The nature versus nurture debate involves whether human behavior is determined by the environment, either prenatal or during a person's life, or by a person's genes. The alliterative expression "nature and nurture" in English has been in use since at least the Elizabethan period and goes back to medieval French.
The combination of the two concepts as complementary is ancient (Greek: ἁπό φύσεως καὶ εὐτροφίας).
Nature is what we think of as pre-wiring and is influenced by genetic
inheritance and other biological factors. Nurture is generally taken as
the influence of external factors after conception e.g. the product of
exposure, experience and learning on an individual.
The phrase in its modern sense was popularized by the English Victorian polymath Francis Galton, the modern founder of eugenics and behavioral genetics, discussing the influence of heredity and environment on social advancement. Galton was influenced by the book On the Origin of Species written by his half-cousin, Charles Darwin.
The view that humans acquire all or almost all their behavioral traits from "nurture" was termed tabula rasa ("blank slate") by John Locke in 1690. A "blank slate view" in human developmental psychology assuming that human behavioral traits develop almost exclusively from environmental influences, was widely held during much of the 20th century (sometimes termed "blank-slatism"). The debate between "blank-slate" denial of the influence of heritability, and the view admitting both environmental and heritable traits, has often been cast in terms of nature versus nurture. These two conflicting approaches to human development were at the core of an ideological dispute over research agendas throughout the second half of the 20th century. As both "nature" and "nurture" factors were found to contribute substantially, often in an extricable manner, such views were seen as naive or outdated by most scholars of human development by the 2000s.
The strong dichotomy of nature versus nurture has thus been claimed to have limited relevance in some fields of research. Close feedback loops have been found in which "nature" and "nurture" influence one another constantly, as seen in self-domestication. In ecology and behavioral genetics, researchers think nurture has an essential influence on nature. Similarly in other fields, the dividing line between an inherited and an acquired trait becomes unclear, as in epigenetics or fetal development.
The view that humans acquire all or almost all their behavioral traits from "nurture" was termed tabula rasa ("blank slate") by John Locke in 1690. A "blank slate view" in human developmental psychology assuming that human behavioral traits develop almost exclusively from environmental influences, was widely held during much of the 20th century (sometimes termed "blank-slatism"). The debate between "blank-slate" denial of the influence of heritability, and the view admitting both environmental and heritable traits, has often been cast in terms of nature versus nurture. These two conflicting approaches to human development were at the core of an ideological dispute over research agendas throughout the second half of the 20th century. As both "nature" and "nurture" factors were found to contribute substantially, often in an extricable manner, such views were seen as naive or outdated by most scholars of human development by the 2000s.
The strong dichotomy of nature versus nurture has thus been claimed to have limited relevance in some fields of research. Close feedback loops have been found in which "nature" and "nurture" influence one another constantly, as seen in self-domestication. In ecology and behavioral genetics, researchers think nurture has an essential influence on nature. Similarly in other fields, the dividing line between an inherited and an acquired trait becomes unclear, as in epigenetics or fetal development.
History of the debate
John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) is often cited as the foundational document of the "blank slate" view. Locke was criticizing René Descartes's claim of an innate idea of God universal to humanity.
Locke's view was harshly criticized in his own time. Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, complained that by denying the possibility of any innate ideas,
Locke "threw all order and virtue out of the world", leading to total moral relativism.
Locke's was not the predominant view in the 19th century, which on the contrary tended to focus on "instinct".
Leda Cosmides and John Tooby noted that William James (1842–1910) argued that humans have more instincts than animals, and that greater freedom of action is the result of having more psychological instincts, not fewer.
The question of "innate ideas" or "instincts" were of some importance in the discussion of free will in moral philosophy.
In 18th-century philosophy, this was cast in terms of "innate ideas"
establishing the presence of a universal virtue, prerequisite for
objective morals. In the 20th century, this argument was in a way
inverted, as some philosophers now argued that the evolutionary origins
of human behavioral traits forces us to concede that there is no
foundation for ethics (J. L. Mackie), while others treat ethics as a field in complete isolation from evolutionary considerations (Thomas Nagel).
