Discuss the interaction between genetic factors and environmental factors in aggressive behavior
What will be an ideal response?
Genetic Influences in Humans
Researchers studied levels of aggression in twins and adopted children to gauge how much genetic factors influence human aggression. If genetic factors influence aggression in humans, then identical twins, who share almost 100% of their genes, should be more alike in committing aggressive behaviors than fraternal twins, who share only 50% of their genes. Also, if genetic factors influence human aggression, then children from aggressive biological parents should be more aggressive, even if adopted by nonaggressive parents. Researchers analyzed over 50 twin and adoption studies and found that genetic factors accounted for about 34% of the total factors that were responsible for developing aggressive and antisocial behaviors. These studies show that genetic influences may partly predispose a person to develop aggressive behaviors, but whether this actually occurs depends on the interaction with potentially powerful good or bad environmental influences.
Genes Interact with Good and Bad Environments
The evidence for the interaction of genetic and environmental factors in aggressive behavior is abundant. Researchers found that a specific gene variation influences brain development to make someone more prone to engage in impulsive violence, but only when the gene variation is combined with environmental stress.
Researchers have also studied the interaction of genetic and environmental factors by following boys who had inherited potentially "bad genes" from their criminally inclined biological parents. Some of these boys were adopted by noncriminal parents and raised in good environments, while others were raised in "bad environments" by criminally inclined adoptive parents. Results showed the combination of "bad genes" interacting with "bad environments" resulted in a large percentage of boys going on to commit criminal acts. However, results also showed that good environments can, to a large extent, compensate for inheriting "bad genes" and can override the development of aggressive or antisocial behaviors
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a. 13; 20 b. 16; 35 c. 25; 40 d. 30; 45
Which of the following is not an applied field?
a. Social b. Clinical c. Counseling d. School Psychology
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