The part of personality not explained by genes is not explained by the family environment either.
Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
The second judge would not resolve this claim; the verdict shown is the first judge's.
What would count as true or false
Judge as of 2002 against the behavioural-genetics literature of that time (twin and adoption studies). TRUE: studies showed that shared family environment explains little or none (roughly 0–10%) of the variance in adult personality, with the non-genetic variance mostly attributable to non-shared environment or error. MOSTLY TRUE: shared environment is small but non-trivial (about 10–15%) for some traits. MIXED: findings varied widely by trait, and shared environment was substantial for several traits. MOSTLY FALSE: shared environment was found to explain a meaningful part (more than 15%) of personality variance across most traits. FALSE: the family environment was shown to be a major source of personality variance.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (3)
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E1 Three Laws of Behavior Genetics and What They Mean - Eric Turkheimer, 2000 Sage Journals (Current Directions in Psychological Science) · October 2000
“Behavior genetics has demonstrated that genetic variance is an important component of variation for all behavioral outcomes, but variation among families is not.”
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E2 Three Laws of Behavior Genetics and What They Mean - Eric Turkheimer, 2000 Sage Journals (Current Directions in Psychological Science) · October 2000
“some behavior genetic partisans have concluded that family environment is not an important cause of developmental outcomes. Both views are incorrect.”
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E3 MIT Linguist Pinker Rekindles Nature vs. Nurture Debate | The Harvard Crimson The Harvard Crimson · 15 November 2002
“One of Pinker’s most controversial assertions last night was that family environment has no significant effect on variations in character or personality, and that”
Reasoning
The 2000 review says that variation among families is not an important component of behavioural outcomes [E1], and also that the view that family environment is unimportant is incorrect [E2]. None of the evidence gives a share of personality variance explained by shared environment, which the criteria need to choose between the verdict bands.
Cite this claim
Steven Pinker, “The part of personality not explained by genes is not explained by the family environment either.” (said 1 January 2002). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_7a3b925db633, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_7a3b925db633
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
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Mostly true
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Mostly true
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Mixed
“So that’s an unresolved controversy in the cognitive psychology literature”
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Mostly true
“Females on average perform better than males on a 'theory of mind' test across 57 countries.”
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Resolved true
“John Ioannidis, among the savviest epidemiologists (his 2005 article alerted us to the replicability crisis)”
John Ioannidis published a 2005 article that alerted scientists to the replicability crisis.
Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.