In the early 20th century, there was an increased interest in the
role of the environment, as a reaction to the strong focus on pure
heredity in the wake of the triumphal success of Darwin's theory of
evolution.
During this time, the social sciences developed as the project of studying the influence of culture in clean isolation from questions related to "biology".
Franz Boas's The Mind of Primitive Man
(1911) established a program that would dominate American anthropology
for the next fifteen years. In this study he established that in any
given population, biology, language, material and symbolic culture, are
autonomous; that each is an equally important dimension of human nature,
but that no one of these dimensions is reducible to another.
The tool of twin studies was developed as a research design intended to exclude all confounders based on inherited behavioral traits.
Such studies are designed to decompose the variability of a given trait
in a given population into a genetic and an environmental component.
John B. Watson in the 1920s and 1930s established the school of purist behaviorism
that would become dominant over the following decades. Watson is often
said to have been convinced of the complete dominance of cultural
influence over anything that heredity might contribute, based on the
following quote which is frequently repeated without context:
- Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years (Behaviorism, 1930, p. 82).
The last sentence of the above quote is frequently omitted, leading to confusion about Watson's position.
During the 1940s to 1960s, Ashley Montagu was a notable proponent of this purist form of behaviorism which allowed no contribution from heredity whatsoever:
- "Man is man because he has no instincts, because everything he is and has become he has learned, acquired, from his culture ... with the exception of the instinctoid reactions in infants to sudden withdrawals of support and to sudden loud noises, the human being is entirely instinctless.
In 1951, Calvin Hall suggested that the dichotomy opposing nature to nurture is ultimately fruitless.
Robert Ardrey in the 1960s argued for innate attributes of human nature, especially concerning territoriality, in the widely read African Genesis (1961) and The Territorial Imperative. Desmond Morris in The Naked Ape (1967) expressed similar views.
Organised opposition to Montagu's kind of purist "blank-slatism" began to pick up in the 1970s, notably led by E. O. Wilson (On Human Nature
1979).
Twin studies established that there was, in many cases, a significant
heritable component.
These results did not in any way point to overwhelming contribution of
heritable factors, with heritability typically ranging around 40% to
50%, so that the controversy may not be cast in terms of purist
behaviorism vs. purist nativism. Rather, it was purist behaviorism which
was gradually replaced by the now-predominant view that both kinds of
factors usually contribute to a given trait, anecdotally phrased by Donald Hebb
as an answer to the question "which, nature or nurture, contributes
more to personality?" by asking in response, "Which contributes more to
the area of a rectangle, its length or its width?"
In a comparable avenue of research, anthropologist Donald Brown in the
1980s surveyed hundreds of anthropological studies from around the world
and collected a set of cultural universals.
He identified approximately 150 such features, coming to the conclusion
there is indeed a "universal human nature", and that these features
point to what that universal human nature is.
At the height of the controversy, during the 1970s to 1980s, the debate was highly ideologised. In Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology and Human Nature (1984), Richard Lewontin, Steven Rose and Leon Kamin criticise "genetic determinism" from a Marxist framework, arguing that "Science is the ultimate legitimator of bourgeois ideology ... If biological determinism
is a weapon in the struggle between classes, then the universities are
weapons factories, and their teaching and research faculties are the
engineers, designers, and production workers." The debate thus shifted
away from whether heritable traits exist to whether it was politically
or ethically permissible to admit their existence. The authors deny
this, requesting that evolutionary inclinations be discarded in ethical
and political discussions regardless of whether they exist or not.
Heritability studies became much easier to perform, and hence
much more numerous, with the advances of genetic studies during the
1990s. By the late 1990s, an overwhelming amount of evidence had
accumulated that amounts to a refutation of the extreme forms of
"blank-slatism" advocated by Watson or Montagu.
This revised state of affairs was summarized in books aimed at a popular audience from the late 1990s. In The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do (1998), Judith Rich Harris was heralded by Steven Pinker as a book that "will come to be seen as a turning point in the history of psychology".
but Harris was criticized for exaggerating the point of "parental
upbringing seems to matter less than previously thought" to the
implication that "parents do not matter".
