Top 10 Best Replicated Findings in Psychology

[Trausti]

Top 10 Replicated Findings from Behavioral Genetics

1. All psychological traits show significant and substantial genetic influence

2. No traits are 100% heritable

3. Heritability is caused by many genes of small effect

4. Phenotypic correlations between psychological traits show significant and substantial genetic mediation

5. The heritability of intelligence increases throughout development

6. Age-to-age stability is mainly due to genetics

7. Most measures of the “environment” show significant genetic influence

8. Most associations between environmental measures and psychological traits are significantly mediated genetically

9. Most environmental effects are not shared by children growing up in the same family

10. Abnormal is normal

You are the genes you're parents passed on to you.

 

[Speakpigeon]

1. All psychological traits show significant and substantial genetic influence

2. No traits are 100% heritable

This seems to assume we've identified all psychological traits, which may or may not be the case.

5. The heritability of intelligence increases throughout development

Rather, heritability levels can only be properly assessed at the end of development.

Further, the older you are, the more opportunities for a different experience from that of your genitors.

You are the genes you're parents passed on to you.

Obviously not.

You really don't need to be an expert to see that's not true at all and couldn't be true.

And that's effectively not in the study itself!

It's just your personal view and it is flatly contradicted by the study:

Although heritability estimates are significantly greater than 0%, they are also significantly less than 100%. As noted earlier, heritability estimates are substantial, typically between 30% and 50%, but this range of estimates is a long way from 100%.

Maybe you don't have the genes to understand English properly.


What we are can only be a mix between our genes and what we have experienced in our life. Clearly, the latter may or may not be related to our genitors very much.

What may be true, and I think is probably true, is that given any particular environment, it is our genes that makes us respond to it, and therefore makes us have a particular experience, and therefore makes us what we become as a result of that experience and that environment.

Yeah, I know, not so catchy.


And, more to the point, we could just accurately reverse the proposition by saying that given any particular genetic make-up, it is our environment that gives us a particular experience, and therefore decides what we become as a result of that particular genetic make-up.
EB

 

[DBT]

An interaction of genes and environment, epigenetics, life experience, social and cultural conditioning.....

 

[Kharakov]

1. All psychological traits show significant and substantial genetic influence

not to mention cultural and socioeconomic influence. Someone born in a good socioeconomic position with shitty genes is going to do better than someone with superior genetics born in a low socioeconomic position, especially in societies that deliberately create the false impression that "good traits" can get you out of poverty. Keep in mind, in the western world, the rich rely upon the poor believing that those who are elevated from their number are better than them, rather than deliberately selected to bamboozle and depress them.

 

[rousseau]

1. All psychological traits show significant and substantial genetic influence

not to mention cultural and socioeconomic influence. Someone born in a good socioeconomic position with shitty genes is going to do better than someone with superior genetics born in a low socioeconomic position, especially in societies that deliberately create the false impression that "good traits" can get you out of poverty. Keep in mind, in the western world, the rich rely upon the poor believing that those who are elevated from their number are better than them, rather than deliberately selected to bamboozle and depress them.

More toward the point of the OP is that when you control for environmental factors, the qualities that make up the person that you are, are mostly genetic

If you take someone with very low general intelligence, and take someone with very high general intelligence, and equalise everything else, the kids of the former will likely have low general intelligence and the kids of the latter will have high general intelligence.

Ensuring good environmental influence is important, but that's an aside of the presented research.

The more I study and even just experience the world the more I appreciate how true this is. When I look at my dad we have similarities almost completely across the board, even down to how we eat or how we walk. And our environmental influences were extremely different.

As far as I know, research will actually tell you that your environmental influence as a parent is pretty much negligible, as long as you're providing the necessities. If you have a really smart kid genetically you could do pretty much fuck all and they would end up successful themselves.

 

[fromderinside]

Rather, heritability levels can only be properly assessed at the end of development.

Further, the older you are, the more opportunities for a different experience from that of your genitors.

Your two criticisms are different ends to the same experiment. This can be seen as resulting from adding subjects to a pool (adding years in a criterion test) which is a common minimum test for number of pilots needed to get a particular level of reliability in a study.

 

[ronburgundy]

Rather, heritability levels can only be properly assessed at the end of development.

Further, the older you are, the more opportunities for a different experience from that of your genitors.

Your two criticisms are different ends to the same experiment. This can be seen as resulting from adding subjects to a pool (adding years in a criterion test) which is a common minimum test for number of pilots needed to get a particular level of reliability in a study.

It isn't just about test reliability. Many genetic influences on psychological "traits" are only very indirect and either mediated or moderated by environmental factors. So, time is required for those environmental contingencies to be experienced. This includes genetic expressions that only manifest under particular environments (e.g., susceptibility to depression, if traumatic events are experienced), and non-psychological traits that impact the social environment in ways that in turn cause effects on people with those traits (e.g., dark skin color triggers racism in others who then treat the dark skin person badly, resulting in psychological effects).

