Genetics and

Behaviour
 Syllabus
Genes and behaviour
✘ The evidence for links between genes and certain types of behaviour requires
critical evaluation in the light of environmental factors.
Genetic similarities
✘ Genetic similarity is referred to as relatedness. The greater the genetic
similarities between two individuals or a group of individuals the higher the
degree of relatedness.
✘ An awareness of the degree of relatedness between MZ and DZ twins,
siblings, parents and children, and parents and adopted children provides a
critical perspective in evaluating twin or kinship studies
Nature of the gene
✘ Genes are made up of DNA which provides the blueprint
for the structure and function of the human body. This
could include behaviour. An individual’s genome refers to
all the genes that individual possesses. The link between
genes and behaviour can be studied using one or more
examples.
Gene regulation and gene expression
✘ Not all genes an individual possesses are expressed at all
times. Genes can be switched on and off. This is gene
regulation resulting in differential gene expression.
Therefore, having a gene for a particular behaviour does
not necessarily mean that an individual will exhibit that
behaviour.
Factors that affect gene expression
✘ Genes are switched on and off by signals from inside and outside the
body. Internal signals include the presence of hormones or other
chemicals, or indeed other genes. Hormones are frequently
produced as a result of environmental events and work by altering
gene expression. There are countless environmental events that
also affect gene expression. The signal activates special proteins
that can promote or block the expression of a gene. Genes are
constantly being switched on and off.
✘ Sometimes genes are permanently switched off. This is mostly
achieved by methylation of the DNA molecule as part of the
developmental process.
✘ This effect on genes is sometimes referred to as epigenetics as
there is no alteration in the actual structure of the DNA. Mutations
occur when there is an actual alteration of the DNA.
General Outline
 Definition
✘ gene: a segment of DNA in a particular location on a
chromosome that acts by directing the synthesis of
proteins
✘ chromosome: thread-like structure that contains a DNA
molecule
✘ human genome: (the whole of human DNA) has
approximately 20,000–25,000 genes contained on 23
pairs of chromosomes
✘ allele: one of two different versions of a gene
✘ gene heritability: the quantitative measure of the
relative contribution of genetic factors into a trait or
 Genotype and Phenotype
✘ nucleus contains a set of chromosomes
✘ long DNA molecule is tightly coiled around supporting proteins, chromosome is a
package that contains folded DNA
✘ DNA stores information
✗ code made up of a long sequence of 4 chemical bases (AGCT)
✗ bases are paired up, making a sequence of base pairs
✘ DNA has a characteristic structure of the double helix which looks a bit like a ladder
where base pairs are the ladder’s rings (US National Library of Medicine 2017)
✘ information is coded in this sequence of bases like letters in a sentence (change the
order of letters, get a different sentence)
✘ incredibly long sentence, though human DNA consists of about 3 billion bases
✘ long sentence will break into lines, this long sequence of chemical bases is broken up
into 23 chromosomes, each chromosome is present twice in each cell (except for sex
cells)
✘ 23 pairs of chromosomes
✘ both the chromosomes in the pair have a code for identical characteristics (height,
eye colour)
✘ gene: unit of heredity, region of DNA that encodes a specific trait/ function
✘ e.g. gene for eye colour, gene for height
✘ total no. of genes in the human organs is currently estimated to be around 20 000
✘ combination of these alleles determines the trait/ function
✘ alleles: different forms of the gene, can be dominant/ recessive
✘ trait controlled by the recessive allele only develops if the allele is present in both
chromosomes in the pair
✘ trait controlled by the dominant allele will develop if at least one of the chromosome
in the pair contains it
✘ set of traits as coded in an individual’s DNA— genotype
✘ set of traits that manifest in an individual’s body, appearance/ behaviour —phenotype
✘ phenotype compromises observable characteristics, unobservable characteristics
(blood type, immune system), as well as behaviour
✘ genotype: plan, phenotype: implementation