The situation as it presented itself by the end of the 20th century was summarized in The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (2002) by Steven Pinker.
The book became a best-seller, and was instrumental in bringing to the
attention of a wider public the paradigm shift away from the
behaviourist purism of the 1940s to 1970s that had taken place over the
preceding decades. Pinker portrays the adherence to pure blank-slatism
as an ideological dogma linked to two other dogmas found in the dominant view of human nature in the 20th century, which he termed "noble savage" (in the sense that people are born good and corrupted by bad influence) and
"ghost in the machine"
(in the sense that there is a human soul capable of moral choices
completely detached from biology). Pinker argues that all three dogmas
were held onto for an extended period even in the face of evidence
because they were seen as desirable in the sense that if any
human trait is purely conditioned by culture, any undesired trait (such
as crime or aggression) may be engineered away by purely cultural
(political means). Pinker focuses on reasons he assumes were responsible
for unduly repressing evidence to the contrary, notably the fear of
(imagined or projected) political or ideological consequences.
Heritability estimates
This
chart illustrates three patterns one might see when studying the
influence of genes and environment on traits in individuals. Trait A
shows a high sibling correlation, but little heritability (i.e. high
shared environmental variance c2; low heritability h2).
Trait B shows a high heritability since correlation of trait rises
sharply with the degree of genetic similarity. Trait C shows low
heritability, but also low correlations generally; this means Trait C
has a high nonshared environmental variance e2. In
other words, the degree to which individuals display Trait C has little
to do with either genes or broadly predictable environmental
factors—roughly, the outcome approaches random for an individual. Notice
also that even identical twins raised in a common family rarely show
100% trait correlation.
It is important to note that the term heritability refers only
to the degree of genetic variation between people on a trait. It does
not refer to the degree to which a trait of a particular individual is
due to environmental or genetic factors. The traits of an individual are
always a complex interweaving of both.
For an individual, even strongly genetically influenced, or "obligate"
traits, such as eye color, assume the inputs of a typical environment
during ontogenetic development (e.g., certain ranges of temperatures,
oxygen levels, etc.).
In contrast, the "heritability index" statistically quantifies the extent to which variation between individuals
on a trait is due to variation in the genes those individuals carry. In
animals where breeding and environments can be controlled
experimentally, heritability can be determined relatively easily. Such
experiments would be unethical for human research. This problem can be
overcome by finding existing populations of humans that reflect the
experimental setting the researcher wishes to create.
One way to determine the contribution of genes and environment to a trait is to study twins. In one kind of study, identical twins
reared apart are compared to randomly selected pairs of people. The
twins share identical genes, but different family environments. In
another kind of twin study, identical twins reared together (who share
family environment and genes) are compared to fraternal twins
reared together (who also share family environment but only share half
their genes). Another condition that permits the disassociation of genes
and environment is adoption. In one kind of adoption study,
biological siblings reared together (who share the same family
environment and half their genes) are compared to adoptive siblings (who
share their family environment but none of their genes).
In many cases, it has been found that genes make a substantial
contribution, including psychological traits such as intelligence and
personality.
Yet heritability may differ in other circumstances, for instance
environmental deprivation. Examples of low, medium, and high
heritability traits include:
| Low heritability | Medium heritability | High heritability |
|---|---|---|
| Specific language | Weight | Blood type |
| Specific religion | Religiosity | Eye color |
Twin and adoption studies have their methodological limits. For
example, both are limited to the range of environments and genes which
they sample. Almost all of these studies are conducted in Western,
first-world countries, and therefore cannot be extrapolated globally to
include poorer, non-western populations. Additionally, both types of
studies depend on particular assumptions, such as the equal environments assumption in the case of twin studies, and the lack of pre-adoptive effects in the case of adoption studies.
Since the definition of "nature" in this context is tied to
"heritability", the definition of "nurture" has necessarily become very
wide, including any type of causality that is not heritable. The term
has thus moved away from its original connotation of "cultural
influences" to include all effects of the environment, including;
indeed, a substantial source of environmental input to human nature may arise from stochastic variations in prenatal development and is thus in no sense of the term "cultural".
