Article: Personality set for life by 1st grade, study suggests

From livescience.com (Link)

Excerpt: "Using data from a 1960s study of approximately 2,400 ethnically diverse schoolchildren (grades 1 - 6) in Hawaii, researchers compared teacher personality ratings of the students with videotaped interviews of 144 of those individuals 40 years later."


"They examined four personality attributes - talkativeness (called verbal fluency), adaptability (cope well with new situations), impulsiveness and self-minimizing behavior (essentially being humble to the point of minimizing one's importance)."

Can people change?  I wonder why these criteria were highlighted and selected - are these the new prominent features of personality in psych circles?  Some of this information has me evaluating how I see myself.  Are there scales for each?  For example, I could see the detriment of being too self-minimizing.  I may reflect some of this.  However,  what of being 'too adaptable'?  Could there be such a thing?  For instance, one who is too adaptable might be a milquetoast or left blowing in the wind - i.e. a lack of resiliency? Some good comments in the bottom of the article:
 
"Look for a fish in the ocean and you'll probably find it."

"I don't even recognize me from highschool, let alone the 1st grade. All it takes it the slightest breeze to change a person."

80s video of the month: Johnny and Mary

Struggling, why, oh why couldn't I remember the name?

.......................Something I can't put my finger on

Set in motion a series of thoughts and flashes

That somehow had me humming the bars to

One truly rad 80s song today

Outside a pet store?!

Of all unlikely places

Until I was home

And I knew

Inbound:

Relieving the iconic Tina Turner, uncontested for several months with the extended anthem of "We Don't Need Another Hero" ( "Thunderdome"), is Robert Palmer's "Johnny and Mary."

Robert Palmer, 1949-2003, like many of the legendary 1980s musicians, was a dressy, Britain-born performer who uniquely epitomized New Wave style and jazzy swagger. He did this perhaps most memorably in "Simply Irresistible," the music video (in the dawn of the video era) capitalizing on the pastel red, black and alluring flourishes often associated with Patrick Nagel and the general artistic zeitgeist of the time.

Please see this excellent online bio: http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Palmer_Robert.html

Outgoing:

"Thunderdome": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TViZKt-AX6E

Fare thee well, great diva Tina.

Film at 11...

80s video of the month - The Killing Moon

Article: "EQ" vs. "IQ"

Source: The Utne Reader. URL: http://www.utne.com/interact/test_iq.html



Emotional intelligence gives you a competitive edge. Even at Bell Labs, where everyone is smart, studies find that the most valued and productive engineers are those with the traits of emotional intelligence -- not necessarily the highest IQ. Having great intellectual abilities may make you a superb fiscal analyst or legal scholar, but a highly developed emotional intelligence will make you a candidate for CEO or a brilliant trial lawyer.



Empathy and other qualities of the heart make it more likely that your marriage will thrive. Lack of those abilities explains why people of high IQ can be such disastrous pilots of their personal lives.



An analysis of the personality traits that accompany high IQ in men who also lack these emotional competencies portrays, well, the stereotypical nerd: critical and condescending, inhibited and uncomfortable with sensuality, emotionally bland. By contrast, men with the traits that mark emotional intelligence are poised and outgoing, committed to people and causes, sympathetic and caring, with a rich but appropriate emotional life -- they're comfortable with themselves, others, and the social universe they live in.



A high IQ may get you into Mensa, but it won't make you a mensch.