Bouchard worked on
twin study, particularly as part of the
Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart (MISTRA). This work has included
case studies,
longitudinal studies, and large-scale quantitative analyses and
meta-analyses. These studies attempt to determine to what degree
genes have a role in medical and psychological outcomes, such as
personality or
heritability of IQ. According to
The New York Times they both also owned a dog named "Toy", and had named their first son almost identically, "James Allan" and "James Alan". Bouchard has said that these two twins happened to be unusually alike, while most twins show more differences: "There probably are genetic influences on almost all facets of human behavior, but the emphasis on the idiosyncratic characteristics is misleading. On average, identical twins raised separately are about 50 percent similar -- and that defeats the widespread belief that identical twins are carbon copies. Obviously, they are not. Each is a unique individual in his or her own right. The next year, he was part of task force commissioned by the
American Psychological Association which released a consensus statement on the state of intelligence research titled
Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns. Bouchard served as Associate Editor for the journals
Behavior Genetics and
Journal of Applied Psychology. According to
Google Scholar, Bouchard has over 300 publications that have been cited over 38,000 times. He has an
h-index of 84. ==Awards==