Nature-Nurture Debate
✘ human behaviour is determined primarily by biological factors e.g. genetics & brain
structure/ environmental factors e.g. education & friends
 Methods of study
✘ twin studies: main principle is estimating the similarity between identical
(monozygotic—MZ) twins, comparing it to the similarity between fraternal (dizygotic—
DZ) twins
✗ MZ twins develop from the same egg & share 100% of genotype
✗ DZ twins develop from different eggs & share 50% of genotype
✗ if identical twins are more similar to each other than fraternal twins, can
attribute it to genetic influences
✘ family studies: uses the principle of genetic relatedness
✗ compares relatives on a broader scale, across generation
✗ e.g. comparing children to parents, grandparents, siblings
✘ adoption studies: compare adopted children to their adoptive parents, biological
parents, adoptive siblings, biological sibling
✗ infer genetic influences if adopted children: more similar to their biological than
to their adoptive parents
✘ molecular genetics: studies of molecular genetics are based on using modern
technology for genetic mapping, identifying the alleles of particular genes in a
particular individual
✘ genetic variants are then correlated with observed behaviour
✘ used to identify specific genes responsible for specific behaviour— gene of depression,
 Gene Heritability
✘ twin studies: based on Falconer model, assumes that phenotype is comprised of 3
types of influence
✗ genetics
✗ shared environment
✗ individual environment
✘ shared environment: part of the environmental influences that is common to the 2
twin studies e.g. similar schooling, some exposure to books & technology
✘ individual environment comprises environmental influences that are unique to each of
the twins
✗ 1 (the combination of these three influences theoretically can explain 100% of
observed variation in phenotype) = A (genetic inheritance)+C (shared on
common environment) +E (individual environment)
✘ no other factors that influence a certain trait/ behaviour apart from these 3
✘ Genes have been shown to affect human behaviour, but not directly
✘ there are no genes ‘for’ any behaviour – no genes for depression
or alcoholism
✘ what there is instead is inheritance of a particular sensitivity to stress, maybe, or the
effects of a particular neurotransmitter or group of neurotransmitters
✘ It is a winding path, with bidirectional gene–gene and gene–environment interactions,
 Gene Mapping
✘ possible to analyse & compare sequences of genes to
identify those responsible for particular traits
✘ genes for cystic fibrosis & breast cancer have been
identified, intelligence is unlikely to be caused by a
single gene
✘ combination of genes that interact with each other &
with the environment
✘ new science of epigenetic suggests that the environment
may also change the way genes are passed down the
generations
✘ data from a no. of such studies is pooled & analysed—
meta-analysis
 The influence of genetics on the
environment: niche-picking
✘ genes & environment: not completely independent
✘ how the interaction between these 2 factors develops dynamically
✘ niche-picking: the phenomenon when genetic predisposition causes
individuals to select environments, start to affect their behaviour
✘ e.g. child predisposed to depression may intentionally seek-out high-
demanding environments where it is hard to succeed
✘ heritability coefficients change during life, becoming larger
✗ use a sample of adolescent twins, the Falconer model to arrive at an
estimate of heritability (A), estimate will typically be smaller than if
you use a sample of older twins
✗ as you grow up, your genetic programme ‘unfolds’ causing you to
choose certain niches in the environment
✘ MZ twins become more and more similar with age
 heredity & environment on intelligence

✘ genes & environment have an additive influence on the development of IQ

✘ there is a reaction range to IQ, where refers to the limits placed on IQ by
heredity
✘ environment determines where within these limits

Evidence for heredity influences on intelligence comes from the following

observations
✘ family studies show that intelligence tends to run in families
✘ twin studies show a higher correlation between identical twins in IQ than
between fraternal twins reared together
✘ adoption studies show that adopted children somewhat resemble their
biological parents in intelligence
Evidence for environmental influences on intelligence comes from the following
observations:
✘ adoption studies demonstrate that adopted children show some similarity in
IQ to their adoptive parents
✘ adoption studies show that siblings reared together are more similar in IQ
than siblings reared apart (even when identical twins reared together are
compared to identical twins reared apart)
✘ biologically unrelated children raised together in the same home have some
similarity in IQ
✘ IQ declines overtime in children raised in deprived environment
✘ people’s performance on IQ tests has improved over time in industrialised
countries
✗ Flynn effect: attributed to environmental influences
✗ cannot be due to heredity— world’s gene pool could not have changed
in the 70 years or so since IQ testing
 Ethical issues in behavioural genetics

