Word: lykken
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Psychologist David Lykken, one of the Minnesota researchers, thinks the study will shove the pendulum further away from the "radical environmentalism" of those who believe the characters of children are more or less created by their parents and environment. Lykken says Test Pilot Chuck Yeager is daring because he was "genetically endowed with a low scale of fearlessness," a trait that might have been redirected or tamped down but not eradicated. Says Psychologist Nancy Segal, a member of the project: "Parents can work to make a child less fearful, but they can't make that child brave...
...conceived" and that the genes provide a "rough sketch of life." Some psychologists who stress the influence of genes on behavior often speak as if nurture were a by-product of nature. "All of us make our own environment," says Developmental Psychologist Sandra Scarr of the University of Virginia. Lykken makes the same point: "The environment molds your personality, but your genes determine what kind of environment you have, seek and attend to." Since the early 1960s, several twin studies have reported that identical twins reared apart are actually more alike than those raised in the same home. Scarr thinks...
...Washington police department: "There's always a fear attached when somebody lies, and that causes a physical reaction that can be read." Professional polygraphers say their tests are reliable in more than 90% of the cases if interpreted by a competent examiner. But University of Minnesota Professor David Lykken, author of A Tremor in the Blood, says the tests are accurate only two-thirds of the time and are far more likely to be unreliable for a subject who is telling the truth. "They have no more place in the courts or in business than a psychic or tarot...
...nation's estimated 3,500 examiners generally claim an accuracy rate of 90% for lie detectors or polygraphs. Critics put the figure much lower. In an upcoming book, A Tremor in the Blood, University of Minnesota Psychiatry and Psychology Professor David Lykken maintains that the most prevalent test is correct only two-thirds of the time, and, more critically, that it is far more likely to err when the person being tested is truthful. Lykken also argues that polygraph sensors-which monitor changes in breathing, pulse rate, blood pressure and the conductivity of the skin as the subject...