Word: traits
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...what he describes as "the most exciting" results of his 30 years of research on shyness, Starch Professor of Psychology Jerome Kagan has released findings suggesting that the tendency for shyness is an inherited biological trait that can be detected in infants as young as four months...
...most significant discoveries of Kagan's work is that shyness in children is a non-deterministic character trait. Kagan, who is the chair of the Psychology Department, found that inherited shyness may be alleviated in the childhood years by environmental factors, but that uninhibited children were less likely to show behavioral changes...
Children who show early signs of being uninhibited carry the same behavioral trait more consistently through their lives. Kagan reports that 30 percent of the children he studied showed an early tendency toward extroversion. At four months of age, these children were not highly reactive to stimuli and exhibited "low crying...
Sadly, a totalitarian trait has survived in Gorbachev: the delusion of his own indispensability. He could have been the hero of Baltic independence and of reform in its triumph over reaction. But that might have meant yielding to other, democratically elected leaders. So now he is the villain. That is the tragedy of Gorbachev...
...fatal to reputation. But it is seldom so savage that it actually kills the writer. Plagiarism is usually too squalid and minor to take a part in tragedy; maybe that was the suicide's true shame, the grubbiness. Plagiarism proclaims no majestic flaw of character but a trait, pathetic, that makes you turn aside in embarrassment. It belongs to the same rundown neighborhood as obscene phone calls or shoplifting...