CHAPTER 4:

GENETICS AND EVOLUTIONS

 INTRODUCTION
why do we behave the way we do?
There are three related problems at the intersection of
philosophy and science that are fundamental to our
understanding of our relationship to the natural
world: the mind–body problem, the free will
problem, and the nature–nurture problem. 
• Behavioural genetics is an interdisciplinary field concerned
with how genes and the environment influence individual
behaviour and traits including brain function.
• Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene
expression that does not involve changes to the underlying
DNA sequence.
• Behavioural genomics is the of study of DNA, inherited traits,
and the ways in which specific genes are related to behaviour. 
•  genome- is an organisms complete set of genes in each cell
with the exceptions of sperm and egg cells.
 Theories
• Natural selection- is a theory developed through his observations of
the fitness of a species’ characteristics to its environment. 
• Sexual strategies theory is a comprehensive evolutionary theory of
human mating that defines the menu of mating strategies humans
pursue
• Sociobiology contends that evolution has given us a genetic tendency
to act in ways that maximize our chances of passing on our genes onto
the next generations.
• Biopsychosocial theory takes a complex approach to understanding
human behaviour. Aspects of biology (genes), psychological
components (thoughts, personality, mood), and social conditions
(family support, stress, culture) are all considered in analyses of why
we do what we do from this perspective.
4.1 THE NATURE-NURTURE QUESTION
• the degree which human behavior is
determined by genetics/biology (nature) or
learned through interacting with the
environment (nurture).

• Three related problems at the intersection of

philosophy and science
• Mind-body problem
• Free-will problem
• Nature-Nurture Problem
 Behavioral Genetics
• Is the science of how genes
and environments work
together to influence
behavior.
 Would the puppies’ nature win out,
regardless of who raised them? Or would the result be a
combination of nature and nurture?

Figure 4.1: Researchers have learned a great deal about the

nature-nurture dynamic by working with animals. But of
course many of the techniques used to study animals cannot
be applied to people. Separating these two influences in
human subjects is a greater research challenge .
• Much of the most significant nature–
nurture research has been done in this
way (Scott & Fuller, 1998), and animal
breeders have been doing it
successfully for thousands of years. In
fact, it is fairly easy to breed animals
for behavioral traits.
Observing Nature-Nurture in
Humans
 Twin
Studies
• Twin studies rely on the fact that identical (or
monozygotic) twins have essentially the same
set of genes, while fraternal (or dizygotic)
twins have, on average, a half-identical set.
The idea is that if the twins are raised in the
same household, then the twins will be
influenced by their environments to an equal
degree, and this influence will be pretty much
equal for identical and fraternal twins.
 Influence of Nature and Nurture into Twin
Studies
• Heritability (genetic influence) is indicated when the correlation
coefficient for identical twins exceeds that for fraternal twins, indicating
that shared DNA is an important determinant of personality.
• Shared environment determinants are indicated when the
correlation coefficients for identical and fraternal twins are
greater than zero and also very similar. These correlations indicate
that both twins are having experiences in the family that make
them alike.
• Nonshared environment is indicated when identical twins do
not have similar traits. These influences refer to experiences
that are not accounted for either by heritability or by shared
environmental factors.
• For better or for worse, contentions
about nature–nurture have intensified
because quantitative genetics produces a
number called a heritability coefficient.

• Twin and adoption studies are two

instances of a much broader class of
methods for observing nature-nurture
called quantitative genetics.
• Is our genetics our destiny?

• Figure 4.3: Quantitative genetics uses statistical methods to study the effects that both heredity
and environment have on test subjects. These methods have provided us with the heritability
coefficient which measures how strongly differences among individuals for a trait are related to
differences among their genes.
• One reason nature–nurture
continues to fascinate us so much is
that we live in an era of great
scientific discovery in genetics,
comparable to the times of
Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton,
with regard to astronomy and
physics.
 Francis Galton

Was the first started thinking about

nature-nurture in the late- 19th
century. And he was very
influenced by his cousin, Charles
Darwin
 What Have We Learned About
Nature–Nurture?
• The science of nature and nurture
has demonstrated that genetic
differences among people are vital to
human moral equality, freedom, and
self-determination, not opposed to
them.
Genetic Influence on Behavior
• Genetic Influence in Behavior is a
relatively recent discovery. In the
middle of the 20th century.
psychology was dominated by the
doctrine of behaviorism,which held
that behavior could only be
explained in terms of
environmental factors.
• Behaviorism nor
Psychoanalysis is incompatible
with genetic influences on
behavior, and neither Freud
nor Skinner was naive about
the importance of organic
processes in behavior.
• The outcomes of nature–nurture
studies have fallen short of our
expectations (of establishing clear-
cut bases for traits) in many ways.
• The heritability coefficient, and, in
fact, the whole quantitative
structure that underlies it, does not
match up with our nature–nurture
intuitions.
Figure 4.5

Figure 4.5: The answer to the nature

nurture question has not turned out to
be as straightforward as we would like.
The many questions we can ask about
the relationships among genes,
environments, and human traits may
have many different answers, and the
answer to one tells us little about the
answers to the others.
• How much do the relevant genes vary
in a particular population?

• does the trait involve a single gene or a

great many genes?

• is the trait more easily described in

genetic or more-complex behavioral
terms?
• It is tempting to predict that the more
we understand the wide-ranging
effects of genetic differences on all
human characteristics especially
behavioral ones our cultural, ethical,
legal, and personal ways of thinking
about ourselves will have to
undergo profound changes in
response.