Interaction of genes and environment
| “ | Many properties of the brain are genetically organized, and don't depend on information coming in from the senses. | ” |
| — Steven Pinker | ||
Heritability refers to the origins of differences between people.
Individual development, even of highly heritable traits, such as eye
color, depends on a range of environmental factors, from the other genes
in the organism, to physical variables such as temperature, oxygen
levels etc. during its development or ontogenesis.
The variability of trait can be meaningfully spoken of as being
due in certain proportions to genetic differences ("nature"), or
environments ("nurture"). For highly penetrant Mendelian genetic disorders such as Huntington's disease
virtually all the incidence of the disease is due to genetic
differences. Huntington's animal models live much longer or shorter
lives depending on how they are cared for.
At the other extreme, traits such as native language
are environmentally determined: linguists have found that any child (if
capable of learning a language at all) can learn any human language
with equal facility.
With virtually all biological and psychological traits, however, genes
and environment work in concert, communicating back and forth to create
the individual.
At a molecular level, genes interact with signals from other
genes and from the environment. While there are many thousands of
single-gene-locus traits, so-called complex traits
are due to the additive effects of many (often hundreds) of small gene
effects. A good example of this is height, where variance appears to be
spread across many hundreds of loci.
Extreme genetic or environmental conditions can predominate in
rare circumstances—if a child is born mute due to a genetic mutation, it
will not learn to speak any language regardless of the environment;
similarly, someone who is practically certain to eventually develop
Huntington's disease according to their genotype may die in an unrelated
accident (an environmental event) long before the disease will manifest
itself.
The "two buckets" view of heritability.
More realistic "homogenous mudpie" view of heritability.
Steven Pinker likewise described several examples:
- ...concrete behavioral traits that patently depend on content provided by the home or culture—which language one speaks, which religion one practices, which political party one supports—are not heritable at all. But traits that reflect the underlying talents and temperaments—how proficient with language a person is, how religious, how liberal or conservative—are partially heritable.
When traits are determined by a complex interaction of genotype and environment it is possible to measure the heritability
of a trait within a population. However, many non-scientists who
encounter a report of a trait having a certain percentage heritability
imagine non-interactional, additive contributions of genes and
environment to the trait. As an analogy, some laypeople may think of the
degree of a trait being made up of two "buckets," genes and
environment, each able to hold a certain capacity of the trait. But even
for intermediate heritabilities, a trait is always shaped by both
genetic dispositions and the environments in which people develop,
merely with greater and lesser plasticities associated with these
heritability measures.
Heritability measures always refer to the degree of variation between individuals in a population.
That is, as these statistics cannot be applied at the level of the
individual, it would be incorrect to say that while the heritability
index of personality is about 0.6, 60% of one's personality is obtained
from one's parents and 40% from the environment. To help to understand
this, imagine that all humans were genetic clones. The heritability
index for all traits would be zero (all variability between clonal
individuals must be due to environmental factors). And, contrary to
erroneous interpretations of the heritability index, as societies become
more egalitarian (everyone has more similar experiences) the
heritability index goes up (as environments become more similar,
variability between individuals is due more to genetic factors).
One should also take into account the fact that the variables of
heritability and environmentality are not precise and vary within a
chosen population and across cultures. It would be more accurate to
state that the degree of heritability and environmentality is measured
in its reference to a particular phenotype in a chosen group of a
population in a given period of time. The accuracy of the calculations
is further hindered by the number of coefficients taken into
consideration, age being one such variable. The display of the influence
of heritability and environmentality differs drastically across age
groups: the older the studied age is, the more noticeable the
heritability factor becomes, the younger the test subjects are, the more
likely it is to show signs of strong influence of the environmental
factors.
