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Personality: The Body in Society | Melting Asphalt

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I hate the nature vs. nurture debate. It's a seductive but very dangerous formulation. As a rule of thumb, whenever a discussion of personality gets framed in terms of 'nature' and 'nurture', everyone loses 15 IQ points up front. Your best bet is to run for the hills. The reason it's dangerous is that it sets up a false dichotomy. Nature versus nurture. Who you are (it's assumed) has to come from one or the other of those two factors. To say that it's a mixture or interaction between the two is only slightly more sophisticated. As I'm going to argue today, 'nature' and 'nurture' aren't the right basis vectors for analyzing personality. Nature doesn't trade off against nurture in determining who we become. Instead it goes something like this: Nature and nurture work together to create a prototype, which then negotiates with the external world. The result is a strategy for getting along and getting ahead — a strategy we call "personality." If you didn't catch all of that, don't worry. I'

Personality: The Body in Society | Melting Asphalt Melting Asphalt About Archive Goodies Subscribe Personality: The Body in Society by Kevin Simler I hate the nature vs. nurture debate. It's a seductive but very dangerous formulation. As a rule of thumb, whenever a discussion of personality gets framed in terms of 'nature' and 'nurture', everyone loses 15 IQ points up front. Your best bet is to run for the hills. The reason it's dangerous is that it sets up a false dichotomy. Nature versus nurture. Who you are (it's assumed) has to come from one or the other of those two factors. To say t

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