Steve Sailer – The Unz Review May 8, 2022
Nancy L. Segal at Cal State Fullerton is a leading expert on twins. She is the professor to call if you have some crazy twin story of scientific interest, like her 2015 account of two pairs of South American identical twins who got switched in the hospital and grew up believing themselves to be fraternal twin pairs, one in the city and one in the country, until being reunited in their 20s.
Now she’s done a case study of a pair of South Korean identical twin girls, one of whom got lost at age 2 and wound up adopted by an American family and raised in the US. That’s a pretty huge difference for identical twins raised apart studies, since they usually stay in the same country, often with relatives of one or the other parent (and generally middling income folk who can afford to take one child but not two children).
The twin who stayed home in South Korea scores 16 points higher on an IQ test:
Psychologists found a “striking” difference in intelligence after examining twins raised apart in South Korea and the United States
by Eric W. Dolan May 7, 2022
A new study of monozygotic twins raised apart in South Korea and the United States provides unique insight into how genetic, cultural, and environmental factors influence human development. The new research has been published in the scientific journal Personality and Individual Differences.
“I have studied identical twins reared apart for many years. They pose a simple, yet elegant experiment for disentangling genetic and environmental influences on human traits. This case was unique in that the twins were raised in different countries,” said researcher Nancy L. Segal, a professor and director of the Twin Studies Center at California State University in Fullerton.
The twins were born in 1974 in Seoul, South Korea. One of the twins became lost at age two after visiting a market with her grandmother. She was later taken to a hospital that was approximately 100 miles away from her family’s residence and diagnosed with the measles. Despite her family’s attempt to find her, she was placed into the foster system and ended up being adopted by a couple residing in the United States.
She later discovered she had a twin sister after submitting a DNA sample in 2018 as part of South Korea’s program for reuniting family members.
In the new study, the twins completed assessments of family environment, general intelligence, nonverbal reasoning ability, personality traits, individualism-collectivism, self-esteem, mental health, job satisfaction, and medical life history. They also completed structured interviews about their general life history.
Not only did the twins experience different cultures growing up, they also were raised in very different family environments. The twin who remained in South Korea was raised in a more supportive and cohesive family atmosphere. The twin who was adopted by the U.S. couple, in contrast, reported a stricter, more religiously-oriented environment that had higher levels of family conflict.
The researchers found “striking” differences in cognitive abilities. The twin raised in South Korea scored considerably higher on intelligence tests related to perceptual reasoning and processing speed, with an overall IQ difference of 16 points.
In the second half of the 20th Century, South Korea had world-leading Flynn Effects in increased IQ and increased height.
More idiosyncratically, the American-raised twin reported three concussions, including a bad once as recently as 2018.
In line with their cultural environment, the twin raised in the United States had more individualistic values, while the twin raised in South Korea had more collectivist values.
However, the twins had a similar personality. Both scored high on measures of conscientiousness and low on measures of neuroticism. They also had a similar level of satisfaction with their job, even though their occupations were quite different — a government administrator and a cook. The twins also had similar mental health profiles and had identical scores on the measure of self-esteem.
“Genes have a more pervasive effect on development than we ever would have supposed — still, environmental effects are important. These twins showed cultural difference in some respects,” Segal told PsyPost.
Here’s Nancy’s abstract:
Twins reared apart are rare, especially twins raised in different countries and cultures. This report documents the behavioral, physical, and medical similarities and differences of monozygotic female cotwins, raised separately by an adoptive family in the United States and the biological family in South Korea. Similarities were evident in personality, self-esteem, mental health, job satisfaction and medical life history, consistent with genetic influence found by the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart and related studies. An overall twin correlation across thirty-eight measures was r = 0.95, p < .001. In contrast with previous research, the twins’ general intelligence and non-verbal reasoning scores showed some marked differences. Adding these cases to the psychological literature enhances understanding of genetic, cultural, and environmental influences on human development.
I wonder how many twins she ignores because they don’t give her anything to write about?
One identical twin lives in a deprived neighbourhood, one in a rich neighbourhood: which one turned out 16 IQ points smarter?
One identical twin was abused, one wasn’t: which one turned out 16 IQ points smarter?
One identical twin made friends with junkies, one didn’t: which one turned out 16 IQ points smarter?
One identical twin became obsessed with clothes, one didn’t: which one turned out 16 IQ points smarter?
There are a million reasons why they would turn out that way that have nothing to do with the country’s education system. “Experts” strike again.
I’ve not read all, but this is a very interesting line of research, and it should persuade many to modify or dump some of their deeply held prejudices.
The identical twin provides an excellent study, but individual sheeple are just as relavent, but they get cast aside, because in most sheeple’s minds, planned failure is the default setting, so we see most sheeple fail in their personal aspirations, no matter how grand, or modest they are.
There comes a point in every countries development, when it his that point when it goes into terminal decline.
I’m taking about the UK, since WW2 and the US since the 1970s and 80s. Once the decline sets in, it is impossible to stop. Take the UKs deindustrislisstion which really took hold after WW2, & then went balistic after Thatcher became PM, and in the 80s.
