To what extent does genetic inheritance influence behaviour? Use relevant research studies in your response. There is and has been for a long time now a controversy within the psychology science. This controversy states that until today psychologists can’t assure weather humans’ behaviour is inherited, or that it comes from the environment in which we were formed. Over the years several psychologists have had this doubt and wanted to answer it, so they have done a number of studies, which principally focuses the human behaviour in intelligence and personality. In these studies the psychologists have evaluated and analyzed carefully the results in order to finally conclude and support either one of these side.
There was a relevant research study that started with the Jim Twin study, but is still going on today that is the Minnesota Twin study. The psychologists Thomas Bouchard and David Lykken, teachers of the University of Minnesota conducted it. The research done specifically to the Jim Twins was about two identical twins that were separated 30 days after their birth, and they didn’t have any idea after 39 years, when they were reunited. They found out that they had an amazing amount of things in common. They both had been named Jim by their adoptive families, they both named their dog in the same way, the drove the same car, they named their son the same way, they both divorced and then remarried, and finally they had very similar health conditions, they both had a high blood pressure, they both had what they thought had been heart attacks, they both had been in vasectomies and both suffered from migraine headaches.
The Term Paper on Twin Studies Twins Study Disease
Twinning in human pregnancies occurs either by the separation of a single fertilized egg, or by the fertilisation of two different eggs. In the case where twins result from a single egg, they will be genetically identical or monozygous. Those arising from different eggs are dizygous. Dizygous twins therefore include twin pairs consisting of one male and one female and all dizygous twins are no ...
After it was revealed to them that they were twins the University of Minnesota tested their personalities, intelligence, heart rate and brain waves in 1979. They had almost the same results in most of these tests, they were so similar that when doing the average of both of their results it was like taking the average out of one person who did the test to times. Bouchard estimated that the 70% of the intelligence came from genetic factors, and the other 30% was environmental factors that influences behaviour. This study clearly support the theory that states that genetic inheritance influences in a very large extent the human behaviour like their personality, intelligence and even health behaviours.
On the other hand there was a relevant research study carried out by Scarr and Winberg in 1997, which focused on finding out the correlation between the physiology and cognition and their interaction in specific cases. In order to find this out they carried out a research on parents that raised both natural and adoptive children in the same environment and then analyzed the outcomes. This comparison was done through the results of IQ tests done by the participants. These results demonstrated that there was no relevant or notable difference between the results of the children that had been adopted by the family and the children who were naturally part of the family.
Most of the adopted children came from a low socio – economic environment and they had parents with low IQ test results, and were then adopted by a family and transferred into a higher socio – economic environment where the parents had high IQ test results. The results from the natural children and the adopted children were pretty much the same; the very small and mostly not notable differences were concluded to belong to the gene inheritance. This study contradicts the Jim Twin study and supports the theory that states that genetic inheritance influences to some extent human behaviour, but what affect human behaviour the most, intelligence behaviours in this case, is the environment that humans find themselves in.
The Term Paper on A Genetic Study Of Conjoined Twins
1. 0 Introduction I have always been fascinated by conjoined twins and have always had questions about them like; what do the Siamese have to do with conjoined twins? Why does this form of twin happen? What, if any genes cause this? What types of Conjoined twins are there? How does the environment affect, if at all, the biological families' gene pool? In my research in efforts to prepare this ...
There was another relevant research study conducted by Christiansen in 1977. This study analyzed twins that were separated shortly after birth and their criminality and aggression, in order to find out weather it was a biological factor, like inheritance, which contributed to criminality, in other words this study focused on weather or not the biological factor influenced twins personalities. After conducting this study he found out that there was a concordance rate between identical male twins of 35% and 13% in fraternal male twins, and a rate of 21% for identical female twins and an 8% in fraternal female twins.
The conclusions drawn from this study was that there are genetic factors involved in criminal behaviour, but the these behaviours are mostly caused by other environmental factors as shown in the percentages, as they are not very high. This conclusion supports the theory that states that genetic inheritance influences to some extent human behaviour, but what affect human behaviour the most is the environment that humans find themselves in, in this case the criminal behaviours.
In conclusion we can say that genes are a very important and influent factor within the human behaviour, but they are not the most influent or the only affecting factor. Genetic inheritance influences behavior to some extent, but the influences of genes are also affected by its interaction with other factors like environmental factors and even other genes. This idea is supported by the studies mentioned previously. Both the Christiansen (1977) and Scarr and Weinberg (1977) studies supported the idea that environmental factors influence human behaviours more that genetic inheritance does, and the Minnesota Twin study, specifically the Jim Twin study (1979) supports this idea, but argues that the genetic factor is the most influent one, contradicting the other two relevant research studies.
The Essay on How can studies of animal behaviour and reactions be applied to human psychology
The study of animals may lead to a deeper understanding of human behaviour when it is not always possible to study humans directly, possibly because: 1. There are moral and ethical reasons that restrict the type of research that can be performed using humans as subjects. In the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights it states in Article one “All Human Beings are born free and equal ...
