0101Behavioral Genetics

0202 The Science BehindKarmagenes

0303From DNA to Behavior

0404 5 Factors Personality(Big 5/OCEAN)

KarmagenesKarmagenesBackground contentBackground content

Behavioral Genetics TimelineBehavioral Genetics Timeline

PlatoPlato, one of the founders of Westernphilosophy, rst Introduced the terms Natureand Nurture, in his Protagoras dialogue.

Hereditary GeniusVictorian polymath Sir Francis Galton, officiallyintroduced the notion of "Nature vs Nature" inhis book Hereditary Genius (1869), the rstsocial scienti c attempt to s t u d y genius a n d greatness. He is considered the father ofmodern-day behavioural genetics.

Fitter FamiliesFitter Families, were contests rst launched in1920 in Kansas with the support of the AmericanEugenics Society, aiming to identify and rewardthe family with the highest degree ofpsychological and physical tness among itsmember, as measured by a team of medicaldoctors.

Buck vs. Bell court caseBuck vs. Bell refers to a decision of the USSupreme Court in which the Court ruled that astate statute permitting compulsory sterilizationof the un t, including the intellectually disabled"for the protection and health of the state" didnot violate US Constitution. The decision waslargely seen as an endorsement of negativeeugenics—the attempt to improve the humanrace by eliminating "defectives" from the genepool.

Recognition andMomentum

Behavior genetics eld gained momentum andgratitude as a research discipline followed bythe publication of the textbook BehaviorGenetics by John L. Fuller and William RobertThompson marking the era of new discoveries.

William ShakespeareIn Shakespeare's play The Tempest, protagonistProspero notes: ‘‘A devil, a born devil, on whosenature Nurture can never stick; on whom my pains,Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost; And as withage his body uglier grows, So his mind cankers. I willplague them all, Even to roaring."

Theodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt in his letter to CharlesDavenport : ‘’Some day we will realize that theprime duty, the inescapable duty, of a good citizenof the right type is to leave his or her blood behindhim in the world.”

Eugenic movementThis period witnessed a sharp increase in thenumber of scienti c publications researchingheritability of behaviour. Meanwhile, the popularityof Eugene as a given name increases too.

WW II & EugenicsKnowledge and scienti c achievements can bedestructive in the wrong hands and history hasshown us many times the extent of harm that couldbe imposed when science is applied in the wrongcontext. Nazis focused on the racial improvementof the Germanic "Übermenschen" master racethrough eugenics. The British Psychological Societymentioned: ‘The notion that behavioral traits arepassed "on" from one generation to another, “inthe blood”, has been common currency for a verylong time. It has been used to justify racism,persecution and genocide, it has been used tostereotype individuals, and it has been used toproclaim the superiority of an individual or groupover others.”

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The Jim twinsThe story of the two Jim twins who wereseparated at birth and reunited at the age of 39is a fascinating one. They both married todifferent women called Linda, and after bothgetting a divorce, the remarried to differentwomen both called Betty. And that's not allabout it; they both had sons with James Allanbeing their given name, and pet dogs that werecalled Toy.

Steve Jobs‘’I used to be way over on the nurture side, butI’ve swung way over to the nature side. And it’sbecause of Mona and having kids. My daughteris 14 months old, and it’s already pretty clearwhat her personality is.’’

Behavioural Geneticsused as evidence

Behavioral genetics was rst time used during alawsuit, so as to avoid a rst-degree murderconviction by using an argument on acombination of genes and a history of childabuse.

Swedish Twin RegistryThe Swedish Registry was established in the1960s to study how smoking affects our health.There is, at present, information onapproximately 85 000 twin pairs, bothmonozygotic and dizygotic. There are currentlyaround 30 ongoing behavioral studies based onthe Swedish twin registry.

PubMedNational Library of

Medicine and Science

PubMed, the US National Library's online LifeSciences resources database, lists 21.683scientific publications, to date

Pioneering the FieldIrving Gottesman was a pioneer in the eld ofbehavioral genetics and his Ph.D. thesiscontained scienti c data and publicationshighlighting the high levels of inheritance in thescales related on the genetics of personality.

