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What psychology experiment would you love to carry out if neither ethics nor practical reality stood in your way? For the August issue of Psychology Today, I asked several PT bloggers this question and printed four responses. Here's a more complete roundup of their insights. Read More
Baby Swapping/Musical storks nonsense!
Mr. Kanazawa,
As an evolutionary psychologist you clearly have little to no experience working with real live human beings. How can you possibly feel right about making parents feel even more powerless and less effective than they already feel? Are you in this profession to better our world or to make a quick name for yourself? Tell me please, what purpose does such rediculous information serve? What are parents supposed to take away from such unproven gibberish?
Now let me give you some real life information that will serve to help parents become better and more effective. After working with teens,adults and families for over 20 years I have seen the proof that poor parenting has numerous negative life long effects; effects that most likely will not point directly to parenting based upon statistics but when you speak to the humans affected the picture is clear.
Do you really believe that a kid raised in a happy, healthy and loving home will turn out the same as a kid raised in an angry, hatefull and abusive home? If so you must not have kids of your own. Plus you are insulting the many parents who do a great job taking care of their kids and teaching them how to be good human beings, you are insulting me!
As a therapist I live by the credo: "Above all do no harm." What you are proposing is harmful especially to the many children of our world who are not fortunate enough to have dedicated loving parents. What you are doing as a "Mental health professional" is giving neglectful,abusive and selfish parents an even better excuse to remain the same. What you are doing is giving my profession a bad name. How can we lose by helping parents feel that they can do a better job and that they are highly influential to the outcome of their children?
Regards,
Tony Malinda,M.A.,M.F.T.
Don't be an idiot, Tony.
Yay! Baby swapping!
@Tony. Chill. Of course it is rediculous (sic) that was the request: impossible experiments.
That said, I do wonder whether Mr. Kanazawa thinks that parents have any influence on a child's peer group, and how much influence they have. When parents, for example, select a neighborhood in which to live, and a school for their children (not uncommon), or when they forbid or encourage their children's friendships--particularly at a young age--does this not have a significant influence on who they are and who they become?
I also reject the idea more broadly that parents do not affect their children's development, just as I reject the notion that they can (or should) affect it entirely.
Me Too
Okay, I sometimes question my methods, but I'd have to say as a real life parent: Exposure to specific elements from life onset does indeed influence child personal(ity) development. Point of fact, I watched my mother read books every day of her life, nearly. I grew up to love reading so much that I'd walk through the halls of my high school with a book in hand and barely avoid running into my (book hating) peers. Therefore, I read to my children frequently, and every time we pass a book in a store they want it. They try to read by themselves (but they're only 3 and 4), and exposure to books appears to be making book worms of them, too.
Granted, I listen to rock music and force my poor innocent toddlers to listen (and love) rock music--they play air guitar to Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple, and My Chemical Romance--I doubt if when they're 15 and 16 the only music they listen to is what mommy likes. Probably, peers do play a massive role in personality development around that tween to twenties phase. Then eventually, in my own personal experience, most people go back to the core values they were raised on; these core values shape whether they are rebels or conformists, divers or shore huggers, rock stars or folk fans.
Perform the experiment, Kanazawa! Let's see if me and Halavais are right: if parents send children to school A, expose children to culture A, dress children in clothes A, encourage friendships with kid A,reinforce beliefs in value A--will offspring grow up to be B? Truly? Not just on the surface, not just to prove to good ole mom and dad that they can't control us, not just from age 10 to 29?
Natural experiments have done that
Check out, if you haven't already, the somewhat controversial book, *The Nurture Assumption*, by Harris (forwarded by Pinker, a die hard "blank slate" hypothesis opponent). It is a very good covering of the research out there on the power of heredity using many methodologies: siblings, twins, twins reared apart, adoption, etc. The overall conclusion, while not "straightforward," is that what Kanazawa is saying is essentially correct. If parents have a massive influence beyond genetic contributions (doesn't appear that they really do, unless they are egregiously pathogenic) then it appears that they do this 1)very early in life, or 2)through the secondary manipulation of the child's social environment. Parents raising a child in school A and culture A are themselves typically members of that culture and school, thus if the kid turns out like them, it's always a question as to the influence of rearing or genes. Let the research inform your intuitive feeling on the matter - as either scientists or practictioners, psychologists are obligated to do so.
Judith Rich Harris
Matrix
Knobe, this concept has been around for so long, I'm surprised someone hasn't figured out that if you make that machine, you can throw out the ethics completely! You can call it a new game console. Put people in the mall in it, see how many times they come back to it, see who gets Magic New Life Machine induced existential depression. Put it on sale for a ridiculous amount of money and see who still buys it. C'mon--this is one you could do! If you could make it that is... have you shopped this concept around to the gaming world? No?
Wait, they made it
It's called something like Rock Fan or Guitar Steroid!!! Ah, no--you missed your calling Knobe. You could've been a game coder. Shame. (lol)
Does sperm really 'swim'?
--I want to test to see if individuals conceived through a method involving artificial insemination are less good swimmers than those conceived 'naturally'--i.e. involving a dominant sperm cell that swam in competition with a million others and won. It'd be a difficult test because presumably the variance, if there was any, is small (you'd need a huge sample size to determine a statistically valid result)...and you'd need to find IVF folk who were prepared to swim long distances, because presumably we're not talking about the 50 meter dash here!
Surely you jest!
Surely you jest! Surely!
Sperm propel themselves with their cilia. How would the actions of that single cell have anything at all to do with the complex actions required to swim? Swimming is something that is learnt, not completely innate - ie, nurture, not nature.
On another point: surely the mother's genes would have some effect, if this point wasn't ludicrous to start with. No offense, but high-school biology is enough to show you the door on that one. Any evidence to the contrary would be welcome.
Betcha a dollar..
Bet you Satoshi Kanazawa has daddy and mommy issues.
thats so fake
that video at the end was so fake. i laughed so hard.
these are some pretty
these are some pretty interesting experiments that would have many different affects if they were carried out
Not quite right comment, but
Well, everyone else is commenting on the article, but I have to say it, I've been dying to.
If I could do an impossible experiment, I would raise someone in a blank room, with no outside interaction other than delivering food, etc. Now, this one has been guessed at by many- but my aim would be to see how -and if- their ability to speak would develop. Would they develop a personal language all their own, or never feel the need to?
A question I'll never have an answer to, but it's always on the edge of my mind.
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