"Over a decade ago, "all human behavioral traits are heritable" was stated as the first law of behavior genetics". A new study looked at whether trust was affected by genetics.
The authors found that "genetic influences are smaller for trust, and propose that experiences with or observations of the behavior of other people shape trust more strongly than other traits".
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"Trust" Not Influenced By Genetics
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(Score: 2, Informative) by Serial_Priest on Thursday April 10 2014, @04:24AM
One recalls Putman's paper a few years back exploring the influence of diversity on social trust (link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467- 9477.2007.00176.x/abstract;jsessionid=2748E8803D04 561DE2516B540ADF2C27.f01t02 [wiley.com]). The upshot was that homogeneity is a determinant of altruism, community cooperation/involvement, friendships, "comfort"/safety. (In other words, a direct refutation of America's founding mythos.)
(Score: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Thursday April 10 2014, @05:29AM
I am genetically pre-disposed to not trust the results of this study. But I really can't say why. That is what makes me think my distrust is genetic. That, and the fact that if my ancestors had been gullible enough to believe stuff like this, I would probably not be here at all.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday April 10 2014, @05:49AM
Who the hell passed this bill into a law? Was it Indiana general assembly [wikipedia.org] perchance? (point: I can't believe a researcher in her/his right mind could thing that everything in behavior is genetically driven).
Didn't they hear the father of neurophysiology [wikipedia.org] giving the "Which contributes more to the area of a rectangle, its length or its width?" answer to the nature vs nurture [wikipedia.org] question?
Did they really think they are smarter asses or have they just wanted to swindle some research grants?
Or what the hell am I missing from the picture?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by lhsi on Thursday April 10 2014, @07:41AM
That line in the summary was a quote from the introduction to the paper (it is open access so you can read the whole thing). The citation was for this paper (I found the PDF online, published in 2000): http://www.faculty.umb.edu/pjt/epi/turkheimer00.pd f [umb.edu]
The introduction for that paper lists three "laws" (in this sense it means a law like Newtons laws, not laws of a particular country).
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 10 2014, @09:50AM
Searching after the name of the author, a stumbled over study in 2004 in which the same person discovers that, in low socioeconomic status condition, 60% of IQ is due to nurture. [apa.org]
In this light:
Not at all dissimilar with the Indiana Pi bill, showing politicians ready to pass a law of legislative nature contradicting a "law of nature" (my point in the first post of the thread: the author behave closer to a smart-ass politician than a scientists)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by lhsi on Thursday April 10 2014, @10:10AM
It looks like the trust paper was more evidence against it. This is the full first paragraph of their introduction:
The introduction of the paper talking about the "laws" on the other hand did seem a little self-serving.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Geezer on Thursday April 10 2014, @09:52AM
Strictly speaking, until a fetus becomes responsive to environmental stimuli in the womb every bit of our behavior is genetically driven, and only proportionally modified by environmental/experiential factors threreafter. One dimension of Hebb's rectangle is constant and generally quantifiable via mapping. The other dimension is variable and worthy of study.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 10 2014, @10:29AM
I don't want to discourage open access journals, but they sure do publish a lot of junk. Simply a reflection of today's academia, I suppose.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by opinionated_science on Thursday April 10 2014, @01:20PM
Being an AC there is definitely something amusing about that statement....!
On the topic, the study seems reasonable. The problem comes with the methods. It is very difficult to deal with opinions or feelings. Heritable traits *become* heritable, when they confer (or remove) an advantage to the organism.
As Homo Sapiens Sapiens has its origins perhaps 2-300,000 years ago, at some point in our collected genetic past, language, and society became a positive trait.
In the modern day it is a very complex social landscape to try and squeeze out an general concept as trust. This study used genetic controls. Probably the most interesting and suggestive finding is that "young people are more trusting".
This strongly suggests humans have experience based adapted behaviour and less of the inherited behaviour.
This would seem to be reasonable.
Humans are a social animal and often it is rewarding to not standout from the crowd...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 10 2014, @03:49PM
You are a windbag that managed to say almost nothing with all these words of yours.
Heritable traits become heritable when it becomes heritable. There you manage to say something as opposed to absolutely nothing, except that something was wrong.
(Score: 1) by hellcat on Thursday April 10 2014, @05:34PM
There's other points to be made here.
First, sociobiology and Dawkins's insights (selfish gene) are quite relevant in that, technically, everything is inherited to some degree. That nurture is a cofactor isn't disputed.
Second, oxytocin levels have been found to strongly influence 'trust' or attachment. Sorry, too busy at work to find you relevant links.
Third, the keystone term "trait" is a land mine. There is no rigorous definition as to what constitutes a "trait." Please let me know if you find one.
(Score: 1) by opinionated_science on Thursday April 10 2014, @07:56PM
The word "trait" is the neutral word from biology. It is in common usage for (Mendelian) genetics. (http://www.uni.edu/walsh/genetics.html). It did not used to be "rigorous", but with the human genome sequence in hand, it is now known at the molecular level - well *almost*, but every new genome helps... The use SNP microarrays to probe recombination blocks (sites where chromsomes tend to mix), is providing ever clear maps of what constitutes a genetic trait, although I agree the language is not unambiguous.
The field of epigenetics has shown that it is not just genetics but environment too (via methylation, it appears).
The problem I was trying to articulate is even with a genetic control, "trust" is a poorly defined metric. Humans in society are not the same as lab animals. There are a great many things that go into making a person, and family/society groups dominate that.
For example, a problem with using twins is the fundamental biology that they are genotype identical, but not phenotype identical. Usually one is slightly larger....you want to bet that doesn't make a difference?
(Score: 1) by hellcat on Wednesday April 16 2014, @05:17AM
And I studied 'traits' within psychology. The word itself can be neutral, but our definition of the trait itself is influenced by many factors: personal, cultural, academic and probably social. And I find the soft science's ability to define almost anything to be rather poor.
I agree with you wholeheartedly, and would up the ante. We *think* we have a handle on what influences (any given) trait, but the complexity of genetic expression into phenotype also increases at apparently faster rates.
I remember learning about introns and exons - junk dna. Exons don't do anything we were taught. Chuckle. Mitochondrial dna, not important. Ha. Genetic repair machinery - infallable. Ha. Humans must have a 100,000 genes, because we're so much more complex than a mouse. Double ha.
By the way, I'm not the one laughing here, I'm paraphrasing Mother Nature. She always has the last laugh.
(sorry for the long delay - long overdue vacation - of two days - way overworked!)
(Score: 1) by opinionated_science on Wednesday April 16 2014, @11:30AM
wrong way around! Exons are the coding (i.e. turned into amino acids/protein) and the Introns are the spacing. Note, despite the comment misconception, many(!) biologists never really thought it was "junk DNA", since biology is necessarily quite conservative with resources. However, not knowing what is does specifically, gets communicated to the outside world as "junk". We now now it is really very important.
There is no correlation between number of genes and organism complexity (I think this is called the C-paradox).
The mechanism of alternative splicing is one such way in which greater complexity is obtained from few genes. The same stretch of DNA can produce different proteins, and these proteins can also be modified to function in different roles.
Look around the natural world, and complex "preprogrammed" behaviour is everywhere. It may be something that is a "threshold" effect - you need a certain amount of "complexity" to get certain forms of intelligence, say. Just rambling...