Some have pointed out that environmental inputs affect the expression of genes. This is one explanation of how environment can influence the extent to which a genetic disposition will actually manifest. The interactions of genes with environment, called gene–environment interactions,
are another component of the nature–nurture debate. A classic example
of gene–environment interaction is the ability of a diet low in the
amino acid phenylalanine to partially suppress the genetic disease phenylketonuria. Yet another complication to the nature–nurture debate is the existence of gene–environment correlations.
These correlations indicate that individuals with certain genotypes are
more likely to find themselves in certain environments. Thus, it
appears that genes can shape (the selection or creation of)
environments. Even using experiments like those described above, it can
be very difficult to determine convincingly the relative contribution of
genes and environment.
A study conducted by T. J. Bouchard, Jr. showed data that has
been evidence for the importance of genes when testing middle-aged twins
reared together and reared apart. The results shown have been important
evidence against the importance of environment when determining,
happiness, for example. In the Minnesota study of twins reared apart, it
was actually found that there was higher correlation for monozygotic
twins reared apart (0.52)than monozygotic twins reared together (0.44).
Also, highlighting the importance of genes, these correlations found
much higher correlation among monozygotic than dizygotic twins that had a
correlation of 0.08 when reared together and −0.02 when reared apart.
Social pre-wiring
The social pre-wiring hypothesis refers to the ontogeny of social interaction. Also informally referred to as, "wired to be social." The theory questions whether there is a propensity to socially oriented action already present before birth. Research in the theory concludes that newborns are born into the world with a unique genetic wiring to be social.
Circumstantial evidence supporting the social pre-wiring
hypothesis can be revealed when examining newborns' behavior. Newborns,
not even hours after birth, have been found to display a preparedness
for social interaction.
This preparedness is expressed in ways such as their imitation of
facial gestures. This observed behavior cannot be contributed to any
current form of socialization or social construction. Rather, newborns most likely inherit to some extent social behavior and identity through genetics.
Principal evidence of this theory is uncovered by examining twin pregnancies. The main argument is, if there are social behaviors that are inherited and developed before birth, then one should expect twin fetuses to engage in some form of social interaction
before they are born. Thus, ten fetuses were analyzed over a period of
time using ultrasound techniques. Using kinematic analysis, the results
of the experiment were that the twin fetuses would interact with each
other for longer periods and more often as the pregnancies went on.
Researchers were able to conclude that the performance of movements
between the co-twins were not accidental but specifically aimed.
The social pre-wiring hypothesis was proved correct, "The central advance of this study is the demonstration that 'social actions' are already performed in the second trimester of gestation. Starting from the 14th week of gestation
twin foetuses plan and execute movements specifically aimed at the
co-twin. These findings force us to predate the emergence of social behavior:
when the context enables it, as in the case of twin fetuses,
other-directed actions are not only possible but predominant over
self-directed actions.".
Obligate vs. facultative adaptations
Traits
may be considered to be adaptations (such as the umbilical cord),
byproducts of adaptations (the belly button) or due to random variation
(convex or concave belly button shape).
An alternative to contrasting nature and nurture focuses on "obligate vs. facultative" adaptations.
Adaptations may be generally more obligate (robust in the face of
typical environmental variation) or more facultative (sensitive to
typical environmental variation). For example, the rewarding sweet
taste of sugar and the pain of bodily injury are obligate psychological
adaptations—typical environmental variability during development does
not much affect their operation. On the other hand, facultative adaptations are somewhat like "if-then" statements. An example of a facultative psychological adaptation may be adult attachment style.
The attachment style of adults, (for example, a "secure attachment
style," the propensity to develop close, trusting bonds with others) is
proposed to be conditional on whether an individual's early childhood
caregivers could be trusted to provide reliable assistance and
attention. An example of a facultative physiological adaptation is
tanning of skin on exposure to sunlight (to prevent skin damage).
Facultative social adaptation have also been proposed. For example,
whether a society is warlike or peaceful has been proposed to be
conditional on how much collective threat that society is experiencing .
Advanced techniques
Quantitative studies of heritable traits throw light on the question.
