A devil, a born devil, on whose nature

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Psychology 5-137
Topic 1 Introduction Historical Overview

• A devil, a born devil, on whose nature
• Nurture can never stick On who my pains
• Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost,
• And, as with age, his body uglier grows,
• So his mind cankers.
• Prosperos description of Caliban
• Tempest (Act 4, Scene 1)

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Collins 1999 Shattuck Lecture
1.0 0.3
1.0 1.0 1.0
Risks based on Smith, G.D. et al. (2006). Genetic
epidemiology and public health Hope, hype and
future prospects. The Lancet, 366 1484-1498
Collins, F.S. (1999). Shattuck Lecture Medical
and Societal Consequences of The Human Genome
Project. NEJM, 341 28-36
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Definition

• Behavioral genetics - that area of psychology
  that is concerned with the application of genetic
  methods and research designs to study the nature
  and origins of individual differences in human
  and animal behavior.

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Prescientific Notions of Inheritance

• Selective breeding (10,000 years)
• Greeks
• Aristotle
• Platos ideal society
• Jews
• X-linked inheritance of hemophilia

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Pre-Darwinian Foundations

• Linneaus (1735)
• Natural Theology
• Erasmus Darwin (18th century)
• Jean Lamarck (18th century)
• Charles Lyell (19th century)
• Thomas Malthus (18th century)

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Charles Darwin

• Natural selection
• w/i species variation was not error
• Variation is transmitted (inheritance)
• Differential reproductive success
• gt changes in the genetic composition of the
  species reflecting those who contributed most to
  the gene pool
• In the distant future I see open fields for far
  more important researches. Psychology will be
  based on a new foundation.
• C. Darwin (1859)

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Sir Francis Galton

• Founder of
• Behavioral genetics
• Differential Psychology
• Biometry
• Eugenics
• Hereditary Genius (1869)
• First human behavioral genetic investigation

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Hereditary Genius
Rate of Eminence
(1/4000)
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Nature-Nurture Debate

• There is no escape from the conclusion that
  nature prevails enormously over nurture when the
  differences in nurture do not exceed what is
  commonly to be found among persons of the same
  rank in society and in the same country.
  (Galton, 1876)
• Of all the vulgar modes of escaping from the
  consideration of the social and moral influences
  on the human mind, the most vulgar is that
  attributing the diversities of human conduct and
  character to inherent original natural
  differences. (Mill, 1848)

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Eugenics Movement

• Eugenics - science that seeks to promote
  genetic/biological improvement of human society
  by influencing who does and does not reproduce.
• Quote - if talented men were mated with
  talented women, of the same mental and physical
  characters as themselves, generation after
  generation, we might produce a highly-bred human
  race - Galton (1865)
• Prominent Proponents Theodore Roosevelt,
  Winston Churchill, Margaret Sanger, John Maynard
  Keynes, George Bernard Shay, H.G. Wells,
  Charles Dight from Minnesota

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Gregor Mendel

• First Law -- Law of Segregation -- account for
  the transmission of single characters.
• Second Law -- Law of Independent Assortment --
  account for the joint transmission of two (or
  more) characters.
• Rediscovered in 1900 by deVries (Holland)
  Correns (Germany) and Tschermak (Austria)

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Landmarks in Human Genetics

• William Bateson (1905) - genetics
• Wilhelm Johansen (1909) - gene, genotype and
  phenotype
• Garrod (1902) - genes control metabolic processes
• Fisher (1918) resolved mendelian vs galtonian
  controversy (biometrical genetics)
• Watson Crick (1953) - DNA molecule (molecular
  genetics)
• Tjio Levan (1956) - 46 chromosomes
  (cytogentics)
• Chromosome mapping, linkage 1950s (genetic
  epidemiology)
• Human Genome Project 1990 2001 (2005)
  (genomics)