Word: trait
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Despite their varied interests, the winners seem to have one quality in common: a social conscience. That trait is perhaps best summed up by Louisa Smith, a student of public policy at Harvard-Radcliffe College. Before leaving for Washington with her fellow achievers to meet Vice President George Bush, who had expressed interest in chatting with this year's winners, Smith talked about her commitment to the inmates of the prisons and mental hospitals she has been visiting since high school. "I may never solve all the problems I have seen," said Smith, "but I cannot walk away from them...
Past research has shown that abnormal dopamine levels play a role in Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia and possibly narcolepsy, but the Stanford research appears to be the first to link the chemical to a normal personality trait. "There's nothing pathological about shyness," says Psychiatrist Roy King, who headed the study. He concedes that research such as his could lead to new drugs that modify individual personality, but finds the concept "scary." Besides, he says, "society needs both extroverted and introverted people...
...fall in love not only with the shapes and colors of the animals but with their motions, their curving and infinitely varied gaits. The zebra moves with a strong, short-muscled stride. It is a sleek, erotic beast with vigorous bearing. The zebra's self-possession is a likable trait. It is human habit to sort the animals almost immediately into orders of preference. The animals are arranged in people's minds as a popularity contest. Some animals are endearing, and some repulsive. One wants to see the lion first, and then the elephant and after that the leopard, then...
...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...
...Robert's unceasing energy and passion; his grandfather Joseph's single-minded dedication to winning; and his uncle Ted's occasional inarticulateness, mitigated by only a touch of the bemused self-awareness that was part of the wit and style of his late uncle the President. But the Kennedy trait that carries Joe is the physical charisma and boundless (albeit often unfocused) energy that have become a family trademark...