Yes, studies show that delayed gratification correlates with parental wealth, achievement, home stability, etc. However, as always, it’s quite hard in psychology to conclusively separate environment from heritability, because some portion of our temperament, impulse control, and intelligence is passed down from parents to child and would also influence things like achievement and delayed gratification. All we can say for certain is that the correlation is there, and that it’s probably a combination of both nature and nurture.
A broader question is what the value of doing research is if only research supporting the dominant social narrative is widely believed and disseminated regardless of evidence, while no amount of evidence is enough for a countervailing hypothesis to be accepted.
The older, I get the more I see people just want confirmation of what they already believe, and more cynically, that power structures promote messages that benefit them; most specifically, the just world fallacy must be maintained at all costs if personal anxiety and social revolution is to be avoided.
I think neither the nature or nurture hardliners would be satisfied with the answer to most of these types of questions in psych, because it likely lands somewhere in between.
I also share the frustration with the field being so susceptible to trends of ideology: proposed topics of research, what gets approved, what gets replicated, what gets published (not to mention sloppy methodology that always seems to err on the side of the desired results). In the past, research was rigidly flavored by genetics/evolution/immutable traits because it was built on the model of biology/medicine. In recent history, it’s been influenced by the idea that we’re largely blank slates, because the questions that would come up if we’re not are socially uncomfortable.
As I’ve gotten older too, I’ve also had to get more comfortable with the answer being “it depends” or reframing it to a purely objective-oriented perspective (i.e. “Ok, can we actually do with this information?”).
What it noticed in my small family system and from working with two- and three-year-olds, we are definitely individuals on a biological level, though this obviously acts (and interacts) with the environment.
I also think that “nature” and “being like your parents” are two different things that often get conflated; there such wild variation everytime you pull the lever on the chromosonal slot machine, you may be naturally quite different from your parents.
I trained as a therapist and was quite shocked to learn how poor the research is on modalities on close examination. For instance, every study automatically selects for people who are congruent w/ the treatment because anyone who isn’t, drops out; so any study will have higher success rate than it ever would in the real world where therapists think in terms of conditions and not personal fit.
Very true. I’ve never worked with kids, but after having kids myself and seeing this “chromosomal slot machine” pull in action, it’s so apparent that a lot of personality is baked in. I used to be quite the behaviorist/blank-slatist too.
On the note of research selection bias, how about the realization that most research is done on college students who are trying to get class credit, and that most of the research work is also being done by students? And that it’s almost never going to be replicated? I think the general public has this idea that most science is being done by a bunch of specialized men/women in labcoats with decades of experience, not hungover 20-somethings talking to hungover 20-somethings. In reality, that’s probably 99% of it.
I see this so much with my family. One hundred stories that disagree with their viewpoint are ignored and 1 anecdote that supports their narrative is incontrovertible truth.
Some of us actually change our minds when presented with evidence to do so. Hence, if some people will believe whatever they want regardless of evidence, and perhaps still others are mercurial and believe whatever they feel like in the moment, these are “uninteresting” and can be ignored, leaving only those of us in the middle who are amenable to changing our minds.
And like politics, the entire outcome of life depends upon those of us in the middle, swaying back and forth.
It’s certainly possible, but have you ever considered an underlying belief has shifted before you accept the evidence? The emotional determinants of reason are overwhelming.
True, but part of it lies in wanting to be correct. Imagine if you ask someone how to get to XYZ place - you go down the street but do you take a right or a left? It makes no difference to you then, except that one leads to your destination while the other takes you in the exact opposite direction.
And if you had no idea before asking someone, then you were sitting at only a 50:50 chance of arriving correctly, whereas after asking someone, presumably you now have much better odds.
Yes, if you really are seeking the truth, that is to say, if the truth is a core value of yours.
Most people would rather manage their anxiety, belong to a group, have a structured worldview with meaning, etc.
If “knowing the truth” was really what people cared about, then the first exposure to it would convince people. If someone’s seen the truth presented to them a million times and time million + 1 they believe it, obviously something else has shifted for them…
Take for instance this liberal media apparatchik… I forget his name at the moment, but he was a big time commentator and everyone respected his opinion. He released a video this year reporting that he had changed his mind on Israel–from support to oppose. He presented all his evidence.
The thing is, as one youtube commenter pointed out, they were all reasons for ANYONE to be against Israel at ANY time since its creation. What he didn’t answer was why he specificially changed his mind, because the facts had always been there, all while he was a highly educated, highly intelligent, highly verbal, highly sought-after commentator. The information had not changed, HE had changed.
My cynical opinion is that Israel was leading us into a disastrous war in Iran and that public opinion had shifted radically away from Israel to the point where he would be damaging his career to get ahead of it, but the relevance to this conversation is that facts alone rarely change anyone’s minds about anything that is personally meaningful to them.
There is a lot to unpack there - first and foremost how in any kind of for-profit media there is a difference between what is said vs. truly believed. It is difficult indeed to convince someone that a fact is true when their salary depends upon them not believing it. Which is why in my earlier statement I clarified that these are the “uninteresting” ones who are not likely to be convinced.
Therefore we should not depend upon that happening. Which reveals a foundational weakness in straight democracy itself (e.g. FPTP), although that is not to say that other forms of decision-making are more viable, especially compared with more nuanced (e.g. ranked-choice) and supported (e.g. with heavy funding into education) forms of democracy.
