Personality and Individual Differences 49 (2010) 261–263

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Personality and Individual Differences

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Editorial

Tom Bouchard: A compelling presence in psychology

a r t i c l e i n f o

Keywords:Behavior geneticsAcademic freedom

Twin studiesSpatial abilityIntellectual integrityGenetic and environmental influencesIntelligenceCognitive epidemiologyEvolution

0191-8869/$ - see front matter � 2010 Elsevier Ltd. Adoi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.02.022

a b s t r a c t

In person, Tom Bouchard is a compelling presence. Intellectually, his influence on the field of psychology,and even on science more generally, has been similar. This collection of papers, compiled in tribute to himon the occasion of his official but hardly functional retirement, reflects both the diversity and depth ofthat influence.

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In person, Tom Bouchard is a compelling presence. He is notonly tall but also big. His bald head sticks out above the rest, hisvoice booms, and his simultaneously jovial, challenging, and pierc-ing blue eyes are impossible to disregard. The ideas pour out withan alert energy that you better match if you hope to keep up withhim. His mind is wide-ranging and encyclopedic and if you ques-tion him, he will give you the citation to support whatever hehas just said. A conversation with him is like a good game of ten-nis: it moves fast and the ball is all over the court. It is alwaysfun and one comes away with a hit of those same endorphinsand renewed enthusiasm for life that come with meeting a physi-cal challenge.

Tom Bouchard has had a similar influence on psychology. HisMinnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart (MISTRA, 1990) attractedmuch attention, both within the field and from the general public.Its findings both fascinated us and turned long-held assumptionsabout the origins of psychological traits and patterns of behaviorupside-down, and the MISTRA findings kept on coming in a consis-tent stream. We might have been able to ignore one or two ofthem, but we had to acknowledge the consistent stream. Manychallenged him about his findings and their interpretations, butthese challenges only spurred him to devise more fundamentaltests. He did not accomplish it alone of course. Yet, arguably atleast, we can lay largely at his feet the current acknowledgementin the field that there are genetic influences on behavior, and thevitalization and stimulation of the field that this acknowledgementhas spawned.

Now, in 2010, at age 72, Tom is finally calling his formal, officialcareer quits and heading off for the ski slopes, at least when he isnot still speaking, writing, or doing research in psychology, evolu-tion, genetics, anthropology, anatomy, and sociology. This special

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issue of Personality and Individual Differences, a journal to whichTom has often referred as one of his favorites, is a tribute to hisideas, energy, and dedication to the pursuit of scientific rigor andacademic freedom. It consists of 12 papers based on talks deliveredJune 17, 2009 in Minneapolis, Minnesota at a festschrift held in hishonor. The 12 papers cover four general areas that have particu-larly interested Tom.

The first, The Prospects for a Scientific Discipline of Psychology,begins with a loosely defined point–counterpoint by Earl Hunt andLinda Gottfredson. One of the enduring themes in Tom’s life hasbeen his defense of academic freedom. As a graduate student atthe University California, Berkeley, Tom was one of the leaders ofthe Free Speech Movement. Throughout his academic career,Tom has been unwavering in his defense of the free speech rightsof others, even when his defense brought criticism that he wassupporting unpopular ideas and politically incorrect scholars (Bou-chard, 1995). Hunt points out that academic freedom to study anyand all research questions without constraint carries with itresponsibility for scientific rigor. He argues that this responsibilityis not always taken as seriously as it should be, notes that paperswith erroneous conclusions are often much more widely cited thanthe papers that correct them, and points to recent examples of con-clusions he considers less than rigorous. In contrast, Gottfredsonvividly documents from personal experience how fragile the aca-demic freedom many of us take for granted can be when the sub-ject of investigation is politically unpopular. And Scott Lilienfeldbemoans the state of rigorous scientific thought in psychology.He identifies political correctness, radical environmentalism, theresurrection of common sense and intuition as arbiters of scientifictruth, post-modernism, and pseudoscience as threats to scientificrigor to which psychology is particularly vulnerable. Nonetheless,

262 Editorial / Personality and Individual Differences 49 (2010) 261–263

he offers an optimistic conclusion on the future of psychology if weconfront our tendencies towards these lapses of rigor directly.

