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Are Children Less Like Their Parents Than We Thought?

by Noah Carl
3 May 2024 9:00 AM

On April 23, the Times ran an article with the title ‘Children are less like their parents than we thought, study finds’. According to that article, “the study suggests that people inherit surprisingly little of their personality –– so much so that parents and their children are only slightly more likely to resemble each other in temperament than pairs of strangers are”.

This is a very odd summary. Why? Well, the study in question was titled ‘Familial Transmission of Personality Traits and Life Satisfaction Is Much Higher Than Shown in Typical Single-Method Studies’. In other words, its main finding could be characterised as ‘children are more like their parents than we thought’.

So what’s going on?

René Mõttus and colleagues begin by noting that parent-offspring and sibling-sibling correlations for personality traits are usually based on self-report data. This means that researchers usually estimate the degree to which relatives resemble one another by asking each relative to fill out a questionnaire about their own personality.

However, the use of self-report data may lead to underestimation of parent-offspring and sibling-sibling correlations due to relatives using different reference groups for comparison, or having different interpretations of survey items. A father and his son may be similarly extraverted (by some objective standard) but the father may, for whatever reason, rate himself as less extraverted. For example, he may have spent more time with highly extraverted people during the course of his life.

In order to get round this problem, Mõttus and colleagues analysed data on the personality traits of relatives from two different sources: self-reports and ratings by third parties (mostly spouses/partners). So every relative’s personality was rated twice, once by themself and once by somebody else. This gave the researchers more accurate measurements of personality that are less affected by the idiosyncrasies of individual raters.

When they ran their statistical analyses using these more accurate measurements, they observed higher correlations than have been reported by previous studies. In other words, they found that relatives are more similar with respect to personality than those studies have suggested.

Specifically, they obtained estimates around r = .20, as compared to typical estimates of around r = .15 – which means that theirs are about a third higher. They also obtained higher estimates of heritability (which quantifies the genetic contribution to individual differences in personality). Interestingly, the latter finding is noted in the Times article, despite the fact that it basically contradicts the title.

So where did the bizarre title come from? Well, Mõttus and colleagues state in their conclusion that it is still “impossible to accurately predict a child’s personality traits from those of their mother or father”. Note: they are not saying it is impossible to predict a child’s personality traits, only that it is impossible to do so “accurately” (a somewhat subjective judgement).

To sum up: a new study was published (as a pre-print), and rather than reporting its main finding, the Times decided to emphasise a brief section in the conclusion, thereby giving the impression the study found the opposite of what it actually did.

Tags: heritabilityTimes

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13 Comments
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transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago

Methinks there’s an agenda to emphasise nurture over nature because reasons.

71
0
DHJ
DHJ
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

Diminish the significance of the parents, let the State raise the kids. A recurrent theme of the Scottish Government.

69
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  DHJ

Indeed – and many others.

26
0
RW
RW
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

Obviously. It’s supposed to support the origin-of-xen¹ theory of the so-called progressive left which basically states that humans are not animals but something made of featureless clay which can be formed in whatever way someone desires to form it. Unsurprisingly, they’re again repurposing well-known Christian myths here.

¹ Politically correct way to refer to hairless and sexless hindleg-walking creatures killing the planet by burning stuff said to have brains capable of independent thought despite no evidence for this could be found so far.

13
0
Marcus Aurelius knew
Marcus Aurelius knew
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

“Reject your parents, they are of a world now dead.”

14
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  Marcus Aurelius knew

I’m an ignoramus – who said that?

3
0
Dinger64
Dinger64
1 year ago

“Not like their parents”
Mine are from a different fecking dimension !

20
0
alfarom
alfarom
1 year ago

What would you expect from the Times these days. They parted company from reality sometime ago.

29
0
Grahamb
Grahamb
1 year ago

$cience TM.

6
0
TheGreenAcres
TheGreenAcres
1 year ago

Sounds like a low quality study interpreted by low IQ ‘journalists’ looking for a headline. What a time to be alive!

20
0
godknowsimgood
godknowsimgood
1 year ago

Men are women.

Girls are boys.

Ineffective vaccines are effective.

Unsafe vaccines are safe.

Global warming = our heating bills are far higher than ever.

Children are more like their parents than we thought = children are less like their parents than we thought.

War is peace.

Freedom is slavery.

Ignorance is strength.

“Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can’t believe impossible things.’
I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

32
0
Marcus Aurelius knew
Marcus Aurelius knew
1 year ago
Reply to  godknowsimgood

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master——that’s all.”

23
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago
Reply to  Marcus Aurelius knew

“In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.”

Is this not precisely what the transgender hullabaloo is all about?

A man can be a woman.

A woman can be a man.

Last edited 1 year ago by huxleypiggles
16
0

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