Psychology and Genetics

Psychology and socialization research examine the workings of the human mind and human behavior; genetics, as a branch of biology, examines the way in which traits and predispositions are transmitted from parents to their children as a result of genetic recombination.

The relationship between psychology, in contrast, and biology and genetics, has never been easy. But what makes it so difficult? It is not simply that the past still casts a long shadow on the relationship; there are other, conflicting explanations. Both psychology and genetics claim they can explain human development and behavior; a basis common to both disciplines is their acceptance of the intergenerational transmission of knowledge and skills, attitudes and behavioral predispositions. Psychology and socialization research, however, regard such transmission primarily in terms of social learning theories, while research with a biological and social orientation addresses culture's biological and cultural transmission. Psychologists find it difficult to accept that higher cognitive functions (for example, free will, conscience, and religious attitudes) can be subject to genetic control. Geneticists accuse psychologists of simply describing human behavior while failing to explain it. From the psychologist perspective, genetic explanations are suspected of being deterministic. Must these positions remain irreconcilable for all time?

For approximately 20 years it has been possible to observe a gradual increase in willingness in psychologists to consider biological and genetic approaches when explaining human development and behavior. Key words, such as sociobiology, neurobiological science, human behavioral genetics, evolutionary psychology, life history theory, and evolutionary socialization theory, are increasingly encountered. In the United States, especially, this willingness is seen in the context of the revival of Darwinist theories in the social sciences. Several fundamental questions in biological and evolutionary behavioral sciences have a long history.

While the term genetics (coined by William Bateson in 1906) is of much more recent origin than psychology, the debate about whether nature or culture is the stronger force has a far-longer pedigree. The Latin poet Horace (65–8 B.C.) wrote “Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret” (you may drive nature out with a pitchfork, yet she'll be constantly running back). Nature and nurture as a pair of concepts can be found in Shakespeare's The Tempest (first performed in 1611), which also deals with the opposition of nature and culture. As Prospero remarks of Caliban: “A devil, a born devil, on whose nature/Nurture can never stick; on whom my pains/Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost.” Approximately 250 years later, a fellow Englishman, Francis Galton (1822–1911), introduced the nature and nurture concepts into scientific language in his work English Men of Science. Their Nature and Nurture (1874). Galton, a cousin to Charles Darwin, believed that mental qualities and success in the sciences, the arts, and public life were far more strongly determined by hereditary factors [Page 1965]than was generally assumed. He conducted studies of families and established the basis of twin and adoption research—its methodology and use of correlation statistics. Galton and his followers were the first behavioral geneticists (biometricians), and in relevant specialist literature today Galton is acknowledged as having been the father of human behavioral genetics long before the term even existed. This line of research is now referred to as quantitative behavioral genetics.

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