✘ subjects are usually children (vulnerable), not in a position to give

informed & voluntary consent for themselves
✘ twins were deliberately separated, a violation of their rights
✘ Bouchard: twins had been unaware of each other’s existence prior to
be reunited
✘ family studies can also identify other family members who are at risk
of a disease, but do not wish to know
✗ e.g. misattributed paternity/ unrevealed adoption
✘ research that looks at individual differences rather than at universal
characteristics may be socially sensitive
✘ psychologists often exerted pressure to have these laws passed
 Heritability of intelligence: adoption
studies
✘ Adoption studies: provides a direct test of environmental malleability of
cognitive abilities
✘ computing the correlation between cognitive abilities of the adopted child &
adoptive parents, comparing it to the correlation between cognitive abilities
of the the adopted child & biological parents
✘ comparing cognitive abilities of adopted children to those of their siblings
who were not adopted, raised by their biological parents
✘ most studies: IQ is increased by adoption into more prosperous families
✗ comparing the average IQ of children adopted into higher -SES families
& average IQ of their biological home-reared siblings
✘ demonstrate that adopted child- biological parent correlations are always
higher than adopted child-adoptive parent correlations, genetic component
in cognitive abilities is strong
✘ the additive influence of genetics & environment on the development of
intelligence: adopting into a higher SES family results in an increase in IQ,
depending on the genetic inheritance of the child
RESEARCH DESCRIPTION:
Bouchard & McGue (1981)
RELEVANT TOPICS:
Gene heritability
AIMS OF THE RESEARCH:
To investigate the likelihood of the heritability of intelligence
PROCEDURES:
• cross cultural, longitudinal study involving psychological & physiological assessment started in 1979
• 100 self-selected sets of reared apart twins or triplets asked to complete about 50 hours of testing & interviews
• mean age: 41 years old (at the start of the study)
• scores on these interviews & tests of identical twins raised apart (MZAs) were compared to identical twins raised together (MZTs)
• participants complete 50 hours of medical & psychological assessment
• 4 personal trait inventories, 3 occupational interest inventories, 2 mental ability batteries
• reared-apart twins have even ascertained in several ways e.g. friends, relatives, reunited twins , members of the adoption movement
• use of replicated measure, evaluation of rearing environment effects, analysis of environmental similarity
• three independent measures of IQ: the WAIS (6 verbal, 5 performance subsets) , Raven, Mill-Hill composite (nonverbal—vocabulary), the first PC of two multiple abilities batteries
(Comprehensive Ability Battery)

RESULTS/FINDINGS:
IQ correlation between % of shared genes Median correlation
1 MZ twins reared together 100 0.85
2 MZ twins reared apart 100 0.67
3 DZ twins reared together 50 0.58
3 Siblings reared together 50 0.45
3 Parents & offspring reared together 50 0.39
4 Siblings reared part 50 0.24
4 Parent & offspring reared apart 50 0.22
5 Adopting parent & offspring 0 0.18

• 70% of the variance in IQ was found to be associated with genetic variations

• personality, temperament, occupational, leisure-time interests, social attitudes: MZ twins reared apart are about as similar as are MZ reared together
• genetic differences affect psychological differences largely indirectly by influencing the effective environment of the developing child
EXPLORATION (EVALUATE RESEARCH):
• general intelligence/ IQ is strongly affected by genetic factors
• correlate about 0.7
• few of these MZA twins were reared in real poverty/ illiterate parents, this heritability estimate should not be extrapolated to the extremes of environmental disadvantage still
encounter in society
• institutions and practices of modern Western society do not greatly constrain the development of individual differences psychological traits
• the heritability of a psychological trait reveals as much about the culture as it does about human nature
• similarity in MZA twins in social attitudes e.g. traditionalism does not show that parents cannot influence those traits, this does not tend to happen in most families
• MZA twins are so similar in psychological traits because their identical genomes make it probable that their effective environments are similar
• genes affect the mind is indirect, genetic differences have an important role in determining the effective psychological environment of the developing child
• MZ twins have a perfect correlation of 1 (irrespective of whether they are reared together/apart)
• DZ twins, siblings, parents with their biological children have the second largest correlation
• adopting parents & offspring: 0 correlation
• environment also contributes to the variability of IQ, so MZ twins reared together are expected to have higher correlation than MZ twins reared part due to the exposure of common
environment
• even MZ twins reared together, x have perfect correlation of their IQ scores
• shows the influence of individual environments on the development of IQ
• correlation with an effect size 0.85 is large
• put two of the values— correlation between MZ twins reared together, correlation between DZ twins reared together into Falconer’s formula
• intelligence is to a larger extent 54% genetically inherited