Twins HeritabilityAccording to T. J. Bouchard's work known as theMinessota Study of Identical Twins Reared Apart(MISTRA), shyness, political conservatism,dedication to hard work, orderliness, intimacy,extroversion, conformity, leadership and a hostof other social traits are largely heritable, as canbe observed between identical twins rearedapart from their co-twins.

Human Genome ProjectThe Human Genome Project that was initiatedin 1990 with the aim to sequence the entirehuman genome and map all its genes. Thisinternational largest collaborative biologicalproject spanned over 13 years long of scienti cresearch.

Twin Reading AbilityStudy conducted on samples from USA,Australia and Scandinavia measuring individualdifferences in reading ability. Both US andAustralia showed primarily genetic in uenceswhereas environmental influences coupled withgenetic was observed in Scandinavia.

Karmagenes, SAKarmagenes brings together Nature (DNA andObjectivity) and Nurture (Environment andPerception) by providing its DNA basedpersonality test combined with the Big 5psychological ndings. Karmagenes vision is tobring science and genetics into people's dailylife in a positive, accurate and scientific way.

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The Science behindThe Science behindKarmagenesKarmagenes

From DNA to BEHAVIORFrom DNA to BEHAVIOR

5 Factors Personality Timeline5 Factors Personality Timeline

18801880ʼssThe Lexical Hypothesis, initiated by Sir Francis

Galton in 1884, is a major foundation of the BigFive personality traits, stating that by samplinglanguages (17000 words) it will be feasible to

develop a comprehensive taxonomy of humanpersonality traits.

G. Allport and S. Odbert psychologists in 1936placed Sir Francis Galton’s hypothesis into

practice by narrowing down the amount ofadjectives describing possible traits from17000 words into 4,504 labeled factors.

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19501950ʼss In 1957, by eliminated synonyms, psychologistRaymond Cattell reduced the total factorsto171 and then divided them into 36 traits

19601960ʼssPsychologist Warren Norman in 1963, reducedthem into just 5 broad factors.

19801980ʼss In 1981, psychologist Lewis Goldberg initiatedhis own lexical project, emphasizing five broad

factors once again then He later coined theterm "Big Five" as a label for the factors.

BIG 5 & DNA (Heritability)BIG 5 & DNA (Heritability)Recent twins studies published in top, peer reviewed scientific journals, have shown that not onlyenvironmental factors contribute to personality, but genetics too influence the 5 factors asfollows: openness 57%, extraversion 54%, conscientiousness 49%, neuroticism 48% andagreeableness 42%.

BIG 5 (OCEAN)BIG 5 (OCEAN)The five factor model that describes five basics human personality traits regardless of language orculture derived from statistical analyses of which traits tend to co-occur in people’s descriptionsof themselves or other people. The Big Five is now the most widely accepted and used model ofpersonality to study personality in terms of how it changes over time and how it relates to othervariables.

OOpenness: Individuals scoring high on “openness” areadventurous, curious and creative. They are open-minded,challenge seekers and keen to step out of their comfort zone andmonotonous routines to acquire novel things that boost theirknowledge

CConscientiousness: Individuals scoring high on“conscientiousness” are self-disciplined, highly responsible,organized and punctual. They tend to be workaholics andalmost never act impulsively, executing their daily tasks inthe most disciplined manner.

EExtraversion: Individuals scoring high on “extraversion” areextremely social and friendly. They are talkative, attention seekersand uncomfortable being alone. Always present on parties andevents, engaging in deep discussions at the center of attention.

AAgreeableness: Individuals scoring high on “agreeableness”are associated with good behavior. They are trustworthy,honorable, well-mannered and express concern and respectin their communication. Well known to be helpful,cooperative and empathetic when interacting with other.

NNeuroticism: Individuals scoring high on “neuroticism” aremoody, nervous and stressed. They are emotionally unstable andmost of the time anxious. Mostly manage to grasp the negativeside of things and they are susceptible to induction of negativemood.

OO penesspeness

EExtraversionxtraversion

NNeuroticismeuroticism

CConscientiousnessonscientiousness

AAgreeablenessgreeableness

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