Are Some People 'Destined' To Be Bad?

-Nature: Aspects of our abilities, traits, behaviors, health, etc. that are due to genetic factors (our DNA)

-Nurture: Aspects of these same qualities that are due to our environment (e.g., nutrition, upbringing, location, wealth, etc)

Related questions:

-To what extent is a person to be given credit for their success? Is it their hard work, a lucky situation, or a genetic advantage?

-To what extent should a person be held responsible for bad behavior? Are some people genetically “more likely” to hurt people than others?

“Jim Separated Identical Twins Story”

-Their lives had many similarities

-The extent to which genes are responsible for the variation of a trait in the population varies for the kind of trait

-The effect of the environment on variation in a trait can change over time and place; as such, the effect of “nurture” can be different depending on when and where you are asking the question

-The nature-nurture question remains one of the most complicated questions to address, involving several fields of science (bio, psych, etc.)

-Behavioral genetics: The study of how behavior is affected by the combination of genetic and environmental factors

-To find the effects of the environment separate from the effects of genetics or vice versa, we must find some way to control one or the other

-Most ethical ways to do this involve looking at siblings and adoptions

-Monozygotic (identical) twins share essentially 100% of their genes, while dizygotic (fraternal) twins share 50%

-Adoption disjoins the effects of genes and the environment

Twin Studies

-Twin studies allow researchers to “vary” the amount of genetic similarity

-Two “conditions”: Monozygotic twins (100% genetic similarity) and dizygotic twins (50%)
-Heritability coefficient