Steven Crane Compiled Section Handouts. Human Behavioral Biology 2012

Behavioral Genetics

Things to know for behavioral genetics:

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  How behavior geneticists, sociobiologists and molecular biologists differ in their intellectual approach to detecting a genetic influence on behavior.
  
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  How behavioral geneticists think about behaviors running in families as a function of relatedness, and the criticisms of this.
  
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  The various approaches dissociating sharing biology with an individual and sharing environment with an individual (i.e., twin studies and adoption studies), and the various pitfalls of these approaches.
  
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  Approaches in which one studies behaviors that occur in the absence of environmental influences.
  
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  To understand the strongest critique of that approach, namely prenatal environmental effects.
  
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  The ways in which genetics that don't follow classic Mendelian rules become relevant.
  
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  How the behavioral genetics and molecular genetics approach can be combined to find markers for actual genes.
  
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  What heritability means.
  
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  Some sense of where chance comes into this.
  

What are the major approaches used by the behavioral geneticists? What are the criticisms of these approaches?

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  Remember they're all about teasing apart genetic and various environmental influences.
  
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  Universality, shared among family, and shared as a function of relatedness.
  

1. 
   Saying traits more shared with closer relatives must be due to the more shared genetics.
   

2. Criticism: Genetics and environment tend to correlate well within families as a function of relatedness

3. 
   Criticism: you're not actually controlling for environment because your pre-natal maternal environment is crucial (Dutch Hunger Winter, epigenetics, etc.)
   

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