Re: Scott’s latest post
Is kindness an innate ability and do I now have permission to not feel like pond scum for not being Mel Baggs?
Let me give you an answer which probably much more seriously than you intended, though still not all that serious.
Intelligence is sometimes cited as being about 50-80% heritable.
Agreeableness, the psychological construct that most closely maps to kindness, is sometimes estimated at about 42% heritable. I may be misinterpreting this.
If I am reading this paper correctly, more specific poorly-defined qualities show up as less heritable. Helpfulness is only 7% heritable, friendliness 37% heritable, warmth 27% heritable, caringness 5% heritable, and softheartedness and sympathy 0% heritable.
(these results make no sense, but I’m not sure anyone really expected them to at this level)
There’s no word on being kind yet, but the good news is there are apparently people who will give you grants to study twin concordance in self-reports of vague adjectives, so it’s only a matter of time.
So the genetic evidence is kind of ambiguous. I don’t know who Mel Baggs is, but you have always seemed extraordinarily kind. If you want my permission not to feel like pond scum, it is granted.
