Essentials of behaviour genetics / David A. Hay.

  • Hay, David A.
Date:
1985
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

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

    29/372 (page 19)
    Martin Kallikak He dallied with a feeble-minded tavern girl He married a worthy Quakeress She bore a son known as 'Old Horror' who had ten children From these seven worthy children came hundreds of the highest types ^of human beings From 'Old Horror's' ten children came hundreds of the lowest types of human beings .. Fig. 1.7 The two families of Martin Kallikak. (From H. E. Garrett (1955) General Psychology. American Book Company, New York.) It is unfortunate that people such as Kamin (1974) still link behaviour genetics with the evidence, philosophies and motives of that period. The data we consider in this text are very different from the subjective reports of 60 or 70 years ago. Controversies over the objectivity of earlier data continue. In Chapter 6 we examine the work of Sir Cyril Burt on identical twins reared apart which was influential support for the genetic viewpoint but which is now recognized as hopelessly flawed and perhaps fabricated. The faults were not only on the part of the supporters of the biological viewpoint. Freeman (1983) has criticized the work of the famous cultural anthropologist, Margaret Mead and others have drawn parallels between her actions and those of Burt. When Mead in the 1920s described a very free lifestyle among Samoan adolescents in contrast to the more stressful situation in western society, her results were heralded as evidence for cultural determinism rather than for any biological factors which presumably should apply worldwide. But Freeman argues that she falsified the situation, interpreting the evidence selectively in terms of her ideology that culture was all-important. development and scope 21