Assumption that similarity between MZ twins reared apart is solely due to genotype is limited
• many twin pairs were not separated immediately after birth, they experienced some formative months/ years apart
• many twin pairs (even when separated) grew up in similar culture, SES environments, not randomly allocated into different environments
• twins share a common prenatal environment
• prenatal environment of MZ twins is more similar than that of DZ twins
• twin studies are usually small in sample size, rare due to the uniqueness of their target group
• implies fewer opportunities for replication
• twins might not be a s representative of the general population as we would like them to be
• twin study findings might not be generalisable to a wider population
• similar physical features of the twins might elicit similar responses from the environment e.g. known that attractive people are treated better than average-looking people
RESEARCH DESCRIPTION:
Kendler et al (2015)
RELEVANT TOPICS:
Heritability of intelligence
AIMS OF THE RESEARCH:
• comparing cognitive abilities of adopted children to those of their siblings who were not adopted, raised by their biological parents
PROCEDURES:
• conducted a rigorously designed adoption study of a sample of sibling pairs in which one of the siblings was home reared & other one was adopted away
• complete national Swedish register of male-male siblings was searched, initially identifying 436 male sibling sets where one of the members was reared by adoptive parents
• IQ scores were taken from the Military Conscription Register (includes cognitive assessment data for all 18-year-old men in Sweden)
• demand for child adoption in Sweden was considerably larger than the no. of children available for adoption, potential adoptive parents were carefully screened
• mean educational level was significantly higher in the group of adoptive parents as compared to biological parents
• modest correlation r=0.18 between the educational levels of biological & adoptive parents, suggests some effects of elective placement
RESULTS/FINDINGS:
Correlation with
Mean IQ at age 18 Education of biological parents Education of adoptive parents
Adopted siblings 96.9 0.2 0.18
Home-reared siblings 92.0 0.34 -

• cognitive ability is environmentally malleable: 5-point IQ increase on average by age 18

• correlation between cognitive ability of adopted children, educational levels of adoptive parents supports this conclusion
• results also suggest heritability of intelligence: evident from the correlation between cognitive ability of adopted children & educational level of biological parents
• the largest IQ scores were observed in adopted children from well-educated biological families adopted into well-educated families
• Controlling for clustering of offspring within biological families, the adopted siblings had an IQ 4.41 (SE = 0.75) points higher than their nonadopted siblings. Each additional unit of rearing
parental education was associated with 1.71 (SE = 0.44) units of IQ
• We replicated these results in 2,341 male-male half-sibships, in which, controlling for clustering within families, adoption was associated with a gain of IQ of 3.18 (SE = 0.34) points. Each
additional unit of rearing parental education was associated with 1.94 (SE = 0.18) IQ units.
• The adoptive parents in the study tended to be more educated and in better socioeconomic circumstances than the biological parents. In the study, parental education level was rated on a five-
point scale; each additional unit of education by the rearing parents was associated with 1.71 more units of IQ. In the rare circumstances when the biological parents were more educated than
the adoptive parents, the cognitive ability of the adopted-away offspring was lower than the one who was reared by the genetic parents.
EXPLORATION (EVALUATE RESEARCH):
Conclusions:
Using full- and half-sibling sets matched for genetic background, we found replicated evidence that (i) rearing environment affects IQ measured in late adolescence, and (ii)
a portion of the IQ of adopted siblings could be explained by the educational level of their adoptive parents.

Although the 2- to 5-IQ-point advantage in the adopted-away children is smaller than differences reported in earlier and smaller studies, it is important to bear in mind that
the environmental difference between the adoptive and biological families was not especially large, compared with earlier adoption studies that intentionally sampled
children from extremely deprived backgrounds. The adoptive parents were, on average, better educated than the biological parents (16), but the biological families were
not selected for deprivation; although the adoptive families were screened by the adoption agency, the full population of adoptive families was used in the analysis, rather
than selecting those families that provided the greatest environmental enrichment. Moreover, the population under study was in Sweden, where extremes of poverty and
wealth are relatively rare.
RESEARCH DESCRIPTION:
Scarr and Weinberg (1983)
RELEVANT TOPICS:
Adoption, heritability of IQ
AIMS OF THE RESEARCH:
To investigate environmental malleability of intelligence
PROCEDURES:
• 101 adoptive families who had both biological & adopted children (Minnesota)
• some of the adopted children were black and some white
• some children were adopted in the first 12 months of life & some were adopted later
• back at that time, Minnesota being black, coming from a poorer socio-economic status background & being less educated
• all children were assessed on IQ and school achievement tests
• correlations were calculated between the IQ of children & their parents
RESULTS/FINDINGS:

• black children placed in white families saw a substantial increase in their IQ

• if they were adopted in the first year of life, achieved the same level as adopted white children (though experienced a year of deprivation in the orphanage)
• correlation between adopted children and their adoptive parents: 0.29
• correlation between adopted children & their biological parents: 0.43

EXPLORATION (EVALUATE RESEARCH):

Conclusion:
• results seem to be contradictory
• considerable improvement in the IQ of adopted children
• the correlation was higher withe IQ of biological parents, not adoptive parents
• results demonstrate the idea of additive influence of genetics & environment in the development of IQ
• additive influence suggests that IQ can be influenced by environmental factors, the extent to which an individual will be responsive to these favourable influences
depends on genetic factors
 HOmework
✘ Discuss how genetic similarities are used in studies on
genes and behaviour (22)