Tom is an individual differences psychologist, perhaps the bestone of our era. Not only does he document individual differences,he also thinks theoretically about how they develop and why theyexist. Theoretical Foundations of Individual Differences Research isour second thematic area. In particular, Tom was one of the leadersin recognizing that, if individual differences have meaning, theymust have some place in our evolution, and we must be able to linkevolutionary theory with the existence of genetic influences oncharacteristics that show individual differences. Steve Gangestadpicks up this theme, exploring current ideas about the evolutionof variation in personality. He focuses particularly on balance be-tween stabilizing selection and new mutations and on copy num-ber genetic variants. But many traits such as intelligence thatshow important and stable individual differences clearly also de-velop over time. Building on the work of Hayes (1962), Tom offeredhis Extended Experience Producing Drive Theory (1996, 1997) asan explanation for both the continuity and the development. Thetheory is arguably unique within psychology in offering an inte-grated developmental perspective on the coexistence of geneticand environmental influences on behavior. Wendy Johnson ex-plores the implications of this theory and describes ways in whichit can be both used to explain otherwise perplexing observationsand put to the test. And John Loehlin, taking up a topic of greatinterest to Tom (Bouchard & Segal, 1985), challenges the stereo-type of behavior geneticists as interested primarily in the heritabil-ity of psychological traits by describing all the ways in which theirwork has illuminated the sources and mechanisms of environmen-tal influences.

Much of Tom’s career involved working with twins, especiallythe twins reared apart with which his name is associated, andTwins as a Natural Experiment is our third thematic area. At theFestschrift Nick Martin described how twins have been used tohelp us understand the genetics of complex diseases, and in this is-sue he and Brad Verhulst and Pete Hatemi build on those com-ments by using behavior genetic mediation analyses to take onone of Tom’s favorite subjects, the role of genetic influences on so-cial attitudes (e.g., Bouchard et al., 2003). They explore the geneticand environmental transactions linking personality and social atti-tudes, concluding that a single conservative–liberal dimensioncannot adequately describe the associations linking personalityand social attitudes, and that genetic influences tend to link theEysenckian notion of Psychoticism with conservative social atti-tudes, while shared environmental influences tend to link SocialDesirability with more liberal attitudes. Tom has long been inter-ested in the power of twin research designs (Bouchard, 1991),and Nancy Segal shows how, in the presence of artificial insemina-tion and increased adoption rates, twin studies are evolving be-yond the classic comparison of mono- and dizygotic twins toinclude new designs of social and genetic relatedness. Pairs of rel-atives such as virtual twins, biologically unrelated siblings of thesame age, are providing new insights into many behavioraldomains.

Although Tom is perhaps best known for his behavioral geneticresearch, it was for his expertise in applied psychology that he wasoriginally hired at the University of Minnesota. He has been equallyinterested in the consequences as well as the origins of individualdifferences in behavior. Consequently, our final thematic area isThe Life Consequences of Individual Differences. At the Festschrift,Irv Gottesman discussed the ability of scales from the MinnesotaMulti-phasic Personality Inventory, when administered in adoles-cence, to forecast the later emergence of acute psychopathology

such as schizophrenia and psychopathy and the implications ofthis for personality as an endophenotype for psychopathology.The full study is documented here in the paper by Kevin Bolinskey,Susan Trumbetta, Dan Hanson, and Irv Gottesman.

