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Optical microscopy (OM), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry have been applied to the analysis of Black Glazed pottery from Pompeii (Italy), to have information about their provenance. The ceramic sherds, dating from the fourth century BC to the first century BC, were considered, on the basis of archaeological assumptions, to be locally produced. Clayey sediments from the Salerno area were sampled as a potential source for the production of these ceramics and therefore investigated with the same analytical techniques. The comparison of sampled clays and pottery sherds provided evidence for their compositional similarity, in particular by use of a multivariate statistical approach (PCA). The compatibility of the raw materials considered is clearly in evidence and corroborates the use of these possible sediments for the production of the ceramic body of the Black Glazed pottery.

A sample of 75 ex-members of cults or new religious movements completed two personality inventories: the short form of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and the Beck Sociotropy-Autonomy Scale. Compared to the norms, the sample exhibited elevated scores on neuroticism, sociotropy and autonomy. The elevated neuroticism scores increasingly approached the norm as a function of time out of the cult. Ex-members in contact with support groups showed reduced levels of neuroticism and sociotropy in comparison with those who were not. While it is not possible to draw firm conclusions from a study of this design, the results are consistent with the view that people with high autonomy scores are likely to leave or be ejected from cults or new religious movements and that doing so may cause psychological difficulties which are ameliorated by time and attendance at a support group.

Relationships among major life events, hassles, neuroticism and reported somatic symptoms were examined using a sample of 131 people. Principal components analysis of the Hassles questionnaire revealed four factors. One of these, concerns about money, did not correlate significantly with any of the other variables. A LISREL model incorporating the remaining variables suggested that neuroticism and life events contribute differentially to the three hassles factors, which in turn are related to somatic symptoms. It was argued that the hassles factor most strongly predictive of somatic symptoms, concerns about health, was more likely to be a consequence than a cause of ill-health. It was concluded that minor stressors fall into a number of different classes, which have different causes and different effects. This casts doubt on the concept of stress as a unitary phenomenon.

The relative importance of 17 potential predictors of happiness was examined in a sample of 1207 married couples who had completed a general-purpose marriage questionnaire. Predictors included measures of extraversion, neuroticism, health, education, employment, financial situation, satisfaction with housing, number of children, relationships with family and friends, and a scale measuring quality of marriage. The strongest predictors of happiness were quality of marriage, and to a lesser extent, neuroticism. Causal modelling using LISREL showed quality of marriage to be of overriding importance. Of the remaining significant predictors entered into the model, three (neuroticism, children and family) exerted a direct influence on happiness; neuroticism also affected happiness indirectly through its effect on quality of marriage, as did extraversion, partner's neuroticism, satisfaction with housing, and relationships with in-laws. This model fitted the data very well for both women and men, and accounted for almost all the variance in happiness.

The influence of personality on quality of marriage was examined using causal modelling on a sample of 94 couples who had completed a quality of marriage scale and the revised short form of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. Irrespective of gender, quality of marriage was found to be influenced negatively by spouse's neuroticism, but the strongest influence on the quality of marriage of each spouse was the quality of marriage of the other. Altogether, the model accounted for over 60 per cent of the variance in quality of marriage, and provided an extremely close fit to the data. Finally, it was argued that valid conclusions about marital quality can only be derived from couples rather than from married individuals.

This study used causal modelling on data from 94 couples to investigate the relationship between quality of marriage and social desirability. For wives, the two constructs were found to be unrelated. For husbands, a positive relationship was found, which seemed to be due to a genuine beneficial effect of social desirability on quality of marriage. No support was found for the notion that social desirability response set influences responses to questions tapping marital quality. In conclusion, it was argued that the reason that so high a proportion of couples claim to have good marriages is that they are correct.