In sum, much of what is counted as "heritability" actually has malleable aspects of the environment as their more direct and proximal cause.

This is a major reason for "heritability" indexes increase with age (and thus with increased number of experiences).

 

[humbleman]

10. Abnormal is normal

This is not part of any study.

Psychologists are getting paid to spread out such a fallacy.

 

[ronburgundy]

10. Abnormal is normal

This is not part of any study.

Psychologists are getting paid to spread out such a fallacy.

It is true in the sense they mean it. What they are claiming is that "abnormal" traits are not qualitatively different but rather merely the result of being out on the extreme tails of normal distributions. Since all normal distributions have extreme values, it is "normal" for their to be "abnormal" levels of any trait. By definition, that still means it is relatively much less common (and thus statistically "abnormal") to be at the extremes than closer to the median.

 

[humbleman]

10. Abnormal is normal

This is not part of any study.

Psychologists are getting paid to spread out such a fallacy.

It is true in the sense they mean it. What they are claiming is that "abnormal" traits are not qualitatively different but rather merely the result of being out on the extreme tails of normal distributions. Since all normal distributions have extreme values, it is "normal" for their to be "abnormal" levels of any trait. By definition, that still means it is relatively much less common (and thus statistically "abnormal") to be at the extremes than closer to the median.

OK.

An American tourist went to Mexico.

Trying to live the way Mexicans live and know better about them, our guy didn't go to a restaurant but he ate from the street vendors.

One hour later he felt his stomach and intestines cramping, and vomiting, nausea, losing of consciousness, the wife called the ambulance and the guy was took to the hospital.

After the doctors fought hours trying to save his life, our tourist died that night.

The doctor wrote in the clinic chart: Reason: Natural death.

The wife of the deceased made several complaints, because she knew that her husband died because poison.

The doctor explained her:

My dear lady, after your husband ate those burritos which were all morning under the Sun in a hot Summer day exposed to heat and flies, in combination of a sauce prepared three days ago also exposed to the heat of the days, and drinking a beverage prepared with fruit coming from plantations irrigated with sewer water, of course is was natural for him to die.

Please, use semantics perhaps with other terms, but normal is not abnormal by any means.

 

[bigfield]

Finding 1. All psychological traits show significant and substantial genetic influence
Finding 2. No traits are 100% heritable

The authors mean that no study has found a trait that isn't significantly influenced by genes, and no study has found a trait that is 100% heritable.

"Significant and substantial genetic influence on individual differences in psychological traits is so widespread that we are unable to name an exception. The challenge now is to find any reliably measured behavioral trait for which genetic influence is not significantly different from zero in more than one adequately powered study."
​

Finding 5. The heritability of intelligence increases throughout development
Finding 6. Age-to-age stability is mainly due to genetics

This is fascinating: if I understand it correctly, it means we are more likely to take after our parents (with respect to general intelligence only) as we mature, despite the accumulation of life experiences that differ from those of our parents.

"How can the heritability of intelligence increase so substantially throughout development if genetic effects are stable? That is, how can the same genes largely affect intelligence across the life course and yet account for more variance as time goes by? Increasing heritability despite genetic stability implies some contribution from what has been called genetic amplification. In other words, genetic nudges early in development are magnified as time goes by, increasing heritability, but the same genetic propensities continue to affect behavior throughout the life course."
​

Finding 7. Most measures of the “environment” show significant genetic influence
Finding 8. Most associations between environmental measures and psychological traits are significantly mediated genetically

Our parents' behaviour is also genetically influenced, as is that of our entire social network. Life events are often caused by genetic influences on our (and others' behaviour). Further, parents are biased in how they record and report measurements to researchers.

Finding 10. Abnormal is normal

"Quantitative genetic methods suggest that common disorders are the extremes of the same genetic factors responsible for heritability throughout the distribution"
​

For instance, autism may put a person on the end of the bell curve in terms of empathising skills but that person is no more "abnormal" than a really tall person. The terms normal and abnormal really only serve as a catchy heading; no point getting hung up on that.

 

[bigfield]

You are the genes you're parents passed on to you.

30%-50% of you, at least.

 

[DBT]

Genes are only half the story...

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I've responded to these types of threads by Trausti by mentioning microbiomes but never getting a response from Trausti.

Example:
https://talkfreethought.org/showthr...he-Blank-Slate&p=479962&viewfull=1#post479962

 

[fromderinside]

Rather, heritability levels can only be properly assessed at the end of development.

Further, the older you are, the more opportunities for a different experience from that of your genitors.

