QUOTABLE:
Richard W. Robins

"[P]eople are not blank slates upon which culture-specific experiences inscribe our personalities; rather, we all come into the world with a preprogrammed set of innate mechanisms and personal proclivities. Using a diverse array of methods, including survey research, computer simulations, brain imaging, and population and molecular genetics, researchers have shown that personality traits are highly heritable, replicable across a wide range of cultures and even species, largely stable across the life span, and linked (albeit weakly) to specific genes, hormones, neurotransmitters, and brain activation patterns."

-Richard W. Robins, in Science,
October 7, 2005