Developmental genetic analysis examines the effects of genes over
the course of a human lifespan. Early studies of intelligence, which
mostly examined young children, found that heritability
measured 40–50%. Subsequent developmental genetic analyses found that
variance attributable to additive environmental effects is less apparent
in older individuals, with estimated heritability of IQ increasing in adulthood.
Multivariate genetic analysis examines the genetic contribution
to several traits that vary together. For example, multivariate genetic
analysis has demonstrated that the genetic determinants of all specific
cognitive abilities (e.g., memory, spatial reasoning, processing speed)
overlap greatly, such that the genes associated with any specific
cognitive ability will affect all others. Similarly, multivariate
genetic analysis has found that genes that affect scholastic achievement
completely overlap with the genes that affect cognitive ability.
Extremes analysis examines the link between normal and
pathological traits. For example, it is hypothesized that a given
behavioral disorder may represent an extreme of a continuous
distribution of a normal behavior and hence an extreme of a continuous
distribution of genetic and environmental variation. Depression,
phobias, and reading disabilities have been examined in this context.
For a few highly heritable traits, studies have identified loci
associated with variance in that trait, for instance in some individuals
with schizophrenia.
Entrepreneurship
Through
studies of identical twins separated at birth, one-third of their
creative thinking abilities come from genetics and two-thirds come from
learning. Research suggests that between 37 and 42 percent of the explained variance can be attributed to genetic factors. The learning primarily comes in the form of human capital transfers of entrepreneurial skills through parental role modeling.
Other findings agree that the key to innovative entrepreneurial success
comes from environmental factors and working “10,000 hours” to gain
mastery in entrepreneurial skills.
Heritability of intelligence
Evidence from behavioral genetic research suggests that family environmental factors may have an effect upon childhood IQ, accounting for up to a quarter of the variance. The American Psychological Association's report "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns"
(1995) states that there is no doubt that normal child development
requires a certain minimum level of responsible care. Here, environment
is playing a role in what is believed to be fully genetic (intelligence)
but it was found that severely deprived, neglectful, or abusive
environments have highly negative effects on many aspects of children's
intellect development. Beyond that minimum, however, the role of family
experience is in serious dispute. On the other hand, by late adolescence
this correlation disappears, such that adoptive siblings no longer have
similar IQ scores.
Moreover, adoption studies indicate that, by adulthood, adoptive
siblings are no more similar in IQ than strangers (IQ correlation near
zero), while full siblings show an IQ correlation of 0.6. Twin studies
reinforce this pattern: monozygotic (identical) twins raised separately
are highly similar in IQ (0.74), more so than dizygotic (fraternal)
twins raised together (0.6) and much more than adoptive siblings (~0.0). Recent adoption studies also found that supportive parents can have a positive effect on the development of their children.
Personality traits
Personality is a frequently cited example of a heritable trait that has been studied in twins and adoptees using behavioral genetic
study designs. The most famous categorical organization of heritable
personality traits were created by Goldberg (1990) in which he had
college students rate their personalities on 1400 dimensions to begin,
and then narrowed these down into "The Big Five"
factors of personality—openness, conscientiousness, extraversion,
agreeableness, and neuroticism. The close genetic relationship between
positive personality traits and, for example, our happiness traits are
the mirror images of comorbidity in psychopathology. These personality
factors were consistent across cultures, and many studies have also
tested the heritability of these traits.
Identical twins reared apart are far more similar in personality
than randomly selected pairs of people. Likewise, identical twins are
more similar than fraternal twins. Also, biological siblings are more
similar in personality than adoptive siblings. Each observation suggests
that personality is heritable to a certain extent. A supporting article
had focused on the heritability of personality (which is estimated to
be around 50% for subjective well-being) in which a study was conducted
using a representative sample of 973 twin pairs to test the heritable
differences in subjective well-being which were found to be fully
accounted for by the genetic model of the Five-Factor Model’s
personality domains. However, these same study designs allow for the examination of environment as well as genes.
Adoption studies also directly measure the strength of shared
family effects. Adopted siblings share only family environment. Most
adoption studies indicate that by adulthood the personalities of adopted
siblings are little or no more similar than random pairs of strangers.
