a song that contains these lines in a chorus: "Is it nature, is it nurture?/Why should anybody care?/We are dealt the cards, but our own hand we play..." Yet in the song, I celebrated Nature (genetic endowment) more than Nurture, and assumed that Nurture was also mainly a family affair. I wrote it in my fifties, after thinking long and hard about the way I'd "become my Father" in many ways, but quite a different person in others, and not just because in those ways I had instead become my Mother. Some of "what is Me" seems to be due to neither of them, nor any ancestor. Where and how did I come by some of these things? It was a mystery to me.

Judith Rich Harris may have the key that unlocks such a mystery. She studied psychology, including at Harvard, from which she was eventually expelled as being too much the synthesist...they like specialization there. She became an independent investigator, which makes her right after my own heart. She has studied much more than psychology over the years, which I believe gives her unique insight into humanness. Her recent book No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality presents her key, or rather, three synergistic keys.

Having at present a teenage son, I've been forced to the conclusion that most of who he is, that is, his personality, was built not my my wife and me but by the world around him and his reaction to it. I don't mean just his peer group—naturally, I think him peerless, and in many ways, he is so capable that true peers are hard to find. No, I mean everyone: schoolmates, church friends, teachers, coaches, and family members (definitely in the minority). His case is not like mine; my father's oldest friends, as they get senile, mistake me for a younger him. Such will never happen with my son. My wife and I are so very different, and he is such a smooth blend of the two—in those things he does have from us—that he cannot resemble either of us very closely.

I'll cut to the chase, but you shouldn't think this will "spoil it" for you. Nobody could do that; Ms Harris writes too well, bringing too much detail, for a mere thousand-word review to steal her thunder!

Author Harris first explains and then disposes of the common list of "suspects," commonly thought to produce human personality. The vast majority of studies have focused on degrees of similarity: between identical twins, ordinary siblings, cousins, and non-relatives, including step-siblings raised together. Few have focused on differences, and nearly none have focused on Harris's key question: Why are identical twins so different?

Think about it. Everyone knows a few pairs of identical twins. Some pairs go to great lengths to seem similar, others to great lengths to be different. Yet, once you get to know them, you can always tell them apart, though you may occasionally forget which name goes with which.

A certain sub-genre of science fiction literature abounds with clones. (Definition: a clone is the collection of individual entities that share the identical geotype. Thus a pair of identical twins is one clone. The four or eight calves produced by splitting a single embryo are one clone. The sheep Dolly and the mature sheep from whose cell she was developed are one clone, though in this case, the two were of different ages; both have died). Anyway, these sci-fi clones typically have almost magical qualities, frequently of the telepathic sort. In reality, there is at least one known human four-member clone, a set of identical quadruplets...there is nothing magical about them. They are four kids who happen to look a lot alike and have many similar tastes and habits, and a very robust collection of tastes and habits that are not shared!

Judy Harris has discerned three more likely suspects, that she calls systems. Each appears to be a mental organ with a specific function. This is similar to our language organ and our face-recognition organ. People whose face-recognition organ is damaged (it is in a particular part of the brain) cannot learn to recognize faces any quicker than they learn to recognize a car key or the house they live in. If you show them a picture of a familiar face, either right-side up or upside-down, they take the same time to state who it is. For most of us, however, recognition of an upside-down picture of someone's face takes much longer. The "face" organ is tuned to people in "ordinary" orientation, not hanging by their heels.

Each System has a set of skills, and each provides its own motivation so that a person willingly does the work to develop accordingly. We are self-motivated to produce a personality that we feel will best serve our interests. The three systems observe differing things, so they sometimes work at cross-purposes. We have plenty of reasons for the inner conflict we often feel!

