
What is psychogenetics?
Psychogenetics is an interdisciplinary field, in addition to psychology and genetics proper, which combines elements of neuroscience and statistics in order to study the correlation of hereditary and behavioral factors. Sometimes psychogenetics is called "behavioral genetics".
The subject of psychogenetics is the interaction of heredity and environment in the formation of human individuality: learning ability, temperament, inclinations and sympathies. For psychogenetics, each person is located between two poles of influence: their own genes and external factors, such as their upbringing and relationships with others.
Scientists identify three types of genotype-environment interaction:
- passive, which does not involve purposeful actions on the part of the individual (for example, a child of emotionally unstable parents receives both genes and a family environment that contribute to the development of neuroticism in him);
- reactive, which occurs when the environment "adjusts" to the genotype (for example, if a frequently crying child receives positive reinforcement – toys, sweets, then this form of behavior is fixed);
- active, which is expressed in purposeful actions of an individual related to the search or creation of an environment conducive to the realization of a genotype (a set of genes in the body) in a phenotype (a set of external and internal characteristics).
Psychogenetics analyzes the specific weight of genotypes and environmental factors in the formation of certain phenotypic traits in various ways. For example, we can name one of these methods — the gemini method. It allows to some extent to separate the influence of an identical genotype (in the case of identical twins) from the influence of the environment, but still does not give an exhaustive picture of such an influence. Therefore, scientists often resort to other methods — for example, genealogical. Within its framework, a comparative analysis of the signs found in individuals on the paternal and maternal lines is carried out.
Psychogenetic research is not only the study of twins, adopted orphans and relatives of different generations. They also affect the dynamics of genes and chromosomal abnormalities in vast human populations. At the level of large communities, the population method has proven itself positively, where the representativeness of the sample is of paramount importance: that is, only such a set of representatives of the population is studied, on the basis of which it is possible to make a complete characteristic of the entire population.
After decoding the human genome, a valuable development was the statistical method — Genome-Wide association search (Genome-Wide Association Studies, abbreviated GWAS or GWA).
References:
- Polyakova O. B. Psychogenetics: textbook [Electronic resource] / O. B. Polyakova, T. I. Bonkalo. – The electron. text data. – M.: GBU "NIIOZMM DZM", 2024. – URL: https://niioz.ru/moskovskaya-meditsina/izdaniya-nii/metodicheskieposobiya / – Title from the screen. – 265
- https://biomolecula.ru/articles/gwas-i-psikhogenetika-konsortsiumy-v-poiskakh-assotsiatsii