Essentials of behaviour genetics / David A. Hay.

  • Hay, David A.
Date:
1985
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Essentials of behaviour genetics / David A. Hay. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    several conventional myths such as the idea that genetics is the anti¬ thesis of social change. A text of this length cannot discuss every aspect of behaviour genetics but can only provide illustrations of the different methods and controversies. Apart from one other introductory text (Plomin et al 1980), lengthier texts are available with a bias towards the student of psychology (Fuller and Thompson 1978) or of genetics (Ehrman and Parsons 1981). This text places more emphasis on the understanding of behaviour than on genetics while still stressing that we can learn much from developments in genetics. To understand why such dis¬ tinctions between the 'behaviour' and the 'genetics' in 'behaviour genetics' exist, we must consider the ways in which behaviour genetics has grown from the two parental disciplines. Behaviour genetics — part of genetics or of psychology? Until about 1975 it was unnecessary even to ask this question. Most research in behaviour genetics was directed to providing the first unambiguous evidence that genes could influence behaviour. This required the application of conventional genetic techniques to con¬ ventional measures of behaviour, with both parent disciplines contri¬ buting more or less equally. It was possible for geneticists at that time to view behaviour as something to be analysed in the same way as any measurable physical or biochemical characteristic — usually referred to as the 'phenotype' — of animals or even plants. My purpose is to examine the experimental and analytical consequences of accepting the premise that behaviour, like any other property of an organism, is a phenotype, determined jointly by inherent causes (usually referred to as nature or genotype) and external agencies (nurture or environment). (J. L. Jinks (1965) Bulletin of the British Psychological Society 18, 25.) At the same time, experimental psychologists were realizing that all organisms were not identical in behaviour and that individual differences could be studied systematically by genetic techniques. It was then while overcome by feelings of disenchantment (obviously without laws, behavior study could never be science) that I embraced genetics. There was true science. My passion became even more intense when I realized that, like thermodynamics, genetics has three laws: segregation, independent assortment and the Hardy-Weinberg law of population equilibria. What a foundation they provided for my beloved individual differences. Q. Hirsch (1970) Seminars in Psychiatry 2, 89) Geneticists and psychologists worked together to accumulate a sizeable store of information on the nature and extent of genetic determination of behaviour. There was also growing cooperation with other disciplines concerning anatomical, biochemical and physio¬ logical factors underlying behavioural differences. But science cannot proceed by the simple cataloguing of more and more examples of the DEVELOPMENT AND SCOPE 3