Its All in the Jeans

In Heaven Can Wait, an otherwise altogether forgettable movie, there was one unforgettable moment.  Warren Be atty is a soul just arrived in Heaven who insists that he didn't really die.  The crowd of archangels in business suits trying to persuade him otherwise grows rapidly until their chief,( James Mason) suddenly has second thoughts.  He states matter of factly that "the probability of anyone being right is directly proportional to the number of people trying to prove him wrong." 

If that rule is reliable, Judith Rich Harris must be dead spot on. 

In 1998, a kindly grandmother living in New Jersey wrote a book about child-rearing that created quite a stir. In "The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do," Judith Rich Harris had the temerity to suggest that the most important influences on children were not their parents but genes and peers. This was heresy, and critics immediately attacked the book in reviews with titles such as "Parents Don't Count!"

Nonetheless, Mrs. Harris had made a very convincing argument, and she stuck to her guns. Now, with "No Two Alike" (W.W. Norton & Company, 352 pages, $26.95), she has expanded her thesis and has attempted to formulate a new theory of personality formation - the first, in fact, since Sigmund Freud. More specifically, she has attempted to solve the mystery of why people are different.

If you are a parent and you want to hear this argument, your children must be behaving very badly.  I am inclined to think that Harris largely right.  How we turn out is almost solely determined by genetics and by our relationship with the web of people and groups around us.  I do not know what to think of her new theory of personality.

Basically, Mrs. Harris believes there are three "perpetrators" at work in the formation of the human personality, each associated with an aspect of a modular brain. One is the "relationship system," designed to maintain favorable relationships in society.Another is the "Socialization System," where the goal is to be a member of a group. The third is the "Status System," where we compete with our peers for status.

The interplay among these systems accounts for the emergence of differences between individuals. So it is that even identical twins develop different personalities because the members of their community see them as unique individuals and treat them differently. Their individual striving for status propels them into different modes of competing, which in turn differentiates their personalities.

But this is fascinating.