When investigators actually go and look, rather than just declare that we are products of childhood, the lack of strong continuity from childhood to adulthood is what hits you between the eyes. This is a major discovery of life-span developmental psychology. “Change” is at least as good a description as “continuity” for what happens to us as we mature. For good reviews of this very large literature, see M. Rutter, “Continuities and Discontinuities from Infancy,” in J. Osofsky, ed., Handbook of Infant Development, 2d ed. (New York: Wiley, 1987), 1256–98; H. Moss and E. Sussman, “Longitudinal Study of Personality Development,” in O. Brim and J. Kagan, eds., Constancy and Change in Human Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), 530–95; G. Parker, E. Barrett, and I. Hickie, “From Nurture to Network: Examining Links Between Perceptions of Parenting Received in Childhood and Social Bonds in Adulthood,” American Journal of Psychiatry 149 (1992): 877–85; and R. Plomin, H. Chipuer, and J. Loehlin, “Behavior Genetics and Personality,” in L. Pervin, ed., Handbook of Personality Theory and Research (New York: Guilford, 1990), 225–43.
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Especially instructive is the finding that divorce itself is heritable. If you have an identical twin who divorces, your chances of divorce increase sixfold, whereas a divorced fraternal twin only increases your chances of divorce twofold. See M. McGue and D. Lykken, “Genetic Influence on the Risk of Divorce,” Psychological Science 3 (1992): 368–73.
or
See D. Finkelhor, “Early and Long-term Effects of Child Sexual Abuse,” for a recent
review.
Three longitudinal studies are R. Gomes-Schwartz, J. Horowitz, and A. Cardarelli,
Child Sexual Abuse: The Initial Effects (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1990); A.
Bentovim, P. Boston, and A. Van Elburg, “Child Sexual Abuse—Children and Families
Referred to a Treatment Project and the Effects of Intervention,”. British Medical
Journal 295 (1987): 1453–57; J. Conte, “The Effects of Sexual Abuse on Children:
Results of a Research Project,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 528
(1988): 310–26.
For the better prognosis in children than in adults, see R. Hanson, “The
Psychological Impact of Sexual Assault on Women and Children: A Review,” Annals
of Sex Research 3 (1990): 187–232.
For ripping off the scars and even manufacturing them out of whole cloth, see D.
Kent, “Remembering ‘Repressed’ Abuse,” APS Observer 5 (1992): 6–7.
For the effect of lengthy litigation, see D. Runyan, M. Everson, D. Edelsohn, et al.,
“Impact of Legal Intervention on Sexually Abused Children,” Journal of Pediatrics 113
(1988): 647–53.
Your claim was that child abuse and trauma have barely any influence on adult life. This is clearly an extraordinary claim, that requires evidence to be taken seriously.
Your evidence are three quotations, two of which only contain more links, and the third is about the heritability of divorce, which has nothing to do with your claim.
So in other words you have given zero evidence for your claim. Maybe there is some evidence to be found in one of the many citations you gave, but without knowing which one or what to look for it would take many hours to investigate this. That is not a reasonable burden to place on your readers, given the prior unlikeliness of your initial claim. I’m not saying you should make an airtight case for your claim in a single post, but at the very least you should give us some reason to put in further effort.
Your claim was that child abuse and trauma have barely any influence on adult life. This is clearly an extraordinary claim, that requires evidence to be taken seriously.
There have been significant longitudinal studies that comprehensively measure many dimensions of well-being over an amazingly long time-frame and these also support this claim.
To be exact, the claim from the book is except for severe PTSD, there is little influence, and in case of PTSD the healing works the same way for adults as for children (and possibly slightly better in children) - so “childhood” trauma is not in any way “special” compared to adult traumas.
As for evidence, why don’t you just go and read the book itself? Reading that chapter is on the order of 20 minutes of easy reading. Sorry, but I have better things to do than repeat what is already written elsewhere.
The 1st and third quote blocks merely reference other sources without summarising them. This leads to a wealth of insubstantiated evidence and holds back efficient evaluation of its truth value.