Similar criteria may operate in mate choice and in mate retention. For example, United States couples tend to be similar, and the more similar they are, the happier and more stable their relationships are. Another widespread criterion is male dominance, which females in several primate species seem to find desirable in a mate. Defined in various ways, dominance seems to characterize men that women find desirable. Also, cross-cultural evidence suggests that attractiveness, particularly in women, enhances mate value. A survey of over 1000 British couples was undertaken to test the homogamy (similarity), male dominance, and female attractiveness hypotheses in that society. In 19 of 42 tests, homogamous couples tended to be significantly ( p

The quality of marriage of 94 couples was examined using a newly-developed scale. Couples also completed the short form of the revised EPQ. There was a significant degree of assortative mating on N, P and L, but not E. Differences between partners on E, P and L were associated with worse marriages, but differences on N did not matter. On average, couples showed a significant tendency to assort on EPQ items. Likewise, on average, similarity between spouses at the item level was predictive of a good marriage. The degree to which similarity on an item predicted a good marriage correlated weakly but significantly (P < 0.05) with the heritability of the item. Thus some support was found for the hypothesis that quality of marriage depends partly on genetic similarity.

In order to investigate the relationship between male hair loss and psychological distress, 182 men were recruited who had a wide range of ages and hair loss varying from none to severe. Care was taken to ensure that hair loss and age were uncorrelated in the sample. Multiple regression was used to predict possible consequences of baldness, controlling for age, and examining the interaction between baldness and age to see if consequences were especially severe in cases of premature baldness. Increasing degrees of hair loss were associated with loss of self-esteem, depression, introversion, neuroticism and feeling unattractive. These effects were more marked for young men in the case of self-esteem, introversion and feeling unattractive.

In a previous short communication on the subject of human assortative mating, we concluded that ‘an open verdict should be recorded concerning the claims and counterclaims surrounding genetic similarity theory, pending more precise theorizing and more analytic investigations’ (Russell & Wells 1994, page 464). Rushton (1995) has disputed the arguments that led to this conclusion. We question his rebuttal of the three points that we originally made, and present some further questions that genetic similarity theory needs to address satisfactorily. Our first point was that if genes produce variation in, for example, height, and in preference for a mate with a particular height, then an individual of a particular height will be chosen by a mate with the relevant preference, and their offspring will tend to inherit both the attribute and the preference for it. Thus, we stated, ‘people will inherit the tendency to find attractive in others the attributes they themselves possess’ (page 463). Rushton does not accept this point, saying that our ‘analysis then stops . . . and is thereby incomplete for it misses the next vital step. Unless the chance configuration is adaptive, it will break up in later generations’ (page 547). As a step towards resolving this issue, we ran a computer simulation. For the sake of simplicity, we assumed that mate choice was confined to preference for a single attribute. The program presumed a population of 200 ‘people’, 100 of each sex. Each person had 20 pairs of chromosomes. The first 10 pairs each carried a ‘gene for height’, which received the value 0 or 1 with a probability of 0·5 at the outset. The second 10 pairs each carried a ‘gene for preferred height’, again taking the value 0 or 1 with a probability of 0·5. We determined the height of each individual simply by summing across the first 10 chromosome pairs. Thus, height varied according to the binomial distribution, taking a value between 0 and 20. Preferred height was determined in the same way, except that it was computed from the genetic material in the last 10 chromosome pairs. The rule for mate choice worked as follows. Each female sequentially chose the male whose height most closely resembled her preferred height, from among the pool of those eligible. Once a male had been chosen, he was swapped to the location of the female, to remove him from consideration by females who had yet to make their choice. When a female found more than one male tying for first place in her affections, she chose the last of those encountered. Thus, the first female had 100 males to choose from, and the last had no choice at all. At this point in the program, the assortative mating coefficient for height was calculated. Then, each couple produced one male and one female offspring. Each offspring’s first chromosome (in each pair) was selected from the father. Whether the gene on a chromosome came from the first or second of each pair of the father’s chromosomes was separately determined at random in each instance. The gene on the second chromosome of each pair was selected in the same way from the mother. Thus, each offspring received a genetic makeup that came equally from the father and the mother, and equiprobably from each of the four grandparents. Although males were able to inherit height preferences, these preferences were not expressed, but could be partly passed on to sons or daughters. After ‘reproduction’, the offspring became the parental generation, and the cycle started again. We ran this simulation for 100 generations, and replicated the whole process 50 times. Assortative mating coefficients were averaged across the 50 replications (Fig. 1). On generation zero, the assortative mating coefficient is just under zero. In 10 generations it climbed to around 0·5 and gradually reached a plateau at around 0·7. There is little evidence for Rushton’s assertion that, in the absence of adaptive mechanisms, ‘the chance configuration . . . will break up in later

