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HarvardScience is a publication of the Harvard Office of News and Public Affairs devoted to all matters related to science at the various schools, departments, institutes, and hospitals of Harvard University.
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+ Enlarge Image Steven Pinker

Photograph by Justin Ide/Harvard News Office

"My genome, my self"

In a New York Times Magazine cover story, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker considers the age of personal genomics

January 10, 2009

Steven Pinker
Faculty of Arts and Sciences

One of the perks of being a psychologist is access to tools that allow you to carry out the injunction to know thyself. I have been tested for vocational interest (closest match: psychologist), intelligence (above average), personality (open, conscientious, agreeable, average in extraversion, not too neurotic) and political orientation (neither leftist nor rightist, more libertarian than authoritarian). I have M.R.I. pictures of my brain (no obvious holes or bulges) and soon will undergo the ultimate test of marital love: my brain will be scanned while my wife’s name is subliminally flashed before my eyes.

To read the entire article, go to the New York Times Magazine

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