Sharon George Dr. Zuckoff Fall 2014 Semester 28 November 2014 Sources of Human Psychological Differences: The Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart The study began in 1979, and over 100 pairs of twins or triplets who were reared-apart from across the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, China, New Zealand, Sweden and West Germany have participated. The conclusion of the study inferred two statements on the psychological behavioral variation between the subjects. The first was that genetic factors had a large amount of influence on the variation of behavior, and the second concluded that the being raised in the same home had little effect on behavior. This suggests that twins reared apart have an equal chance of being alike, the word alike being defined as personality …show more content…
The similarity between separated twins is found within personality, temperament, mannerisms, personal preferences, and perceived social behavior. There were no defining similarities between twins and their IQ scores. The causes of the similarities between the identical twins were explained by three points. The first was that intelligence is strongly influenced by genetics, indicating that in a Western standardized, middle class upbringing; the general variant of IQ can be attributed to genetics. The second point stated that modernized Western culture does not put constraints on the curation of individual psychological differences. This shows that a societies culture does not inhibit the growth on individual peculiarities, more specifically, the effect of parenting culture on a child. The findings show that parents often do not majorly influence psychological traits. The third point concluded that identical twins were so psychologically identical because of their genetics, that their environments were probably tailored in a similar way.