LynnBookReview02
PERSONALITY AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES PERGAMON Personality and Individual Differences 33 (2002) 183-184 www.elsevier.com/locate/paid Book review Eugenics: A Reassessment Richard Lynn, Praeger Publishers, Westport, CT, 2001, 384 pp., ISBN 0-275-95822-1, $85.00 (hardback). Richard Lynn, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland has written a highly readable and stimulating sequel to his 1996 Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in modern populations. In the present book, Lynn proposes that the condemnation of eugenics in the second half of the twentieth century went too far and so warrants a reassessment. The eugenic objectives of eliminating genetic diseases, increasing intelligence, and reducing personality dis- orders, he suggests, remain desirable and are now achievable by human biotechnology and per- sonal choice, not governmental policy. The book is nicely organized into four parts: History of Eugenics, Objectives of Eugenics, Classical Implementation of Eugenics Programs, and The New Eugenics. The first part provides an account of the foundation of eugenics by Sir Francis Galton and the rise and fall of eugenics in the twentieth century. One section on the "last eugenicists," describes the work over the last three decades of Robert Graham, William Shockley, Raymond Cattell, and Roger Pearson. The next two parts, Objectives, and Classical Implementations, provide an enormous store- house of useful and up-to-date information, including extensive data on the social costs and benefits of different levels of intelligence and personality types. These include the "psychopathic personality," which Lynn sees primarily as a function of very low agreeableness combined with very low conscientiousness. There are excellent reviews of the literature on the heritability of all kinds of traits and syndromes, the genetic principles of selection, and the various eugenic methods that have been tried, along with their relative success in differen…