-|`S&^~4n3O0Professor Paul Bloom: What we've been talking about so far inthe course are human universals, what everybody shares. So, we've beentalking about language, about rationality, about perception, about theemotions, about universals of development, and we've been talking aboutwhat people share. But honestly, what a lot of us are very interestedin is why we're different and the nature of these differences and theexplanation for them. And that's what we'll turn to today.心理学空间-s2t8@L*U,?R
So first, we'll discuss how are people different, different theoriesabout what makes you different in a psychological way from the personsitting next to you, and then we'll review different theories about whypeople are different. And this is the class which is going to botherthe most people. It's not dualism. It's not evolution. It's thisbecause the scientific findings on human psychological differences are,to many of us, shocking and unbelievable. And I will just try topersuade you to take them seriously.心理学空间F*uB'pj
cZ HGtyE e:V)`P0Okay. So, how are people different? Well, there's all sorts of ways.Your sexual identity--It is at the core of your being for almost all ofus whether you're male or female. How we refer to you in language, whatpronoun we use, is indexed on how we--on your--on how--whether you'remale or female and related to that though imperfectly is your sexualorientation, who you're attracted to. The question of why some of usthink of ourselves as males and others as females, and the question ofwhy some of us would ideally want to have sex with males, others withfemales, others with both, and then a few others who have harder todefine desires, is such a good question that we're going to talk aboutit after spring break while all the sexual desire has been spent andyou could focus on [laughter] on a scientific discussion of this--notthat I recommend you do that on spring break.
How happy are you? This is also such a good topic it's going to getits own class. The very last class of the semester is devoted tohappiness and the question of what makes people happy, what makespeople unhappy, and what makes people differ in their happiness. If Iasked you to rank how happy you are from a scale of 1 to 10, thenumbers would differ across this room. And there's different theoriesas to why. Your success and failure in life--This is somewhatinteresting because you could study this in more or less objectiveways. We don't have to ask people. We could look at your relationships,how they begin, how they end, your job satisfaction. We could look atyour criminal records. Some of you are going to see time. Most willnot. Some of you will get into little troubles all through your life.Some of you already have seen the inside of a police station, possiblya lineup. Others couldn't go near such a thing. What determinesthat?
And at the root of all human differences are two main factors. Andso, I want to talk about the two main interesting factors. One ispersonality. The other is intelligence. And this is what--These are thedifferences I'll talk about today first from the standpoint of how dowe characterize them, how do we explain them, and then from thestandpoint of why these differences exist in the first place.
One way to characterize personality is in terms of people's stylewith dealing with--in dealing with the world and particularly theirstyle with dealing--in dealing with other people. So, you take a simplecharacter you know of and you could talk about that person'spersonality. You could talk about it in terms of being impulsive,irresponsible, sometimes lazy, good-hearted. You could compare thatperson's personality with other people's personalities such as mycolleague who gave a talk last class. He's wonderful. He's responsibleand reliable and very kind [laughter] and different from Homer. And so,this difference is a difference in personality.心理学空间6u*Iw g3{cd`
Now, when we talk about personality we're talking about somethingelse as well. We're talking about a stable trait across situations andtime. So, if all of a sudden the person next to you kind of smacks youin the head, you might be angry but we wouldn't call that "personality"because that's something that's a result of a situation. We'd all feelthat way in that situation. It's "personality" if you walk around allthe time angry. That'd be a stable trait. That'd be something you carryaround with you and that's what we mean by personality.