Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Familial Transmission of Personality Is Higher Than Shown in Typical Studies

osf.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 198 posts

Re: Familial Transmission of Personality Is Higher Than Shown in Typical Studies

#151

Post by Aerbil313 »

heyjamesknight wrote: post #143
trallnag wrote: post #130

Isn't this obvious? It is very obvious to me

The reproducibility crisis and general decay of academia has given us a few decades of bad science. Entire fields have been built using massaged statistics to deny common sense in the pursuit of tenure. We're just now "unlearning" much of this, especially in the social sciences.

Why would we be "unlearning" anything now? It doesn't make sense. What changed? Are academicians not monetarily awarded for attention-grabbing and breakthrough-sounding research anymore?

Re: Familial Transmission of Personality Is Higher Than Shown in Typical Studies

#152

Post by s1artibartfast »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #148
s1artibartfast wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that as a practical matter, they are extremely correlated. Wealth sitting in cash loses half its value every 20 years. Physical assets require upkeep and property taxes. In practice, if you aren't making income, you losing wealth.

>Wealth sitting in cash loses half its value every 20 years. By wealth, people tend to mean assets, not petty cash sitting in checking accounts. If you're sitting on inherited assets you're accumulating more wealth by just sitting on your ass without doing anything. Just see the post-2009 monetary polices: from housing to stocks, everything went up like crazy, especially during COvid. You didn't have to be financiall…

It seems like you didn't read the whole post. If anyone ever sells those assets, they are counted as income.

The vast majority of wealth isn't empty houses, ever rented, and never sold.

Re: Familial Transmission of Personality Is Higher Than Shown in Typical Studies

#153

Post by Rinzler89 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #149
froh wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the top 1% is people we all know. the interesting groups are the top .1% and .01%. there isn't that much fluctuation at that layer.

You said we don't know but claim to know. Which is it?

It's complicated. Not all wealth is public. Only the wealth of the individuals who's wealth is tied to publicly traded companies: Musk, Bezos, Zuck, etc.

But we also have all those royal families from Europe and the Middle East, dictators like Putin, etc. whos' wealth are secret and very well hidden through crown estates, trusts, shell companies, all through Caribbean off-shores and often under different names. The best you have for those people is guestimations and some leaks from the Panam Papers to get an idea.

Re: Familial Transmission of Personality Is Higher Than Shown in Typical Studies

#154

Post by whimsicalism »

dleink wrote: post #150
whimsicalism wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I have… multiple times now across many different comments. Stuff like hm, maybe the children of child abusers are likely to abuse children not only because they were raised that way but because of genetic behavioral factors. Or maybe the correlation between test scores and affluence doesn’t mean that test scores are bunk or only measure affluence, but are partially due to heritable confounders and the “af…

If "children of child abusers are more likely to abuse children" were to be found undeniably true, how should we use this knowledge? Are you proposing some kind of public policy?

> how should we use this knowledge?

One example: in future studies of interventions at reducing child abuse, if we can use genetic factors to explain away some of the variance, then we can better identify interventions that are effective at reducing child abuse that we wouldn't be able to identify otherwise.

> Are you proposing some kind of public policy?

Not in that case that immediately comes to mind, but if we discover some interventions as mentioned above ^ it could be useful. In the case of the test scores affluence one, it might take some (although not all) strength away from some of the arguments for dropping standardized testing.

Re: Familial Transmission of Personality Is Higher Than Shown in Typical Studies

#155

Post by s1artibartfast »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #83
darby_eight wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This implies one's being upper class is a reflection of having better habits than the poor, which is incorrect. They just have more money. Rich people could not survive poverty.

I grew up in poverty, on food stamps. I do somewhat well for myself. My wife had a similar childhood. We have poor financial habits that occasionally hint (I won't go so far as to say that they "threaten") at upending our lifestyle. Just having "more money" doesn't protect. Our habits would, if not kept in check, squander nearly anything. We are, in many ways, our own worst enemies. I've struggled to recognize this m…

>It's both bizarre and cruel.

Yep, it seems like so many people are happy to tell children that their efforts and choices don't matter because everything is luck, and moreover, if they do try, they are a fool.

Cruel and tragic, especially when it comes from people who claim to be helping.

