ABSTRACT
Introduction The question of whether personality and ability are socially determined or whether they are substantially influenced by our genes is generally seen as being one of the most important issues in psychology. It is certainly one of the best researched, with studies of varying quality dating back to the early years of the twentieth century. So why is it so important to understand whether personality and intelligence are influenced by genes? The answer is quite simple. You will have gathered by now that there are two schools of individual difference theorists. The first, rooted in social psychology and sociology, claims that the environment is of paramount importance in determining how individuals behave. An extreme form of this view stresses that personality is not ‘something inside’ the individual at all. Instead, personality is inferred by other people, who may choose to ‘see’ constancies in behaviour that really do not exist. For these theorists, the only interesting issue in personality study is to examine the social process by which personality traits and abilities are attributed to others. On what grounds may I decide that John is mean? What evidence would it take to make me change my mind? You can see now that Howe (1988) took essentially this point with regard to intelligence.
