On Sat, 10 Jan 2004, Jon Johanning wrote:
> Well, I'm not so sure. Yes, up to now, the pronouncements in this field
> (which are of course mostly hot air, since very little hard conclusions
> relating genes to anything in the human make-up have been reached so
> far) have been mostly reactionary, probably because it's historically
> been the reactionaries who have been hot to "racialize" everything. But
> unless we assume that psychology has nothing to do with biology, there
> should be *some* connections between genetics and psychology. I'm not
> holding my breath waiting for solid research reports, though.
Even though I'd prefer not to admit it, biological psychologists have provided compelling empirical support for the claim that genetics influences various psychological attributes (e.g., IQ performance, sexual orientation, temperament, schizophrenia). Granted, this is not based on genetic mapping, but consider: (1) the correlation between adopted children and their biological parents on many psychological characteristics is positive (difficult to explain with nongenetic factors!); (2) monozygotic twins (identical twins) are more similar on many psychological characteristics than dizygotic (fraternal) twins are. Given that each twin pair is the same age growing up in the same household, this is again difficult to explain without genetics.
Note that the reseearch above supports the claim that genetics influences some psychological attributes; it also clearly contradicts the claim that genetics completely determines psychological traits. If that were so, identical twins would be psychological clones--and they're not: for instance, if one identical twin develops schizophrenia, the other twin's lifetime risk is about 60%. High, yes, but not 100% (as it would be if schizophrenia were a genetic disorder "people were born with").
Miles