The admissions scandals reflects parents trying to externally shape their kids’ development rather than figure out what types their kids are and supporting healthy versions of those types. Culture heavily weights desirability of some types (like students, highly ambitious individuals, and extroverts) over others (like introverts, low ambitious individuals, and many artists). Most personality traits, including academic success, TV watching, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness are around 50% heritable, and much of the other 50% of variance is attributed to non-systematic effects.

According to twin researcher Robert Plomin (author of Blueprint), parents have less influence than other non-systematic effects–which doesn’t make sense to me in terms of my experience and reading of other research (especially attachment research). One of his findings is that type of child influences what types of parenting are evoked by whatever types parents are, thus making childhood experience heavily cocreated by the temperaments of parents and children–in other words, genetically determined. That being said, I think it begins to make sense when we factor in personal choices, both unconscious and conscious, that individuals make in development. I think these track in his research as non-systematic effects that are indirectly determined by types of parenting–growth mindsets, emphases on discovering who their children are and supported healthy versions, and resisting cultural standards for uniform models of success.

The admissions scandal is the tip of the iceberg

The college admission scandals involved multiple parents pulling strings, bribing, cheating, and lying to get their children into high ranking colleges. This is the tip of the privilege iceberg that’s is as old as nepotism and human history. We are genetically programmed to give more rights/care/resources to those most genetically and tribally connected to us. Also, morally, people tend to feel more exhilaration when successfully cheating than guilt, and all of us have certain areas where we break rules (and even laws) when it suits us or when we believe our moral compass is superior to the collective’s for us (not necessarily for everyone). One of the more interesting parts of the underlying forces at work in this scandal is the question of how much the values of these families and individuals were culturally determined–internalized LLQ values pressuring individuals to instantiate states with impulses to conform to personally important success/status standards.

-Dr. Keith Witt