BEHAVIORAL OBJECTIVES
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1. To understand how behavior is the result of genetic and environmental f actors
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2. To understand that there are genes that affect human behavior
Sociobiology—A new and Controversial Science
Sociobiology is a combination of ethology which is the naturalistic study of whole patterns of behaviors and ecology which is the study of organisms in their environment and of genetics which is the total chemical make-up of the organism.
Socio-biology is the study of the biological properties of entire societies and involves comparisons of the social species i.e. man, apes, ants, and bees. It is based on the premise that a person is molded by interaction of his cultural environment and the genes that affect social behavior. There are similarities in the social behavior between man and monkey which are equated to similarities in gene chemistry. Laughter is a good example of like behavioral patterns.
A postulate of sociobiologists is that “social behavior inc. eases biological fitness”. For instance the social taboo against incestuous behavior is a behavior which discourages inbreeding and promotes substantial variety within the gene pool. The premise is that natural selection of Darwin which acclaims ‘survival of the fitness’ means that good genes are selected for. Social behavior such as altruism does not allow for the selection of the most ‘fit’ genotypes.
Postulating genes for behaviors is the most controversial part of the application of the theory of socio:biology. There is fear of repeating the mistakes of the eugenicists who postulated genes for alcoholism, crime and other unapproved social behaviors.
Eugenics or the determinability of human fitness by genes for behavior was alluded to in many sociological studies. One of the tools used by man against his fellow man in the social environment is a tool to measure intelligence, called the IQ test. The Stanford-Binet test published by Terman in 1916 was used as a means for social and economic exclusion. It was used against the poor as an instrument to verify that those at the bottom economically were genetically inferior. The IQ test has been used by immigration authorities, penal institutes and educators. Its use resulted in putting the mentally deficient, lunatics, poor and disadvantaged all in a social outcasts situation.
To follow the correlation between intelligence and environment has been established as a very close one. Both types of twins, MZ and DZ, have been tested in similar adoptive environments. Estimating the heritability of intelligence independent of the environment is difficult. This is because there is similarity in adoptive environments frequently.
Comparing twins which are monozygotic MZ with the same genetic material with those which are dizygotic results in closer IQ scores for the MZ twins. Still it has not been determined exactly what the heritability of IQ really is.
Also to be considered is that the expression of a trait may depend almost entirely upon the environment. An analogy is using identical flower seeds grown in different soils.
Studies concerning the differences that arise among individuals of the same species show that most differences are between individuals not among groups.
An obvious question that arises is/ Should genetic typing be allowed as an acceptable evaluation criteria on for the determination of an individual’s fitness or suitability?
Note: A class discussion, debate and/or thesis could be assigned to discuss the moral, ethical and legal aspects of the proposal.
(figure available in print form)
Tracing human traits by electrophoresis of the DNA material can produce micrographs similar to the one above, The DNA material or basepairs are duplicated in a ’ southern’ block using RNA for reverse transcriptase. Note that carriers for the trait in generation II were 1 and 3 and the two types of DNA showed at locations 1 and 5 on graph. This alters the allele theory and substantiates a transposon theory or different reading concept for utilizing different basepairs at different recognition sites.
