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Article Excerpt
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THOMAS J. BOUCHARD, JR., is Professor of Psychology at the University of Minnesota and Director of the Minnesota Center for Twin and Adoption Research. He is best known for initiating and carrying out the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart (MISTRA), which revealed the remarkable similarity in the behavior of identical (technically best termed monozygotic) twins who had been separated very early in life. This detailed study, which included physical, medical, and psychological measurements of a large number of such cases, established the importance of genetic factors in just about every aspect of human behavior.
The remarkable similarity of one pair of monozygotic twins reared apart, called the "Jim twins," captured worldwide media attention and led to the identification and study of many more cases. As described by Bouchard's colleague and co-interviewee Nancy Segal, in her book Entwined Lives, each Jim had a dog named "Toy," had been married twice--first to wives named "Linda" and then to second wives named "Betty," one named his son "James Allan," the other "James Alan," Both "Jims" drove a light-blue Chevrolet to Pas Grille beach in Florida for family vacations, smoked Salem cigarettes and drank Miller Lite beer, served as part-time sheriffs, bit their fingernails, suffered from migraine headaches, and left love notes to the wife around the house.
Professor Bouchard has conducted extensive research in human behavior genetics, as well as evolutionary psychology.
Recently published papers include: Koenig, L. B., & Bouchard, T. J., Jr. 2006. "Genetic and Environmental Influences on the Traditional Moral Values Triad--Authoritarianism, Conservatism and Religiousness--as Assessed by Quantitative Behavior Genetic Methods." In McNamara, P. (Eds.) Where God and Science Meet: How Brain and Evolutionary Studies Alter Our Understanding of Religion. Volume I: The Evolutionary Psychology of Religion: How Evolution Shaped the Religious Brain. Westport, CT: Praeger.
A publication currently in press is Bouchard, T. J., Jr., "Genes and Human Psychological Traits." In P. Carters, S. Lawrence & S. Stitch (Eds.), The innate mind: Foundations for the future (Vol. 3). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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NANCY L. SEGAL was one of Bouchard's most important collaborators on the MISTRA project. Now Professor of Psychology and Director of the Twin Studies Center, at California State University, Fullerton, she was named Distinguished Professor in the Humanities and Social Sciences and Outstanding Professor of the Year (2004-5). Dr. Segal also received the 2005 James Shields Award for Lifetime Contributions to Twin Research from the Behavior Genetics Association and International Society for Twin Studies, the 2008 Social Responsibility Award from the Western Psychological Association, and the 2006 International Making a Difference Award (Multiple Births Canada).
Dr. Segal is the author of Indivisible by Two: Lives of Extraordinary Twins (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005/2007) and Entwined Lives: Twins and What They Tell Us About Human Behavior (NY: Dutton, 1999, NY: Plume 2000), and senior editor of Uniting Psychology and Biology: Integrative Perspectives on Human Development (Washington, DC: APA Press, 1997). She received a 2003-2004 American Fellowship from the American Association of University Women and is an Associate Editor of Twin Research and Human Genetics, the official journal of the International Society for Twin Studies. One of the most interesting pairs of separated identical twins Dr. Segal has studied and described are Oskar, who grew up Catholic in Nazi Germany, and Jack, who grew up Jewish in Trinidad.
Dr. Segal has appeared on Good Morning America, 20/20, the Oprah Winfrey Show and Discovery Health.
SKEPTIC REUNITED THESE "MINNESOTA Twins" to explain how twin and adoption research changed the face of psychology and explain the growing influence of human behavior genetics on evolutionary psychology, economics, and political science.
SKEPTIC: You both work in a field dealing with evolution and genetics. In the common mind they are entwined, but still different. Evolution implies change, while heredity or genetics implies continuity. We're seeing an explosion of knowledge in genetic and evolutionary research. Just pick up any day's newspaper. Has it taken this long since Darwin and Mendel for science and society to appreciate their importance, or has it been a pendulum swing? How would you describe this history?
NS: I think there been somewhat of a pendulum swing because genetics took on a bad name for a while due to the legacy of Nazism and genetic determinism. And, as a reaction, American psychology was subsequently pervaded by environmentalist thinking (that is, the exclusion of genetics in favor of social, cultural, economic and political factors). There was disillusionment with purely environmental explanations, coupled with important developments in genetics starting with the deciphering of DNA in 1953. It was also discovered that an extra 21st chromosome is present in most cases of Down's syndrome. All these events moved the pendulum back toward the genetic side.
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Behavior genetics and evolutionary psychology have existed separately for a while, but now as they edge closer I think each is realizing the value of the other. For example, behavior genetics offers a vast array of methods and approaches that evolutionary psychologists can use to answer some of their questions (especially those concerning kin relations), and evolutionary psychologists can inform behavior geneticists about differences in trait-specific heritabilities. I do wish that behavior geneticists would take more of an evolutionary perspective in their work. I think the evolutionary psychologists are moving a little bit more toward behavior genetics than vice versa, but I'm not quite sure why. Tom?
TB: Well, in terms of the broad question, I think Nancy is correct. Nazism really contaminated everything associated with human genetics and left us unable to think straight about all the influences on human behavior. Even when my study of twins reared apart began in 1979 there were graduate students in the department, some of them associated with my lab, who said, "I don't want anything to do with this. I won't be able to find a job when I get out of here." There were other factors at work, as well. There is no question that behaviorism, starting with John B. Watson and culminating in the work of B.F. Skinner, became dominant for a period. Today, we have a broader perspective and there is a tendency among some, especially in human behavior genetics, to trivialize psychology's behaviorist period. Well, it wasn't all nonsense and error. It made some very important and useful contributions. It developed methodologies that are very useful for clinicians, animal behaviorists, and many others. I definitely don't want to dismiss it out of hand.
Nancy is right, that in recent years there has been a concatenation of events, especially the unraveling of the human genome that ushered in the molecular genetics revolution. That's still ongoing, but there hasn't been a full resolution yet. I was at a meeting just a few weeks ago and there were presentations documenting massive evidence for evolution taking place in different human populations around the world within the last 5,000 to 10,000 years. Some had argued that human evolution had come to a halt. Well, it hasn't. There's now very little doubt about this.
SKEPTIC: Looking back on each of your...
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