"Malcolm"  wrote in
news:bvq2rl$9o9$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org: 

> "Dan Bolser"  wrote in message

> People are psychologically different. Tony Blair is a very different
> person to George W. Bush, despite the fact that both are heads of
> state. The problem is, how can you quantify these differences?

>> Hmmm.... I warn my young child about the dangers of the world - he >
>> grows 
> up conservative... does that count?

(snip)

> The point is that simply sitting down and saying "well I call my
"A"
> type very ambitious, competive people, and my "B" type people who are
> aggressive but not necessarily intelligent or ambitious" etc just
> lands you in the company of Tarot card readers, astrologers, and other
> assorted pseudo-scientists. There has to be more substance to any
> scheme of classification.
 

This is not really my forte, but Pinker refers in "The Blank Slate" to 
the "five major ways in which personality can vary (summarized by the 
acronym OCEAN): openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion-
introversion, antagonism-agreeableness, and neuroticism". He goes on to 
discuss the evidence that personality is largely independent of parental 
influence, but doesn't talk much more about the actual factors. However a 
quick search on the net led to the site www.personalityresearch.org which 
seemed to be a good starting point to learn more about OCEAN as well as 
competing theories.


Yours, 

Bill Morse
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