Hi All: I certainly appreciate Joan's willingness to share her analysis with
us. I don't have time to respond in the depth I'd like, but I'll say only that
I've corresponded with Judy Harris on a number of occasions (and seen her
correspond with others), and that she is not to be underestimated
intellectually, as some appear to have done here. She is a formidable scholar
and intellect and has thought through the rebuttals very, very carefully. That
is not to say that she is correct about everything (who is?) or that her work
ought not be challenged by Joan or others, only that one must be careful not to
dismiss her conclusions cavalierly. People who have done so have typically
ended up humbled, if not humiliated.
I'm not especially interested in the quality of her citations or
referencing either (plus, some of this may be a result of formatting
constraints imposed by her publisher). I'm much more interested in whether her
conclusions stand up to scrutiny. To me, the key issue is as follows:
(1) Until about 20 or 30 years ago, many schools of modern social and
personality psychology presumed that shared environmental influences - those
that tend to make family members more alike - play key shaping roles in adult
personality. One could go on at length here, but Freudian theory posits that
children tend to take on the characteristics of their parents post-Oedipally;
social learning theory (most forms of it, anyway) posits that parental modeling
plays a key role in the development of personality; many cognitive-behavioral
models posit that parenting shapes early schemas; and so on.
(2) Until recently, much of developmental psychology similarly presumed that
shared environment was important, if not determinative, in adult personality.
This was so much the case that even when obvious potential genetic confounds
were present in designs (Baumrind's work comes to mind; so does much of the
literature linking attachment to personality; so does all - and I mean all - of
the huge literature on parenting styles and depression, anxiety, introversion,
impulsivity, ad nauseum in intact famlies; so does all of the research on
parenting monitoring and substance abuse/sexual behavior...one could mention
literally hundreds of research domains here), they were often not even
mentioned by researchers. The assumption, apparently, is that these potential
confounds are so trivial in magnitude that they can be safely ignored. Indeed,
Joan didn't even mention the clear potential genetic confounds in Baumind's
widely cited parenting work. And I'm serious and sincere when I say that I
don't mean to pick on Joan here, as she is in very good company - most of the
field at large has until fairly recently ignored these confounds. We
repeatedly teach our students that they cannot infer causation from
correlation, yet until a decade or so many developmental researchers - not to
mention scores of textbooks - confidently drew causal conclusions from
genetically uninformative designs (especially studies intact families) that do
not permit such conclusions. Remarkably, many continue to do so today.
(3) Data from both twin and adoption studies converge in suggesting that the
role of shared environment on adult (not always child, however) personality or
psychopathology (with disorders of antisocial behavior being a likely
exception) is minimal across the personality spectrum. Some behavior genetic
studies suggest no role of shared environment at all, others at best a modest
role. Whether or not we like their conclusions (which shouldn't be relevant,
as our role as scientists is to put aside emotional reasoning), these studies
challenge the nurture assumption and challenge the prevailing view that shared
environment is of key importance in shaping personality, normal and abnormal,
in adulthood. At best, it is a modest influence; in the lion's share of
studies, it is a nonexistent or negligible influence.
(4) These data do not imply, as some have claimed, that parenting makes no
difference. They do suggest that within the broad range of average expectable
environments, parents tend not to have the potent homogenizing influence often
attributed to them by social and personality researchers. Parenting can still
play a key role in producing differences among children - and later adults - in
their personality traits, although the magnitude of influence here remains
controversial. And I don't know anyone in the field (maybe they're out there,
but if so they are certainly outliers) who deny that outside the range of
average expectable environments, such as exceedingly neglectful or abusive
parents, shared environment can play a role (a negative one on the low end) in
shaping personality. Children need basic love and nourishment to thrive, and
the prolonged lack of both can produce dire consequences for later personality
and intellectual development.
