The Molecule of More

THE MOLECULE OF MORE

authors noted that people with low P scores are more likely to be “altru-
istic, well  socialized, empathic, and  conventional.” By contrast, people
who have high P scores are “manipulative, tough-minded, and practi-
cal,” and present characteristics such as “risk-taking, sensation-seeking,
impulsivity, and authoritarianism.” They concluded, “As such, we expect
higher P scores to be related to a more conservative political attitude.”
What they predicted was exactly what they found. The stereotypes,
they said, were true: conservatives tend to be impulsive and authoritarian
while liberals tend  to  be well  socialized and  generous. But in  science, when
you  find  just what  you  expect, it can  be a  red  flag.  And  in  January 2016,
fourteen years after the original report, the journal published a retraction:

The authors regret that there is an error in the published

version of “Correlation not Causation: The Relationship

Between Personality Traits and Political Ideologies.” The

interpretation of the coding... was exactly reversed.

Somebody had  flipped the  labels. The correct interpretation was  the 
opposite of what they reported. It was the liberals in their study—not
the conservatives—who were manipulative, tough-minded, and prac-
tical. And it was the conservatives, not the liberals, who tended to be
altruistic, well socialized, empathic, and  conventional.  Many people 
expressed surprise at this reversal. But if we consider what the study
found at its most basic level and how it relates to the dopamine sys-
tem, the revised results make good sense—certainly more sense than
the  original findings, which were widely heralded but  exactly backward.

THE LIMITATIONS OF

PERSONALITY MEASURES

Psychologists have worked for decades to develop ways

to measure personality. They found that personality can be

divided into different domains, such as how open a person is