Steven Pinker - Parental Influence On Personality

The Brian May of evolutionary psychology brings the heat!
Do parents really shape the personality of their children?

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Steven
• pinker
• psychology
• genes
• nature
• nurture
• dangerous knowledge
• controversial
• harvard

[pawsoned]

Mr Pinker is just another modern day sophist and his pseudo-explanations are a whole lot of hooey that befuddle other people by constructing false data and presenting them as a scientific fact that is seemingly irrefutable. Who is he really? Not a philosopher or a scientist but only a linguistic maven who uses rhetorical gimmicks to dismiss ideas that he does not like.

[magnusjsolberg]

@pawsoned Would you like to present an actual argument? Also, on what grounds do you claim that the data he's presenting is "false"?

You say that he's not a philosopher, as if to suggest that would lend more credibility to what he's saying. Obviously it wouldn't. Philosophy doesn't help much in this context. What we need is data, and Pinker is presenting just that. You can dispute the data, but , again, you need actual arguments.

[pawsoned]

@magnusjsolberg Oh man, debunking the demagoguery that pinker disseminates would take a few days, but let's concentrate on the fragment from your channel: at 0:18 the woman asked a concrete question and was his response in the same vein? By any means, his "scientific" response is peppered with such "scientific" phrases as: "a large number of studies" (0:31), "most people hear about THESE studies" [I ask together with the woman WHAT STUDIES for Christ's sake!]

[magnusjsolberg]

@pawsoned First of all, I'm sure you realize this is not the full lecture. Second of all, Pinker's book The Blank Slate does reference the relevant research. You're free to read it, as I have done. Thirdly, do the work yourself. Do some searching online, find the relevant studies and study them. Well, that's if you're really interested in finding out what the only relevant data we have really does say on this subject.

[magnusjsolberg]

@pawsoned Also, what Pinker does is hardly demagoguery. He pretty much pisses off everybody in the world with what he's saying. He's closer to bringing the best scientific data we have to idiots who either can't or won't understand it and meets it with aggression. Is that demagoguery? No, it isn't.

[zieben64]

Culture and Genes rather than parental guidance is what ultimately shapes us. Interesting.

[magnusjsolberg]

@zieben64 Yes, it appears so. I find most parents get very irritated when this research is pointed out to them. They're quick to dismiss it without checking the facts. The human mind is a fascinating thing.

[mjbowerman]

@pawsoned Pinker directed the questioner to the book the Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris, which contains references to many dozens of papers supporting his position, as well as relevant meta-analyses of the literature. The question then rests on the quality of the methodology implemented by the respective positions. The behavioral genetics research Pinker cites is clearly superior than the developmental psychology research which consistently fails to control for heritability.

[MrDarkbloom]

Pinker is a fantastic (excuse the term) 'public intellectual'. He really is just trying to present the science in a non-technical way, so that we can all benefit. In short, he is a teacher (in the widest sense of the word). The fact that he tries to draw his own conclusions from the research simply puts him in the same position as every other academic. He may be right or wrong in his analysis, but from what I can see, he's doing a great job.

[iutiubfede]

@probal ehi! I noticed it too! Spectacular

[probal]

by the time she asked the last question, Pinker felt the clear attack which made him cross and close his arms .. body language makes his situation obvious

[energyeternal]

hmm.. interesting.

but what about mirroring at an early age, etc?

gabor mate on ADHD/addiction for a little counter-perspective. but he does draw on more traditional psychoanalysis (he credits alice miler author of 'the drama of a gifted child'). but i believe he has the backing of more contemporary research.

[eukaryotebag]

I find it quite fascinating how people can be highly hostile and icredulous to scientific ideas, and will use their lack of knowledge in the subject to justify their a priori views. The fact that home upbringing has a negligible effect on personality has now been supported by a broad range of experiments, surveys, methodologies across various fields of study (not just behavioural genetics!) and by an unusually large degree of statistical significance.

[pawsoned]

@yankskiller34 That's right and this is the trick he's doing, namely he jumps on the bandwagon of other people's research, twists it according to his will and presents it as science. However, his impact, notwithstanding his title and the glamor and glitter of his hair, is next to nothing. That's why he's a bogus scientist.

[pawsoned]

@magnusjsolberg [part 2] He ought to have stayed within his area of psychology, i.e. he should observe small kids and do the 'wug' tests instead. Maybe he would discover anything. Instead what does he do? Preaching pinkerism, i.e. worthless pseudo-science. Tell me it is not demagoguery! Sorry but his floundering makes me doubt in science.

[pawsoned]

@magnusjsolberg [part 1] First of all his books are not scientific just because they popularize other's peoples inventions. Secondly, Pinker himself didn't invent nor for that matter produce any major breakthrough in any of the fields he's purportedly an expert. Thirdly, as to his aforementioned books (which, by the way I have read almost all of them) if brevity is the soul of wit then Steven Pinker is a schmuck; they're worthless and pointless waste of time. He ought to have stayed within his

[yankskiller34]

To answer the woman's question, new studies have come out since Pinker gave this lecture that show that our moral value systems are one of the only psychological factors our parents have a strong influence on. Then again, I've never really met a person who was actually motivated into action by their value system, just ones who use it as post-hoc rationalization for their behavior.