The degree results of nearly 300,000 British graduates were tabulated by the month of their birth. The number of graduates varied as a function of month of birth. So too, but in a different way, did the quality of their degree results. A number of possible predictors of the results are examined. These analyses suggest that, among those who stay at school until the age of 18, the oldest in their year group are at an advantage but, by the time they graduate from university, the youngest perform best. It is concluded that some intellectually relevant quality peaks between 18 and 21 yr of age and then declines.

If paternity confidence is less than absolute, sociobiological reasoning leads one to expect a preference for female relatives, and for people related through a female rather than through a male. We obtained ratings of closeness to various relatives and estimated paternity confidence by examining the extent to which certain relatives were preferred to others. The overall estimate suggests that people behave as if seven-eights certain that the husband of their mother is their father.

This article advances two theoretical schemas. The first concerns nomothetic human personality traits. We provide evidence that personality traits (a) exist, (b) are longitudinally stable, (c) can be assessed by several converging indices, (d) are inherited, and (e) have adaptive significance. We provide a review of some data on the inheritance of individual differences in activity level, aggression, altruism, chronogenetics, criminality, dominance, emotionality, intelligence, locus of control, political attitudes, sexuality, sociability, values, and vocational interests. We also suggest ways in which personality traits could arise in accordance with established genetic principles. p]The second half of the paper presents genetic similarity theory (GST). Going beyond kin selection, GST states that a gene may ensure its own survival by acting so as to bring about the reproduction of any organism in which copies of itself are to be found. An organism may have a tendency to exhibit favoritism toward genetically similar strangers as well as toward its own relatives. We order several data sets with this theory including (a) kin recognition studies in animals, (b) assortative mating, (c) intrafamilial relations, (d) human friendship and altruism, and (e) ethnic nepotism. We discuss a strong and weak version of GST and offer some predictions for future research.

A total of 881 Ss completed EPQ and 16PF questionnaires at different dates spanning 2 years. Multivariate analyses of variance of the scores as a function of the phase of the moon at the time of testing revealed no significant effect of moon phase on EPQ scores. Although a significant effect on 16PF scores was found, it was small, confined to three factors and bore little resemblance to the findings of a previously reported study.

We present genetic similarity theory (GST), which incorporates the kin-selection theory of altruism under a more general principle. GST states that a gene ensures its own survival by acting so as to bring about the reproduction ofany organism in which copies of itself are to be found. Rather than behaving altruistically only toward kin, organisms are able to detect other genetically similar organisms and to exhibit favoritism and protective behavior toward these “strangers,” as well as toward their own relatives. In order to pursue this general strategy, an organism must, in effect, be able to detect copies of its genes in other organisms. We order several data sets with this theory including (a) kin recognition studies in animals raised apart, (b) assortative mating, (c) intrafamilial relations, (d) human friendship and altruism, and (e) ethnic nepotism. We discuss a strong and a weak version of GST and offer some predictions for future research.

We offer here two extensions to Rushton’s paper. First, we shall attempt to develop some ideas which suggest why personality traits are to be expected. In addition, we shall extend the line of speculation with which Rushton ends his paper by arguing for the notion, drawn from socio-biological theorizing, that genetic similarity is a variable which may predict and explain a large part of human behavior.