Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

provided some interesting stories, that’s all they amounted to.
Minnesota Twins Raised Apart
So, how does one determine if something ultimately nature or nurture? The next breakthrough in this
line of research started in the late 1970s when Thomas J. Bouchard and his colleagues at Minnesota State
University began studying twins who were raised separately. 30 This research started when a pair of twins,
Jim Lewis and Jim Springer, were featured in an article on February 19, 1979, in the Lima News in Lima,
Ohio. 31 Jim and Jim were placed in an adoption agency and separated from each other at four weeks of
age. They grew up just 40 miles away from each other, but they never knew the other one existed. Jess
and Sarah Springer and Ernest and Lucille Lewis were looking to adopt, and both sets of parents were
told that their Jim had been a twin, but they were also told that his twin had died. Many adoption agencies
believed that placing twins with couples was difficult, so this practice of separating twins at birth was an
inside practice that the adoptive parents knew nothing about. Jim Lewis’ mother had found out that Jim’s
twin was still alive when he was toddler, so Jim Lewis knew that he had a twin but didn’t seek him out
until he was 39 years old. Jim Springer, on the other hand, learned that he had been a twin when he was
eight years old, but he believed the original narrative that his twin had died.
As you can imagine, Jim Springer was pretty shocked when he received a telephone message with
his twin’s contact information out of nowhere one day. The February 19 th article in the Lima News was
initially supposed to be a profile piece on one of the Springers’ brothers, but the reporter covering the
wedding found Lewis and Springer’s tale fascinating. The reporter found several striking similarities
between the twins: 32
• Their favorite subject in school was math
• Both hated spelling in school
• Their favorite vacation spot was Pas Grille Beach in Florida
• Both had previously been in law enforcement
• They both enjoyed carpentry as a hobby
• Both were married to women named Betty
• Both were divorced from women named Linda
• Both had a dog named “Toy”
• Both started suffering from tension headaches when they were 18
• Even their sons’ names were oddly similar (James Alan and James Allan)
This sensationalist story caught the attention of Bouchard because this opportunity allowed him and
his colleagues to study the influence rearing had on twins in a way that wasn’t possible when studying
twins who were raised together.
Over the next decade, Bouchard and his team of researchers would seek out and interview over
100 different pairs of twins or sets of triplets who had been raised apart. 33 The researchers were able to
compare those twins to twins who were reared together. As a whole, they found more similarities between
the two twin groups than they found differences. This set of studies is one of many that have been
conducted using twins over the years to help us understand the interrelationship between rearing and
genetics.
Twin Research in Communication
In the field of communication, the first major twin study published was conducted by Cary Wecht
Horvath in 1995. 34 In her study, Horvath compared 62 pairs of identical twins and 42 pairs of fraternal
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Interpersonal Communication