The second claims something is heritable, but every human trait is heritable by definition. The wording implies the divorce is attributable to the status of having an identical twin that is divorced, which is underdetermined and moreover, twin studies aren’t interpreted so simply. So, I expect that the author is a poor biostatistician and wouldn’t take their word on the 1st and 3rd claims from these exerpts alone.
I mean, obviously it “should” be no. But suppose you attempt to answer that question using the same machinery generally used to estimate heritability. What answer will come out? Bear in mind, e.g., that it is rather rare for identical twins to live on different continents. (C.f. Cosma Shalizi here and here. The former is long and discusses many other things; search for the heading “Cultural transmission”.)
(I agree that “every human trait is heritable by definition” is a pretty silly thing to say.)
I didn’t mean to suggest this question has a valid answer, but rather to point out that the phrasing is ambiguous.
C.f. Cosma Shalizi here
The quote I gave above from the book says:
If you have an identical twin who divorces, your chances of divorce increase sixfold, whereas a divorced fraternal twin only increases your chances of divorce twofold.
So I think the criticism from the article you linked doesn’t apply.
I can’t find any references to this online. Given its controversial I call bullshit.
Here are some relevant references from the book:
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or
Your claim was that child abuse and trauma have barely any influence on adult life. This is clearly an extraordinary claim, that requires evidence to be taken seriously.
Your evidence are three quotations, two of which only contain more links, and the third is about the heritability of divorce, which has nothing to do with your claim.
So in other words you have given zero evidence for your claim. Maybe there is some evidence to be found in one of the many citations you gave, but without knowing which one or what to look for it would take many hours to investigate this. That is not a reasonable burden to place on your readers, given the prior unlikeliness of your initial claim. I’m not saying you should make an airtight case for your claim in a single post, but at the very least you should give us some reason to put in further effort.
There have been significant longitudinal studies that comprehensively measure many dimensions of well-being over an amazingly long time-frame and these also support this claim.
A good book on these studies and what we might learn from is Aging Well: Surprising Guideposts to a Happier Life from the Landmark Study of Adult Development by George E. Vaillant.
Otherwise I wouldn’t dismiss claims from ‘What we can change and what we can’t’ easily just because not enough refs are quoted. Read for yourself. Also you migth want to look at lukeprogs http://lesswrong.com/lw/3nn/scientific_selfhelp_the_state_of_our_knowledge/
To be exact, the claim from the book is except for severe PTSD, there is little influence, and in case of PTSD the healing works the same way for adults as for children (and possibly slightly better in children) - so “childhood” trauma is not in any way “special” compared to adult traumas.
As for evidence, why don’t you just go and read the book itself? Reading that chapter is on the order of 20 minutes of easy reading. Sorry, but I have better things to do than repeat what is already written elsewhere.
The 1st and third quote blocks merely reference other sources without summarising them. This leads to a wealth of insubstantiated evidence and holds back efficient evaluation of its truth value.
The second claims something is heritable, but every human trait is heritable by definition. The wording implies the divorce is attributable to the status of having an identical twin that is divorced, which is underdetermined and moreover, twin studies aren’t interpreted so simply. So, I expect that the author is a poor biostatistician and wouldn’t take their word on the 1st and 3rd claims from these exerpts alone.
The book has summaries in the content (these were just footnotes). So I’d maybe recommend you just read that chapter from the actual book.
Arguing “By Definition”
Is living in Africa heritable? I’m sure if you try, you can understand what is the author is trying to say without picking on his words.
How sure are you that the answer is no?
I mean, obviously it “should” be no. But suppose you attempt to answer that question using the same machinery generally used to estimate heritability. What answer will come out? Bear in mind, e.g., that it is rather rare for identical twins to live on different continents. (C.f. Cosma Shalizi here and here. The former is long and discusses many other things; search for the heading “Cultural transmission”.)
(I agree that “every human trait is heritable by definition” is a pretty silly thing to say.)
I didn’t mean to suggest this question has a valid answer, but rather to point out that the phrasing is ambiguous.
The quote I gave above from the book says:
So I think the criticism from the article you linked doesn’t apply.