Yes, studies show that delayed gratification correlates with parental wealth, achievement, home stability, etc. However, as always, it’s quite hard in psychology to conclusively separate environment from heritability, because some portion of our temperament, impulse control, and intelligence is passed down from parents to child and would also influence things like achievement and delayed gratification. All we can say for certain is that the correlation is there, and that it’s probably a combination of both nature and nurture.
A broader question is what the value of doing research is if only research supporting the dominant social narrative is widely believed and disseminated regardless of evidence, while no amount of evidence is enough for a countervailing hypothesis to be accepted.
The older, I get the more I see people just want confirmation of what they already believe, and more cynically, that power structures promote messages that benefit them; most specifically, the just world fallacy must be maintained at all costs if personal anxiety and social revolution is to be avoided.
I think neither the nature or nurture hardliners would be satisfied with the answer to most of these types of questions in psych, because it likely lands somewhere in between.
I also share the frustration with the field being so susceptible to trends of ideology: proposed topics of research, what gets approved, what gets replicated, what gets published (not to mention sloppy methodology that always seems to err on the side of the desired results). In the past, research was rigidly flavored by genetics/evolution/immutable traits because it was built on the model of biology/medicine. In recent history, it’s been influenced by the idea that we’re largely blank slates, because the questions that would come up if we’re not are socially uncomfortable.
As I’ve gotten older too, I’ve also had to get more comfortable with the answer being “it depends” or reframing it to a purely objective-oriented perspective (i.e. “Ok, can we actually do with this information?”).
What it noticed in my small family system and from working with two- and three-year-olds, we are definitely individuals on a biological level, though this obviously acts (and interacts) with the environment.
I also think that “nature” and “being like your parents” are two different things that often get conflated; there such wild variation everytime you pull the lever on the chromosonal slot machine, you may be naturally quite different from your parents.
I trained as a therapist and was quite shocked to learn how poor the research is on modalities on close examination. For instance, every study automatically selects for people who are congruent w/ the treatment because anyone who isn’t, drops out; so any study will have higher success rate than it ever would in the real world where therapists think in terms of conditions and not personal fit.
Very true. I’ve never worked with kids, but after having kids myself and seeing this “chromosomal slot machine” pull in action, it’s so apparent that a lot of personality is baked in. I used to be quite the behaviorist/blank-slatist too.
On the note of research selection bias, how about the realization that most research is done on college students who are trying to get class credit, and that most of the research work is also being done by students? And that it’s almost never going to be replicated? I think the general public has this idea that most science is being done by a bunch of specialized men/women in labcoats with decades of experience, not hungover 20-somethings talking to hungover 20-somethings. In reality, that’s probably 99% of it.
I see this so much with my family. One hundred stories that disagree with their viewpoint are ignored and 1 anecdote that supports their narrative is incontrovertible truth.
Some of us actually change our minds when presented with evidence to do so. Hence, if some people will believe whatever they want regardless of evidence, and perhaps still others are mercurial and believe whatever they feel like in the moment, these are “uninteresting” and can be ignored, leaving only those of us in the middle who are amenable to changing our minds.
And like politics, the entire outcome of life depends upon those of us in the middle, swaying back and forth.
It’s certainly possible, but have you ever considered an underlying belief has shifted before you accept the evidence? The emotional determinants of reason are overwhelming.
True, but part of it lies in wanting to be correct. Imagine if you ask someone how to get to XYZ place - you go down the street but do you take a right or a left? It makes no difference to you then, except that one leads to your destination while the other takes you in the exact opposite direction.
And if you had no idea before asking someone, then you were sitting at only a 50:50 chance of arriving correctly, whereas after asking someone, presumably you now have much better odds.
Yes, if you really are seeking the truth, that is to say, if the truth is a core value of yours.
Most people would rather manage their anxiety, belong to a group, have a structured worldview with meaning, etc.
If “knowing the truth” was really what people cared about, then the first exposure to it would convince people. If someone’s seen the truth presented to them a million times and time million + 1 they believe it, obviously something else has shifted for them…
Take for instance this liberal media apparatchik… I forget his name at the moment, but he was a big time commentator and everyone respected his opinion. He released a video this year reporting that he had changed his mind on Israel–from support to oppose. He presented all his evidence.
The thing is, as one youtube commenter pointed out, they were all reasons for ANYONE to be against Israel at ANY time since its creation. What he didn’t answer was why he specificially changed his mind, because the facts had always been there, all while he was a highly educated, highly intelligent, highly verbal, highly sought-after commentator. The information had not changed, HE had changed.
My cynical opinion is that Israel was leading us into a disastrous war in Iran and that public opinion had shifted radically away from Israel to the point where he would be damaging his career to get ahead of it, but the relevance to this conversation is that facts alone rarely change anyone’s minds about anything that is personally meaningful to them.
There is a lot to unpack there - first and foremost how in any kind of for-profit media there is a difference between what is said vs. truly believed. It is difficult indeed to convince someone that a fact is true when their salary depends upon them not believing it. Which is why in my earlier statement I clarified that these are the “uninteresting” ones who are not likely to be convinced.
Therefore we should not depend upon that happening. Which reveals a foundational weakness in straight democracy itself (e.g. FPTP), although that is not to say that other forms of decision-making are more viable, especially compared with more nuanced (e.g. ranked-choice) and supported (e.g. with heavy funding into education) forms of democracy.