mulle286: April 2012 Archives

Imagine seeing someone who looks exactly like you walking down the sidewalk opposite you. He/she looks so much alike that you are convinced he/she could be your twin. It turns out, he/she is. If there is one thing that will stand out for me from this semester, it will be some of the discussion we had on twin studies.

The study I described is a psychological study that separates twins at birth and reunites them decades later. It is discussing the age old debate of Nature vs Nurture. Does our genetic makeup or the environment in which we are raised determine our personality and intelligence. According to this study, the Monozygotic twins, share 100% same genes, who were separated show some similarities through the separation and some dissimilarities. Lets take the story of Oskar and Jack regarding personality. They were raised in separate regions of the world and still ended up with similar personality scores on tests: intense, loyal, and politically engaged. However, they both supported groups who were polar opposites. Oskar supported the Nazi movement, Jack was helping to build the Jewish state of Israel. The fact that their personality traits were very similar shows that the genetics approach is at least partially true. Moving on to intelligence. When studies of separated Monozygotic Twins are examined, we find similarly that MZ twins have very similar scores on intelligence tests. The fact that these two groups both show a very similar personality and intelligence suggests again that genetics is a key part of the picture of human characteristic. However, if this was the case why would the twins not be perfectly aligned? There is still variablity within these studies proving that environment also has a role. We should all be aware of these interesting studies because, who knows, you could be walking down the street and could miss your twin on the other sidewalk. For more on twin studies and what Harvard is doing with them click here

For blog #3 I chose to take an Implicit Association Test (IAT). I was asked play the role of consumer and first looked over an advertisement about a fictitious laundry detergent called Softate. While observing the product, I noticed certain things that as a consumer would be turned off by; such examples would be like that Softate is "almost as effective as the other well known brands" or that it is "packaged cheaply so it can be the same price as the other guys." To me this was a product I would never consider buying, so when the questions about whether I would buy the product came up I answered as such. Following the short opinion of product section, there was a matching portion where I was asked to sort pictures of detergents with a Softate label or a Other Detergents label. This task was followed with a sorting of adjectives like marvelous and glorious or awful and unpleasant into the side of "Softate" or "Other Detergents" categories. Then halfway through the sorting, the sides of the categories were swapped, and i continued to sort the pictures and adjectives. Once the sorting was complete a couple more questions were asked to me and I responded with dislike towards Softate. The test was then complete.

When I went to see the results of the test, I was shocked to see that I "showed little or no opinion towards Softate." Throughout the whole test I had adamantly stated that I would never buy the product. However, the test determined otherwise. How could this be? It turns out that my neutrality was from an unconscious response to the sorting portion of the test. Though I may have thought I knew what I thought, I actually didn't. Confusing right? Well IATs test this phenomenon of how people don't know their own minds with tests like the one I took. Some factors of why something is thought consciously are because of things like social, political, economic restrictors. Unconscious things are tricky business, and it is difficult to think of where something that isn't thought by your conscious comes from. This is a great way to checkup on your consciousness, so go take a test for yourself and see if you think you know what you think here.