(5) Nor do these data imply that environmental factors are unimportant in
shaping personality. These same behavior genetic data clearly demonstrate that
nonshared environment plays a key role in adult personality and
psychopathology, although it is unclear how much of this environment is
systematic (e.g., differential parental treatment, differential peer exposure)
or essentially random, as Eric Turkheimer has concluded in his writings on what
he terms the "gloomy prospect" for work on environmental influence. I will not
discuss Harris' views on peer influence, partly because I'm not sure I grasp
these as well, and also because I don't see them as essential to the above
arguments. Even if Harris is wrong about peer influence, she could be entirely
correct about the nurture assumption.
I would contend that points 1 to 4 have stood up to careful scrutiny, and
that minor details and amendments aside, Harris's central conclusions about the
nurture assumption are essentially correct.
....Scott
________________________________________
From: [email protected] [[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 8:19 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: Re: [tips] Critique of Harris's book: The Nurture Assumption/Study in
Social psychology?
I've been away and seem to have missed the fun. But I can't
help but join in on this judgemental comment from Paul, which
is rather daring of him considering that he admits that he has
not read Harris' book.
On 18 Nov 2009 at 11:02, Paul Brandon wrote:
> E.g., I think that Joan has a valid point about Harris'
> failure to address a considerable behavioral literature in the past
> 20 years showing the effects of parental actions on child behavior
> <snip> but since I
> don't have a copy of the book available, I am not prepared to debate
> it with someone who has.
Where did Paul get the idea that Harris failed to address the
behavioural literature on parental actions? In fact, her skillful
treatment of this literature is one of the strengths of her book. In
a detailed, insightful chapter on methodology ("The Nature and
Nurture of the Evidence"), she discusses the flawed nature of
this research, in particular its failure to consider that the results
reported for parental effects could be explained as readily by
heredity as by upbringing. Joan also fails to understand this (see
her critique).
Harris says:
"[Behaviour geneticists] are still overwhelmingly outnumbered by
socialization researchers. Perhaps that is why most socialization
researchers find it easy to ignore the results of behavioral
genetic studies. The behavioral geneticists, on the other hand,
do not ignore the work of socialization researchers. They have
pointed out time and again that the failure to control for the
effects of heredity makes the results of most socialization
studies uninterpretable. And they are right."
In her next chapter, Harris reviews the literature on parental
actions through a detailed discussion of a major and lengthy
review paper by Maccoby and Martin on the topic. She cites
their conclusion, "The implications are either that parental
behaviors have no effect, or that the only effective aspects of
parenting must very greatly from one child to the other within the
same family" (which Harris then further discusses). Although
Maccoby and Martin published back in 1983, one only has to
pick up a current textbook or journal of child psychology to see
that the problems they (and later Harris) identified with parenting
studies are still with us today. Joan, despite claiming to have
read Harris' book, seems oblivious of these problems.
Harris does consider examples of socialization research as well,
notably the deeply flawed work on birth order effects, but also
such matters as research on parenting styles so beloved by
Joan, day care, and unconventional homes, and finds all these
sources of evidence wanting in support for parental effects. She
also reviews such topics as attachment studies, studies of
deprived children, the effects of father absence, divorce, and
spanking. How many more such studies would Joan have
Harris repetitively plod through if every one shows the same
defects? To recyle a familiar phrase, garbage in = garbage out.
This is why I did not ask Joan to provide a verbose, rambling,
nit-picking essay consisting mostly of false accusations against
Harris of incorrect referencing. I asked her to provide us with
one single experiment which, in her opinion, unequivocally
blows Harris' research-buttressed contention away, and shows,
once and for all, that parental upbringing does have a lasting
effect on the adult personality. Harris' claim that it does not is
what horrifies Joan, and it's the substantive issue I expected
Joan would respond to in her critique. Not misguided trivia about
referencing, style, and illustrative anecdotes.
I'm still waiting.
Stephen
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen L. Black, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology, Emeritus
Bishop's University
e-mail: [email protected]
2600 College St.
Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7
Canada
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