Nature vs. Nurture/ Genetics vs. Environment

How much of our children’s personality traits, temperament, talents, health conditions, mental illness, and intelligence are controlled by their genes and how much by the environment we have created? What relevance does this have to us as parents through adoption or donor egg or sperm? Our guests will be: • Dr. Matt McGue, Professor of Psychology at University of Minnesota, a behavioral and quantitative geneticist, and Co-Director of Minnesota Twin Family Study and the Sibling Interaction and Behavior Study and Research on Adoption. He is also an adoptive dad. • Dr. Nancy Segal, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Twin Studies Center, at California State University, Fullerton and author of Indivisible by Two: Lives of Extraordinary Twins and Entwined Lives: Twins and What They Tell Us About Human Behavior. • Dr. Jenae Neiderhiser, a professor of psychology at Penn State University and Director of several long term twin and adoption studies that look at the interplay between genetics and environment.