Chapter 3: Gene, Environment, and Behavior

Heritability Coefficient

Estimates the extent to which the differences, or variation, in a specific phenotypic characteristic within a group of people can be attributed to their differing genes.

Natural Selection

Characteristics that increase the likelihood of survival and reproduction within a particular environment will be more likely to be preserved in the population and therefore will become more common in the species over time.

Evolution

Change over time in the frequency with which particular genes and the characteristics they produce occur within interbreeding population.

Chromosome

Is a double- stranded and tightly coiled molecule of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)

Evocative Influence

A child's genetically influenced behaviors may evoke certain responses from others.

Polygenic Transmission

A number of gene pairs combine their influences to create a single phenotypic trait.

Alleles

Alternative forms of a gene that produce different characteristics.

Epigenetics

Changes in gene expression that are independent of the DNA itself and are caused instead by environmental factors.

Dominant

The particular characteristic that it controls will be displayed.

Genotype

The specific genetic makeup of the individual.

Recessive

The characteristic will not show up unless the partner gene inherited from the other parent is also ________.

Concordance

Trait similarity.

Phenotype

The individuals observable characteristics.

Adaptive Significance

How behavior influences an organism's chances of survival and reproduction in its natural environment.

Strategic Pluralism

The idea that multiple- even contradictory- behavioral strategies.

reproductive ability

Adaptations: physical or behavioral changes that allow organisms to meet recurring environmental challenges to their survival, thereby increasing their ________.

Genes

Biological units of heredity

Family Studies

Researchers study relatives to determine if genetic similarity is related to similarity on a particular trait

Adoption Study

In which people who were adopted early in life are compared on some characteristics with both their biological parents, with whom they share genetic endowment and with their adoptive parents, with whom they share no genes

Twin Studies

Which compare trait similarities in identical and fraternal twins

Adapting to the Environment

The Role of Learning

Shared Environment

The people who reside in them experience many of their features in common

Biologically Based Mechanisms

Enable us to take in, process, and respond to information, predisposing us to behave, to feel, and even think in certain ways

Adaptations

Physical or behavioral changes that allow organisms to meet recurring environmental challenges to their survival, thereby increasing their reproductive ability

Evoked Culture

Cultures may themselves be products of biological mechanisms that evolved to meet specific adaptation challenges faced by specific groups of people in specific places at specific times.

Sexual Strategies Theory

Mating strategies and preferences reflect inherited tendencies shaped over the ages in response to different types of adaptive problems that men and women faced

Social Structure Theory

Maintain that men and women display different mating preferences not because nature impels them to do so, but because society guides them into different social roles