Essays
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An Imaging Gene by Environment Interaction (IG×E) Approach to Understanding Youth Antisocial Behavior - Waller, Rebecca
An examination of the complex interplay of genes, environmental experience, and the brain is critical to understanding psychopathology, violence, and aggression. This essay reviews the gene–environment (G×E) interaction and imaging genetics literature relating to the development of youth antisocial behavior (AB). A model is proposed that bridges these approaches within an imaging gene×environment (IG×E) interaction framework. The potential application of an IG×E framework to youth AB is outlined and ongoing research challenges are discussed. -
Genetic and Environmental Approaches to Political Science - Fazekas, Zoltán
Over the past decade, a growing interest in the possibility that biological factors, including genes, might contribute to individual differences in political and social behaviors has emerged. Behavioral genetic techniques have provided a variety of approaches to quantify the effects of genetic and nongenetic inheritance. However, until quite recently, these methods were largely unknown to political scientists. In this essay, we review the general approaches to modeling genetic and social influences on differences in complex human social traits. In so doing, we focus on the “genetics of politics,” including attitudes, ideologies, voting, and partisanship. The emergence of this research reflects a paradigm shift in the study of social traits necessitating the inclusion of biological influences, and recognizing the interdependence of genetic, social, and environmental factors in the development of political behaviors over the life course. -
Genetics and Social Behavior - Harpending, Henry
We focus on the effects of gene differences on social and behavioral differences among individuals and among larger groups of individuals. Many specific genetic markers are known that influence aspects of personality and behavior. The focus on single genes and groups of genes is giving way to quantitative genetics, the statistical study of transmission of characteristics viewed as the outcome of the effects of very large numbers of genes. While traditional social science largely ignores the effects of genetically transmitted influences, the subject persists and grows in importance. Classical quantitative genetic methods may give much insight into human behavioral diversity and they provide the “right” way to measure and assess variation in rates of threshold traits. We discuss examples, trends, and possibilities for the incorporation of genetic data and models in the social and behavioral sciences without advocating major changes in practice. -
Genetics and the Life Course - Charney, Evan
A life‐course perspective is committed to the proposition that from conception to death, all human outcomes are the result of a continual interaction between the individual and all of the environments that he or she inhabits at any given point in time. Early development is a critical period, a window of time during the life course when a given exposure can have a critical or permanent influence on later outcomes. But the impact of exposures upon outcomes does not end at any specific point in time, inasmuch as life is a continuing interactive and adaptive process. We now know that what applies to human beings also applies to their genomes. The “outcome” of any gene at any given point in time (whether or not it is used to transcribe a particular protein, what form of that protein, and how much) is a product of the interaction between the gene and the multiple environments of which it is a part, which include the epigenome, the cell, the biological human, and the assorted environments he or she occupies (e.g., geographical, socioeconomic, ethnic, etc.). Early life experiences can permanently “reprogram” the epigenome and gene transcription with life‐long behavioral consequences. At the same time, the epigenome as well as the genome continue to be environmentally responsive throughout the life course. -
Social Epigenetics: Incorporating Epigenetic Effects as Social Cause and Consequence - Anderton, Douglas L.
Epigenetics is a field of study that invites an interdisciplinary interaction of the social and biological sciences. This collaboration has, in fact, led to a blossoming research community over the past two decades, which is using new data, methods, and conceptual frameworks to address a host of old and emergent research questions. A recent (2014) search of PubMed found over a thousand articles on social, behavioral, and cognitive epigenetics. If one includes epidemiological epigenetic studies that incorporate either social causes or consequences in their research, the number expands nearly threefold. Yet, social epigenetics is a still nascent field, marginalized and misunderstood in social science. In this essay, we attempt to review basic epigenetic concepts and the way in which epigenetics has, and can be, of use to social and behavioral scientists in addressing some of the most fundamental sorts of questions their disciplines raise. -
Telomeres - Adler, Nancy
Telomeres cap the ends of chromosomes in the cell and their length provides a marker of cellular aging. As people age, their telomeres generally shorten, a process that is accelerated by exposure to chronic stress as well as by health behaviors such as smoking, lack of exercise, and poor diet. Individuals who are lower on the social hierarchy have shorter telomeres on average, providing evidence of the health‐damaging effects of social disadvantage.