Examples of behavioral genetics in the following topics:
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- The influence of genes on behavior has been well established in the scientific community.
- To a large extent, who we are and how we behave is a result of our genetic makeup.
- While genes do not determine behavior, they play a huge role in what we do and why we do it.
- Behavioral genetics studies heritability of behavioral traits, and it overlaps with genetics, psychology, and ethology (the scientific study of human and animal behavior).
- Genetics plays a large role in when and how learning, growing, and development occurs.
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- Behavior can influence genetic expression in humans and animals by activating or deactivating genes.
- Behavior can have an impact on genetic makeup, even as early as the prenatal period.
- It is important to understand the implications of behavior on genetic makeup in order to reduce negative environmental and behavioral influences on genes.
- Addiction is thought to have a genetic component, which may or may not be caused by a genetic mutation resulting from drug or alcohol use.
- Light exposure also influences genetic expression.
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- The biological perspective on personality emphasizes the influence of the brain and genetic factors on personality.
- This research can include the investigation of anatomical, chemical, or genetic influences and is primarily accomplished through correlating personality traits with scientific data from experimental methods such as brain imaging and molecular genetics.
- The field of behavioral genetics focuses on the relationship between genes and behavior and has given psychologists a glimpse of the link between genetics and personality.
- A large part of the evidence collected linking genetics and the environment to personality comes from twin studies, which compare levels of similarity in personality between genetically identical twins.
- In the field of behavioral genetics, the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart—a well-known study of the genetic basis for personality—conducted research with twins from 1979 to 1999.
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- Behavior is the change in activity of an organism in response to a stimulus.
- Ethology is an extension of genetics, evolution, anatomy, physiology, and other biological disciplines.
- One goal of behavioral biology is to distinguish the innate behaviors, which have a strong genetic component and are largely independent of environmental influences, from the learned behaviors, which result from environmental conditioning.
- Innate behavior, or instinct, is important because there is no risk of an incorrect behavior being learned.
- These behaviors are “hard wired” into the system.
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- According to evolutionary psychology, individuals are motivated to engage in behaviors that maximize their genetic fitness.
- The basic idea of evolutionary psychology is that genetic mutations are capable of altering an organism's behavioral traits as well as its physical traits.
- In this way, individuals are motivated to engage in behaviors that maximize their genetic fitness.
- This results in social processes that maximize individuals' genetic fitness, or ability to pass their genes to the next generation.
- Evolutionary psychology suggests that individuals are motivated to engage in behaviors that maximize their genetic fitness.
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- Others argue that who we are is based entirely in genetics.
- The pairs shared the same genetics, but, in some cases, were socialized in different ways.
- Studies like these point to the genetic roots of our temperament and behavior.
- Though genetics and hormones play an important role in human behavior, sociology’s larger concern is the effect that society has on human behavior, the “nurture” side of the nature versus nurture debate.
- Sociology is most concerned with the way that society’s influence affects our behavior patterns, made clear by the way behavior varies across class and gender.
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- Those who had the genetic makeup to be effective runners survived and passed along their genes, while those lacking the genetic predisposition for running were killed by predators.
- It attempts to explain and examine social behavior within that context.
- Often considered a branch of biology and sociology, it also draws from ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, population genetics, and other disciplines.
- Sociobiologists believe that human behavior, like nonhuman animal behavior, can be partly explained as the outcome of natural selection.
- Discuss the concept of sociobiology in relation to natural selection and Charles Darwin, as well as genetics and instinctive behaviors
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- Although environment also plays an important role, genetics influence human intelligence and our capacity to learn in many ways.
- While environmental influences play a large role, our ability to learn is also largely shaped by genetics.
- One of the most extensively studied behavioral traits is intelligence.
- The occurrence of neurobehavioral disorders is influenced by both genetic and non-genetic factors, and the genes directly associated with these disorders are often unknown.
- Discuss the role genetics play in our cognition and our ability to learn.
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- The environment in which a person is raised can trigger the expression of behavior for which a person is genetically predisposed, while the same person raised in a different environment may exhibit different behavior.
- When the children's own genotype influences their behavior or cognitive outcomes, the result can be a misleading relationship between environment and outcome.
- It is relatively unclear whether the genetic or environmental factors had more to do with the child's development.
- Evocative gene-environment correlation happens when an individual's (heritable) behavior evokes an environmental response.
- Identical twins share the same genotype, meaning their genetic makeup is the same.
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- Genetic variation in a population is determined by mutations, natural selection, genetic drift, genetic hitchhiking, and gene flow.
- Five forces can cause genetic variation and evolution in a population: mutations, natural selection, genetic drift, genetic hitchhiking, and gene flow.
- As novel traits and behaviors arise from mutation, natural selection perpetuates the traits that confer a benefit.
- Even in the absence of selective forces, genetic drift can cause two separate populations that began with the same genetic structure to drift apart into two divergent populations.
- Describe how the forces of genetic drift, genetic hitchhiking, gene flow, and mutation can lead to differences in population variation