Re: Familial Transmission of Personality Is Higher Than Shown in Typical Studies

#156

Post by steve_adams_86 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #118
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is arguably a different mechanism. Propagation of personality seems to be based lest on acute, specific, traumatic events like physical abuse. We understand to some degree why hurt people hurt other people. It’s less clear why and how much we emulate our families in more subtle ways.

> We understand to some degree why hurt people hurt other people By “understand”, you mean “have colloquial theories that we don’t bother trying to falsify”

There are cross-disciplinary, longitudinal, and meta-analysis studies which seem to support that when people experience adversity or various forms of trauma, they are far more likely than the general population to perpetuate the same or other harms upon others. It doesn’t strike me as colloquial at all. Psychology, neurology, and sociology each find this trend and various context-specific candidates for causal mechanisms.

Re: Familial Transmission of Personality Is Higher Than Shown in Typical Studies

#157

Post by whimsicalism »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #156
whimsicalism wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We understand to some degree why hurt people hurt other people By “understand”, you mean “have colloquial theories that we don’t bother trying to falsify”

There are cross-disciplinary, longitudinal, and meta-analysis studies which seem to support that when people experience adversity or various forms of trauma, they are far more likely than the general population to perpetuate the same or other harms upon others. It doesn’t strike me as colloquial at all. Psychology, neurology, and sociology each find this trend and various context-specific candidates for causal mechan…

What are the best studies?

There is evidence pointing against environmental unicausality. [0][1] Both these and the studies you mention will have trouble disentangling causality because nobody can run ethical experiments.

[0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266717432... [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6758596/

Re: Familial Transmission of Personality Is Higher Than Shown in Typical Studies

#158

Post by sublinear »

crmd wrote: post #5

The big difference seems to come from self-reporting vs independent reporting. In other words, people around you think your personality is more similar to your dad’s than you think it is.

Not trying to be an edgy contrarian, but my dad was never around and I turned out very different as a result. My mother also worked a lot, so completely checked out and a neglectful enabler. I despised a lot about both my parents. When I would introduce them it tended to hurt my relationships unless they too had crappy parents, so I stopped doing that. I spent most of my childhood and early adult life with other people's families.

The far more interesting study to me is how much genetics can be overcome due to harsh circumstances.

Re: Familial Transmission of Personality Is Higher Than Shown in Typical Studies

#159

Post by feoren »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #121
feoren wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both can be true, if growing up with more money is a causal factor in having "better" habits (in terms of wealth generation/retention). I also agree that many rich people could not survive poverty. Both are adapted to their situations. The problem is that this makes it harder to bring people out of poverty, because you're trying to pull them into a situation they're less adapted for. I actually am in favor of simply…

What would cause them to not survive poverty? would they all commit suicide or spontaneously combust? Avoiding death is a pretty strong force for adaptation to new circumstances.

Alcoholism, drug addiction, dying on the street on a cold night, lack of proper healthcare, and yes, suicide. I didn't think it'd be controversial to suggest that poverty can kill. And you're taking a strict definition of "survive" -- plenty of people talk about "not being able to survive" some situation if they think it would be extremely difficult and take a permanent toll on them, even if they might not literally die.

Honestly it's a completely moot point anyway, as I said: nobody is trying to pull rich people into poverty, so it doesn't matter how they'd fare.

Re: Familial Transmission of Personality Is Higher Than Shown in Typical Studies

#160

Post by s1artibartfast »

kipchak wrote: post #140
lazide wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding your first point - usually because the 'dark side' is easier (short term), and life periodically gets hard. So it's often inevitable. Especially in the face of others doing bad acts to you. Regarding the second - see my comment. At least in the western world, most crimes require fault and mens rea. Those require someone being able to make a informed choice, which means having free will. If there is (actuall…

Would removing the punitive aspect of punishment be enough to keep things making sense? For example with temporary insanity someone isn't considered deserving of retribution without real fault, but incapacitation and rehabilitation might still be justifiable if there was a risk of reoccurrence. Deterrence seems like it could also still be justifiable, for example if you thought someone could be aware of such a punish…

There is a feedback loop and moral hazard, so you need some fixed punishment as deterrent.

If a unique situation not likely to reoccur is an defense for criminal behavior, Then this rule provides the unique situation.

Imagine a rule that rehabilitation is the punishment for a first murder. For a rational person, this is a free pass to commit exactly one murder, because as soon as they do, they have every reason to avoid the 2nd and require no rehabilitation for compliance.

Post reply on HN