1 / 9

Behavioral Genetics Research The most commonly studied traits are:

Behavioral Genetics Research The most commonly studied traits are: Extraversion (individuals who are outgoing and talkative at one end and people who are quiet and withdrawn at the other end (introverted)

omar-carr
Download Presentation

Behavioral Genetics Research The most commonly studied traits are:

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Behavioral Genetics Research The most commonly studied traits are: Extraversion (individuals who are outgoing and talkative at one end and people who are quiet and withdrawn at the other end (introverted) Neuroticism (individuals who are anxious, nervous, and emotionally volatile at one end and calm and emotionally stabile at the other end

  2. Note: If you double the difference between the correlations of identical vs. fraternal twins you obtain the heritability of a trait. • .60 for extraversion and .54 for neuroticism • Also individual activity level yields a heritability level of .40 indicating that activity level may be due to genetic differences.

  3. Other traits include: • Machiavellianism (manipulate others) • Cold-heartedness (emotionally callous style) • Impulsive nonconformity (indifferent to social conventions) • Fearlessness (risk taker, lacks anticipatory anxiety concerning harm) • Blame externalization (blames others for problems) • Stress immunity (lacks anxiety when faced with stressful life events) • These “psychopathic” traits have moderate to high hereditability

  4. Even dominance in chimps tends to be inherited! • 40% of the Big Five appears to be inherited (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness to experience. The major personality traits show a moderate degree of heritability and also suggest that a substantial portion of the variance has environmental origins.

  5. Attitudes and Preferences • Stable attitudes are stable over a long period of time and have a heritability of .63. • Significant differences due to genes emerge as early as 12 years of age. • Genes also appear to influence occupational preferences and also effect social status attainment. • There is no evidence that religious attitudes are influenced by heredity.

  6. Drinking and Smoking • Individual differences in drinking and smoking show evidence of heritability. • Cigarettes…moderate heritability • Drugs/Alcohol…mixed results (some high heritability in boys and not girls, and some high in girls and not boys

  7. Sexual Orientation • Sexual orientation refers to the object of a person’s sexual desires, whether the person is sexually attracted to men or women. These differences tend to be stable over time. Ranges from .30 to .70! • Simon LeVay suggests that the medial preoptic region of the hypothalamus is up to 3 times smaller in homosexual men. This area appears to be partially responsible for regulating male-typical sexual behavior. • GID (gender identity disorder)….62 heritability • cross-gender identification that is strong and persistent over time • persistent psychological discomfort with one’s own biological sex.

  8. Shared vs. non-shared environmental • Flawed research on the riddle of the influence of the environment. • What do you have in common with sibs and what don’t you have in common in your environment?

  9. EXERCISE • For most personality variables, the shared environment has little or no discernible impact • The critical environmental influence on personality appears to lie in the unique experiences of individual children. • Which ones are critical? We don’t really know. • Shared environments are important, however in influencing religious beliefs, attitudes, political orientations, and smoking/drinking behavior.

More Related