So you transfer this economic decline to sheeple and their little lambs. As rams and ewes lose good jobs, their little lambs don’t have the culture of success to aspire to. We’re now at the point where you’re doing well if you’re a graduate flipping burgers. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still good jobs, but they’ve declined to the point of no return, especially in advanced manufacturing. Boris wants to build 1 new nuclear power station every year, but we know Boris is not in the real world. China was going to build new nuke stations, but they pulled out, because the UK regime is bankrupt, and remember, China was the cheapest option. We used to be a proper nuclear power, now its all done at Porton Down, and even then, its theoretical.
James Dyson has done well, but I can’t stand the man. He had zero luck with City finance, so he raised his investments from the Far East. This kinda sums up bankrupt Britain. The Dragons in Dragons Den nearly always tell shepple pitching for investments, that they need to get it made in China or some other cheapo labour economy with low eco rules.
None of this is by accident. It doesn’t just happen. We saw most of our best jobs go, gone for good, and now they are doing exactly the same thing to farming. They want 80/90% of our food imported, the filthy US food producers will love it. High end food will be produced in the UK, for the elite, for high end catering, for BBC cooking shows and the like.
Remember all those fancy ingredients that you could once get at the supermarkets? FAT chance. I’ve been in Scotland for two months, and I’ve not seen an advercado since I’ve been here. Some parts of Scotland might stock them.
The point I am making, is that these economic and cultural changes have a huge impact on how sheeple and their lambs develop, and the BBC, which has dumbed down its content to levels which should have you worried, because sheeple have votes, and while the votes mean nothing, they do allow the fake news to set the tempo and agenda, and this allows the one party state to say the sheeple want xyz, even if they don’t.
That Identical Twin raised in the USA should thank her lucky stars she wasnt’t raised in the UK…
else her IQ wouldve been TWENTY SIX points lower! 😅
The one in America got beaten up and so had less time to study. Life is best when it is not overseen by the jealous insect eyes of Jews, always sabotaging it.
How many vaccinations did the American one get versus the Korean one?
@ cleverer,
Excellent comment.
Yes, what a retarded study. So what? The girls were brought up in completely different home environments. Tells us nothing about either the U.S. or South Korea.
Suppose the lost girl had been adopted back in South Korea, but in a dysfunctional family. Results would have been the same: i.e. IQ much lower for the adopted girl.
Reading this article I began to wonder about Nancy L Segal And who would fund this work and no doubt this research could be weaponised; lo and behold “ [from https://www.mylife.com/nancy-segal/e758208961902%5D Nancy’s ethnicity is Middle Eastern American, whose political affiliation is currently a registered Democrat; and religious views are listed as Jewish.“ She appears to have written a good few books on twins and lectured on this in a major way. Now remind me who it was who is reputed to have a fascination with research on twins during WWII.
The Commies always wanted to prove that nurture is what matters, and not nature (genes), so it’s okay to mate with African monkey-men, we’ll educate them later, and this article, and the Commie Carl Jones, draw attention to a case supportive of their opinion/policy/lie.
I’d love to sit some of you people down witb an Oxford educated “monkey man” and see him talk you around in circles. Or Cambridge if you prefer.
I’d also like to take you to the slums of the uk filled with white people who never received any kind of chance in life thanks to all those “lords”, and see you try to talk them up into Einsteins.
To albert the grate–Oxford, Cambridge and Einstein are very unfortunate choices when you are looking for intelligence; the universities breed foreign and hostile spies and Einstein is a vandal in the cosmology realm. You only have politics and “clever” Race War.
If you too were raised on a diet of imbecilic American/Jewish television like the Korean girl you’d end up as thick as that Jewish Prick Biden.
American origin TV is almost impossible to watch….and Britain is going the same way.
Both are completely controlled by Jews…..Expect French tv/movies to go the same way.
Next there will be a jew showing up “proving” Blacks are as intelligent as Asians (some) and Europeans.
No doubt there WILL be Blacks with high intelligence….but it is the average which is talked about.
Jews stick their noses into everything.It seems they have now taken over an equivalent of Which magazine (NZ) in Britain.
Whereas before it was run by Europeans.
Next…eventually they’ll have selected studies of X Y or Z favouring Jews…..
This process will go on until they have taken over EVERYTHING.It seems they now run the equivalent of Britains RSBP …the bird protection outfit.
Lewis Jones: you wouldn’t know a commie if you fell over one, and same for me. I’ve never seen or met a communist. I’ve not been to Albania… 🤣🤣🤣
Intelligent people may be stupified by implanting the right beliefs, encouraging the right habits, and assuring that they are under stress and distraction enough that rational thought becomes difficult, a chore, or impossible.
Toss in a bit of chemical “goodness’…
Dammit, all these decades pretending we the peons are just as smart as the Germans, etc. and now we have to déjà vu it all over again with the Koreans. Who’s next, the cetaceans..
@ “albert the grate”
== I’d also like to take you to the slums of the uk filled with white people ==
Yeah, I guessed there would be.
In the US there are plenty of “left behind” whites in Detroit, Chicago and so on buy you’ll never see them photographed. They won’t be on TV or anything. They are left behind as certain as if they were in another world.
Carl Jones—I’m not sure when, where, why and and how, but Communism imperceptibly morphed into the programme to get rid of all the White people, as with Kalergi, and this is usually what I mean by Communism. I still would like the headlong rush to heap up money at any cost to the surroundings, and the defence of this habit, to stop.