Your two criticisms are different ends to the same experiment. This can be seen as resulting from adding subjects to a pool (adding years in a criterion test) which is a common minimum test for number of pilots needed to get a particular level of reliability in a study.

It isn't just about test reliability. Many genetic influences on psychological "traits" are only very indirect and either mediated or moderated by environmental factors. <snip>

So you're going to have to show how my reasoning and your reasoning are actually different since we both depend on properties of statistical sampling. You refer to words and factors and I refer to increasing population size in experiments. If a certain finding is true for both the young and the old - take the hypothetical it takes seven persons to achieve a certain level of congruence at age six, sixteen, and forty - I believe it is better to rely on it rather than picking apart factors as explanation. If one doesn't eliminate that statistical finding one can't just assign words and factors just because ......

 

[humbleman]

The greater finding in Psychology corresponds to me.

My discovery makes the former ones look like findings by amateurs.

This is the greatest finding: we and our instruments can perceive solely the present of the universe.

This is a law, and is a law without exceptions.

 

[Bomb#20]

The greater finding in Psychology corresponds to me.

My discovery makes the former ones look like findings by amateurs.

This is the greatest finding: we and our instruments can perceive solely the present of the universe.

This is a law, and is a law without exceptions.

When philosophers philosophize about science, why are their philosophical conclusions invariably informed by the very latest developments in 19th-century science?

On a clear night, take a look at Andromeda. The electrons in your eyes will be exchanging photons with thousands of dead stars.

 

[Subsymbolic]

The greater finding in Psychology corresponds to me.

My discovery makes the former ones look like findings by amateurs.

This is the greatest finding: we and our instruments can perceive solely the present of the universe.

This is a law, and is a law without exceptions.

When philosophers philosophize about science, why are their philosophical conclusions invariably informed by the very latest developments in 19th-century science?

On a clear night, take a look at Andromeda. The electrons in your eyes will be exchanging photons with thousands of dead stars.

Because you are not reading current philosophers of science?

Try this:

https://www.lhc-epistemologie.uni-w...ions/news/philosophy-of-particle-physics.html

 

[ronburgundy]

The greater finding in Psychology corresponds to me.

My discovery makes the former ones look like findings by amateurs.

This is the greatest finding: we and our instruments can perceive solely the present of the universe.

This is a law, and is a law without exceptions.

When philosophers philosophize about science, why are their philosophical conclusions invariably informed by the very latest developments in 19th-century science?

On a clear night, take a look at Andromeda. The electrons in your eyes will be exchanging photons with thousands of dead stars.

But you are not perceiving the dead stars of the past. You are only perceiving the photons that are reaching your eyes in the present.
You are merely inferring the past and the now dead star as the source of what you perceive now and what you recall perceiving in previous moments. And that is more than mere "semantics". There is a real and important difference between the acts of perception and the acts of inference.

Granted, that is not any kind of "problem" for science unless one tries to define science as pure empiricism rather than the empirically grounded inductive process that it is.

 

[Bomb#20]

The greater finding in Psychology corresponds to me.

My discovery makes the former ones look like findings by amateurs.

This is the greatest finding: we and our instruments can perceive solely the present of the universe.

This is a law, and is a law without exceptions.

When philosophers philosophize about science, why are their philosophical conclusions invariably informed by the very latest developments in 19th-century science?

On a clear night, take a look at Andromeda. The electrons in your eyes will be exchanging photons with thousands of dead stars.

Because you are not reading current philosophers of science?

Try this:

https://www.lhc-epistemologie.uni-w...ions/news/philosophy-of-particle-physics.html

Fair enough. Good to know somebody out there is trying to do better.

But you are not perceiving the dead stars of the past. You are only perceiving the photons that are reaching your eyes in the present.
You are merely inferring the past and the now dead star as the source of what you perceive now and what you recall perceiving in previous moments. And that is more than mere "semantics". There is a real and important difference between the acts of perception and the acts of inference.

You're providing an example of my point. This picture of the world you imply, a picture containing dead stars coexisting with light they'd emitted before they died, light still flying through space on its way to your eyes, is a picture of classical physics. It isn't a picture of relativity and quantum electrodynamics. According to modern theory, no time passes for a photon in flight. The emitting electron and the receiving electron are entangled across time. Perceiving the photon and perceiving the emitting electron are not two different things -- the emission and the absorption are one phenomenon, not two. If you can see the source star it means there are other equally valid frames of reference in which that star hasn't died yet. Spacetime is a loaf of bread we can cut at any angle and regard the resulting surface as "the present". The conceptual division of reality into an objective present and past has been obsolete since 1905.

Granted, that is not any kind of "problem" for science unless one tries to define science as pure empiricism rather than the empirically grounded inductive process that it is.

It's a problem for philosophy, not for science.