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The Inheritance of Neuroticism: An Experimental Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2018

H. J. Eysenck  and
D. B. Prell
H. J. Eysenck
Affiliation:
Psychology Department, The Institute of Psychiatry (Maudsley Hospital)
D. B. Prell
Affiliation:
Psychology Department, The Institute of Psychiatry (Maudsley Hospital)
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Extract

It is commonly believed that heredity plays a considerable part in the determination of an individual's personality. If we accept the well-known definition of personality as “the integrated organization of all the cognitive, affective, conative and physical characteristics of an individual as it manifests itself in focal distinctness to others,” we might expect that much research endeavour would have been dedicated to the discovery of hereditary influences on the cognitive, affective, conative and physical characteristics of the individual. A certain amount of such research there has been, but its emphasis has been curiously lopsided; we have some studies into inheritance of physical characteristics, and numerous studies into the inheritance of cognitive characteristics, but there has been little worth-while research into the conative and affective sides of personality.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 97 , Issue 408 , July 1951 , pp. 441 - 465
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1951 

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