Word: inborn
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...notion that sexual orientation is inborn, and not simply a life-style choice, was supported with the announcement that male homosexuality may be linked to a gene or genes on the human X chromosome. Female homosexuality is now under investigation as well...
Scientists are also trying to find inborn personality traits that might make people more physically aggressive. The tendency to be a thrill seeker may be one such characteristic. So might "a restless impulsiveness, an inability to defer gratification," says psychologist Richard Herrnstein of Harvard, whose theories about the hereditary nature of intelligence stirred up a political storm in the 1970s. A high threshold for anxiety or fear may be another key trait. According to psychologist Jerome Kagan, also of Harvard, such people tend to have a "special biology," with lower-than-average heart rates and blood pressure...
...nearly half a century, the character and the resolve of the U.S. President mattered to Europeans in the most visceral sense -- survival. The nuclear football that Clinton will inherit on Jan. 20 now seems almost a cold war anachronism, but the tendency to look anxiously toward Washington remains an inborn trait. The human mind abhors a power vacuum; even in the dying years of the Roman Empire, free men could probably rattle off the names and pedigrees of Emperors like Petronius Maximus, Majorian and Severus...
...long ago, any career-minded researcher would have hesitated to ask such questions. During the feminist revolution of the 1970s, talk of inborn differences in the behavior of men and women was distinctly unfashionable, even taboo. Men dominated fields like architecture and engineering, it was argued, because of social, not hormonal, pressures. Women did the vast majority of society's child rearing because few other options were available to them. Once sexism was abolished, so the argument ran, the world would become a perfectly equitable, androgynous place, aside from a few anatomical details...
Haskell, a well-known feminist, comes to appreciate the instincts that link women "with their inborn sense of suffering," which takes her beyond simplistic movement ideology. "Envy and all the harsh judgments . . . are suspended as we return to some primal bond, where nurturing preceded rivalry." But as comforting as the bonds forged in the intensive-care unit are, she doubts they can last. "Friendships should begin slowly . . . If the opening chords are the life and death notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, there's no place to go from there...