Tom has of course been particularly interested in intelligenceand its real-world consequences (Neisser et al., 1996), and he be-gan his career as an occupational psychologist. The last three pa-pers all involve mental ability. Nathan Kuncel, Deniz Ones, andPaul Sackett describe a wealth of data demonstrating the validityof personality measures and cognitive ability and admissions testsas predictors of academic achievement, work success, and even lifeoutcomes such as divorce and mortality. Despite the well-estab-lished nature of the associations, they note, confusion remainsregarding the associations’ strength, whether they are operativebeyond some threshold, and whether they are merely stand-insfor social class and/or other confounding variables. Kuncel, Ones,and Sackett review the results of large meta-analyses designedspecifically to address and refute the sources of this confusion.Ian Deary provides an introduction to the emerging field of cogni-tive epidemiology, or the study of the nature of and reasons forassociations between scores on tests of cognitive ability and mor-tality, illness, and health. He surveys findings, theories about thereasons for association, and future challenges, including implica-tions for public health policy. Finally, David Lubinski discussesTom’s favorite special mental ability, spatial ability (Bouchard &McGee, 1977). He notes the importance of spatial ability in fore-casting success in academic programs and occupations involvingmanipulation and reasoning about figures, patterns, and shapes,and points out that American academic admissions tests do notmeasure it. He shows how this neglect overlooks potentially strongcandidates for careers in science-, technology-, engineering-, andmath-related fields.

Tom clearly enjoyed the talks the day of the Festschrift. Duringthem, he sat there and beamed. Whenever there was an opportu-nity for discussion, he put his two cents in, with both questionsand comments, as usual insightful. We hope that you, the loyalPAID reader, enjoy them as well.

References

Bouchard, T. J. Jr., (1991). A twice told tale: Twins reared apart. In W. Grove & D.Cicchetti (Eds.), Thinking clearly about psychology: Essays in honor of Paul EverettMeehl. Personality and psychopathology (Vol. 2). Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press.

Bouchard, T. J. Jr., (1995). Breaking the last taboo [review of The Bell Curve].Contemporary Psychology, 40, 415–418.

Bouchard, T. J. Jr., (1997). Experience producing drive theory: How genes driveexperience and shape personality. Acta Paediatrica, 86, 65–68.

Bouchard, T. J., Jr., Lykken, D. T., McGue, M., Segal, N. L., & Tellegen, A. (1990).Sources of human psychological difference: The Minnesota study of twinsreared apart. Science, 250, 223–228.

Bouchard, T. J., Jr., Lykken, D. T., Tellegen, A., & McGue, M. (1996). Genes, drives,environment and experience: EPD theory – revisited. In C. Benbow & D. Lubinski(Eds.), Intellectual talent: Psychometric and social issues (pp. 5–43). Baltimore,MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Bouchard, T. J., Jr., & McGee, M. G. (1977). Sex differences in human spatial ability:Not an X-linked recessive gene effect. Social Biology, 24, 225–332.

Bouchard, T. J., Jr., & Segal, N. (1985). Environment and IQ. In B. J. Wolman (Ed.),Handbook of intelligence: Theories, measurements, and applications (pp. 391–464).New York: Wiley.

Bouchard, T. J., Jr., Segal, N. L., Tellegen, A., McGue, M., Keyes, M., & Krueger, R. F.(2003). Evidence for the construct validity and heritability of the Wilson–Patterson Conservatism scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 34,959–969.

Hayes, K. J. (1962). Genes, drives, and intellect. Psychological Reports, 10,299–342.

Neisser, U., Boodoo, G., Bouchard, T. J., Jr., Boykin, A. W., Brody, N., Ceci, S. J., et al(1996). Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns. American Psychologist, 51,77–101.

Editorial / Personality and Individual Differences 49 (2010) 261–263 263

Wendy Johnson a,b

Matt McGue b,c

a Centre for Cognitive Ageing andCognitive Epidemiology,

Department of Psychology,University of Edinburgh,

UK

b Department of Psychology,University of Minnesota,

Twin Cities,USA

c Department of Epidemiology,University of Southern Denmark,

Odense, DenmarkE-mail address: wendy.johnson@ed.ac.uk (Wendy Johnson)

Available online 4 March 2010