1. • Genes and Human Behavior
• Journal article by Richard J. Rose; Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 46, 1995
Genes and human behavior.
by Richard J. Rose
KEY WORDS: behavior genetics, cognitive abilities, personality, health habits,
psychopathology
CONTENTS INTRODUCTION COGNITIVE ABILITY AND DISABILITY
Cognitive Abilities: General and Specific
Reading Disability
Fragile-X Syndrome and Triplet Repeats PERSONALITY, LIFESTYLES, AND
HEALTH HABITS
Personality
Sexual Orientation
Health Habits: Smoking and Drinking PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND
NEUROLOGICAL DISORDERS
Huntington's Disease
Traditional Twin Methods in Psychiatric Genetics
Alcoholism
Alzheimer's Disease
Schizophrenias and Affective Disorders
Aggression NEW IDEAS AND ENDURING ISSUES
Twin Comparisons: New Twists
Enduring Issues CONCLUSIONS
INTRODUCTION
This volume of the Annual Review of Psychology marks anniversaries of both old and
new approaches to human behavioral genetics. This review of genes and human
behavior appears 35 years after the field of behavior genetics was christened with a
monograph bearing that name (Fuller & Thompson 1960), and 25 years after the
Behavior Genetics Association was founded and its journal, Behavior Genetics,
launched. This volume appears 15 years after recognition of the utility of using DNA
markers for gene-mapping, which initiated the use of restriction fragment length
polymorphisms (RFLPs) for genetic linkage studies. And 1995 is the fifth year of the
United States Human Genome Project, a project to map the human DNA sequence,
one so successful that three years into it, a new, more ambitious five-year plan was
launched (Collins & Galas 1993). There are exciting developments in both old
(quantitative) and new (molecular) approaches to human behavioral genetics; this
review attempts to highlight the excitement, promise, and controversy surrounding
contemporary human behavior genetics.
Cover-story reports of behavior genetics (Science 1994) testify to the field's vitality
and visibility, but controversy follows. The most influential popular periodical in US
science headlined "The dubious link between genes and behavior," subtitling its "lack-
of-progress report" in behavior genetics as "Eugenics Revisited" (Horgan 1993).
Others charge that the "allure of genetic explanations" (Alper & Natowicz 1992) for
complex social behavior leads to poor science and pernicious social policy, and that
problems endemic to the old genetic analyses will reoccur in the new (Billings et al