Siblings: How different Are They, 3

Your blogs on Sibling Differences have helped to explain my experience growing up. Is there anything else you can share about this research?

 
Studies have identified the importance of environmental influences on personality, cognition, and psychopathology among siblings. Research also converges on the remarkable conclusion that these environmental influences—rather than genetic inheritance—make two children in the same family as different from one another as are pairs of children selected randomly from the population. This helps to explain how one child may end up an axe murderer, while all the other siblings have no tendency toward any type of similar behavior and are horrified (and sometimes vilified) when such information is released. The findings were published online by Cambridge University Press. According to the abstract, they hope the information draws “attention to the far-reaching implications of finding that psychologically relevant environmental influences make children in a family different from, not similar to, one another.” More tomorrow