The first of the three is the Relationship System. It makes use of the Recognition organ, and builds up a body of knowledge about every person we've taken note of, even via hearsay. It strives to build a predictive model of a person, so we'll know how they react, and how we ought to act with them. It uses what it has, which is why first impressions are so important. It tries mightily to determine what distinguishes each indivitual from the mass of "others" yet unknown; thus it homes in on the small differences we notice, even between identical twins. Yet it also looks for patterns in each individual's behavior, so as to be better at its predictions. So, it becomes very skillful at determining a certain kind of sameness (for one person) and another kind of distinctiveness (between any person and all others).

The second of the three is the Socialization System. We seek to belong. When we have few options, we do our best to belong to the group in which we find ourselves. The desire to conform is strong. Yet, once we venture outside the home and have a group of playmates and later schoolmates, we automatically belong to at least two groups, and probably several. Our family is but one of those groups, and we are definitely socialized to certain behavior with our family members. But it turns out that our in-home socialization has almost nothing to do with the other groups to which we belong.

The very active teens (high schoolers) with whom my son spends most of his time belong to several groups: as many as three sports teams; two, three, four or more musical ensembles (stage band, marching band, jazz band, city or county performing band, rock group, private jazz ensemble...); several academic organizations (Math League, Science Olympiad, Drama club...); a church; a church youth group; plus the AP and IB students, a quarter of the student body, form a loose-knit group with specific academic and societal goals. For my son, the number of his "friends" in this gaggle of groups numbers about two hundred. Each group has different "bylaws" or "running rules", and thus a child is differently socialized by each group. My kid is like ten different people, depending on whom he's with!

Dwell on that a moment: other than a few basic habits, the effect of parental training is completely overwhelmed by the socialization requirements of such a life. My conclusion, which I think mirror's Harris's: kids only turn out like their parents if all the groups to which they belong are a lot like their parents. Only this can explain the relative success of the Amish and similar groups, in raising kids who "stick with the program." No other choices are offered. Thus also the impulse of strongly religious parents to put their children into religious schools, of the appropriate stripe, of course! Parents can strongly influence their children's personalities, but only by controlling the entire environment. If home and school are much different, the parents will learn how little influence they truly have.

Actually, there is more to it than this. We have one system to go: the Status System. This system uses information from the other two, over a longer period, to gain status or advantage within the groups we choose to stick with (or that we can't escape). This system is the strongest discriminator; it makes our differences more different, in an effort to carve out a niche of greater value. The Relationship System collects all the information about differences between all the people we know, and many people we've heard about. The Socialization System averages the information for those in a group, so we tend to conform to group norms. But the Status System uses the distinctions between ourselves and others to find areas in which we alone excel, so as to dominate, or gain status, or at least earn some measure of respect, in each group.

No matter how similar one twin is to her twin, there must be some differences, just from the effects of random events. Everyone who knows those twins will put them on distinct "pages" of their Relationship memory, and will thus treat one a little different from the other. Each twin, reacting to others' reaction to them, will emphasize any difference that seems to confer an advantage. Thus, though both are likely socialize to the same group, each will specialize within it, so both are individually respected for unique characteristics.

As it turns out, by the time a pair of twins has reached adulthood, they are about equally balanced between similarities and differences. They may share many things (tastes, habits, attitudes...), but they will differ in about the same number of things. They are more similar than nontwin siblings, who typically share only about a quarter of their tastes or attitudes.

Our desire to be "loved for myself" drives much of our personality development, particularly in Western cultures in which individuality is more valued. Yet significant events can have great effects also. I don't know what I'd be like if I'd never experienced receiving Jesus. I might have many characteristics I now have, but I'd probably be very ignorant of biblical and theological subjects, and would not have gained anything from certain spiritual people I've spent much time with. I know that in many ways I am no different than I was six years ago, when I was dying of cancer. But some things are quite different. People who've known me all along can see the difference. Some folks like it, and most don't care. A few liked me better before, and I've lost one formerly close friend as a result.

Nobody who specialized in any one psychological or sociological discipline could have produced such a synthesis. Judy Harris is just the right sort of person to bring it all together, so we can see some of the "why" and "how" of the puzzles we all face.