This would mean that shared family effects on personality are zero by
adulthood.
In the case of personality traits, non-shared environmental
effects are often found to out-weigh shared environmental effects. That
is, environmental effects that are typically thought to be life-shaping
(such as family life) may have less of an impact than non-shared
effects, which are harder to identify. One possible source of non-shared
effects is the environment of pre-natal development. Random variations
in the genetic program of development may be a substantial source of
non-shared environment. These results suggest that "nurture" may not be
the predominant factor in "environment". Environment and our situations,
do in fact impact our lives, but not the way in which we would
typically react to these environmental factors. We are preset with
personality traits that are the basis for how we would react to
situations. An example would be how extraverted prisoners become less
happy than introverted prisoners and would react to their incarceration
more negatively due to their preset extraverted personality.
Behavioral genes are somewhat proven to exist when we take a look at
fraternal twins. When fraternal twins are reared apart, they show the
same similarities in behavior and response as if they have been reared
together.
Genetics
Genomics
The relationship between personality and people's own well-being is
influenced and mediated by genes (Weiss, Bates, & Luciano, 2008).
There has been found to be a stable set point for happiness that is
characteristic of the individual (largely determined by the individual's
genes). Happiness fluctuates around that setpoint (again, genetically
determined) based on whether good things or bad things are happening to
us ("nurture"), but only fluctuates in small magnitude in a normal
human. The midpoint of these fluctuations is determined by the "great
genetic lottery" that people are born with, which leads them to conclude
that how happy they may feel at the moment or over time is simply due
to the luck of the draw, or gene. This fluctuation was also not due to
educational attainment, which only accounted for less than 2% of the
variance in well-being for women, and less than 1% of the variance for
men.
They consider that the individualities measured together with
personality tests remain steady throughout an individual’s lifespan.
They further believe that human beings may refine their forms or
personality but can never change them entirely. Darwin's Theory of
Evolution steered naturalists such as George Williams and William
Hamilton to the concept of personality evolution. They suggested that
physical organs and also personality is a product of natural selection.
With the advent of genomic sequencing,
it has become possible to search for and identify specific gene
polymorphisms that affect traits such as IQ and personality. These
techniques work by tracking the association of differences in a trait of
interest with differences in specific molecular markers or functional
variants. An example of a visible human trait for which the precise
genetic basis of differences are relatively well known is eye color.
For traits with many genes affecting the outcome, a smaller portion of
the variance is currently understood: For instance for height known gene
variants account for around 5–10% of height variance at present.
When discussing the significant role of genetic heritability in relation
to one's level of happiness, it has been found that from 44% to 52% of
the variance in one's well-being is associated with genetic variation.
Based on the retest of smaller samples of twins studies after 4,5, and
10 years, it is estimated that the heritability of the genetic stable
component of subjective well-being approaches 80%.
Other studies that have found that genes are a large influence in the
variance found in happiness measures, exactly around 35–50%.
In contrast to views developed in 1960s that gender identity is
primarily learned (which led to policy-based surgical sex changed in
children such as David Reimer), genomics has provided solid evidence that both sex and gender identities are primarily influenced by genes:
It is now clear that genes are vastly more influential than virtually any other force in shaping sex identity and gender identity…[T]he growing consensus in medicine is that…children should be assigned to their chromosomal (i.e., genetic) sex regardless of anatomical variations and differences—with the option of switching, if desired, later in life.
— Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Gene: An Intimate History
Linkage and association studies
In
their attempts to locate the genes responsible for configuring certain
phenotypes, researches resort to two different techniques.
Linkage study facilitates the process of determining a specific location
in which a gene of interest is located. This methodology is applied
only among individuals that are related and does not serve to pinpoint
specific genes. It does, however, narrow down the area of search, making
it easier to locate one or several genes in the genome which constitute
a specific trait.
Association studies, on the other hand, are more hypothetic and
seek to verify whether a particular genetic variable really influences
the phenotype of interest. In association studies it is more common to
use case-control approach, comparing the subject with relatively higher
or lower hereditary determinants with the control subject.
