made vs born
Saw some really amazing stats today, comparing identical twins with non-identical twins… or in other words looking at kids raised by the same parents in roughly the same way and then looking at what happens if their genes are either the same (identical twins), versus if they have somewhat different genes (non-identical twins). This is roughly what they look like:
Table: “If one twin has the problem, does the other twin have it also”
Identical twins Non-identical twins
Schizophrenia 48 17
Manic depression 65 14
Alcoholism (men) 41 22
Criminal convictions (adults) 52 23
Juvenile delinquency 91 73
(from McGue and Bouchard, 1998, cited in ‘happiness, Lessons from a new Science’, Layard, 2005)
These figures are a pretty amazing demonstration of how much of our behaviours are affected by our genes. The figure for juvenile delinquency is probably the most striking, if you have an identical twin with this problem the odds are 91% against you that you will too. The really interesting thing, of course, is to compare the two columns, many of figures in the ‘identical twin’ column are double what is in the ‘non-identical twin’ column, which gives us some indication of the strength of the effect of the shared genes. And moreover it underlines the futility of what we so often seek to do - find who to blame. Who is to blame in the above cases? The parents? The (‘bad’) neighbourhood? Society?
The figures kind of explode what many ‘self-help’ gurus would like to have us believe about how we make our own destinies. I believe it is utterly destructive and futile to tell people they are the absolute creators of their own destiny, the only authors of their own story. ‘If you fail, you have only yourself to blame - if you had doubled your effort, your commitment, your thinking it would have come off.’ Or so the logic follows.
Studies in fact have shown that strategies often proposed based on that kind of thinking like repeating ‘positive messages’, such as ‘I am a beautiful person’, ‘I am intelligent and creative’ etc (these are real examples!) in most cases have no effect and in many are actually damaging. Life is more like the card game metaphor - you get dealt a hand, it’s up to you how you play it.
Setting yourself realistic but challenging goals, based on who you are are and what you can actually do is a much more effective strategy, much more healthy, and in the long run it’s the only way to end up feeling satisfied with the person you actually are.
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Saw some really amazing stats today, comparing identical twins with non-identical twins… or in other words looking at...
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