Genes and social environment shape personality (Image: Marit Photography/Getty)
Why are we all so different? Here is a toolkit for finding out what people are really like
IN THE 4th century BC, the Greek philosopher Theophrastus, Aristotle’s student and successor, wrote a book about personality. The project was motivated by his interest in what he considered a very puzzling question: “Why it has come about that, albeit the whole of Greece lies in the same clime, and all Greeks have a like upbringing, we have not the same constitution of character?”
Not knowing how to get at the answer, Theophrastus…
