chair or shook hands, were practically indistinguishable. Certain findings had immediate consequences. For instance, since their teenage years both Jims had suffered the same kinds of migraine headaches, which until then were not thought to have a genetic basis. Also, at one point in their adult lives both Jims put on ten pounds at the same time. Was there some kind of genetic programming at work? Such things had been suspected, but now there was a way of comparing major life changes. The possibilities for the study seemed to open endlessly. Bouchard stopped thinking about doing a little monograph.
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"We got quite a bit of publicity," Bouchard recalls. " People magazine ran a story. They were on the Johnny Carson Show . They really fascinated everybody. And so I wrote a grant proposal. I had no idea it would become a life study." As a result of the publicity, however, other separated twins began to surface, creating a research bonanza. Within a year of the Jims' reunion, Bouchard had studied fifteen other sets of separated twins and put together a team of six psychologists, two psychiatrists, and nine other medical experts.
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A routine developed. The twins usually arrive in Minnesota on a Saturday (international visitors arrive on Friday). They have been asked to bring whatever birth certificates, adoption papers, photographs, school and medical records, awards, and letters they can find. Bouchard usually greets them at the airport. Often the spouses or parents come as well, to be included in the family studies that have been added to the program. Sunday afternoon the twins go to Elliott Hall, where one twin begins writing out his life history, while the other twin, in a separate room, takes the first of many personality assessments, which include the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the Myers-Briggs Type
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