APART FROM SCREENING techniques that can now avert birth disasters and the eventual genetic corrections of potential problems, much good has already been accomplished by the simple recognition of genetic links to human behavior. This is most apparent in the area of mental illness, with attention at last being directed to biological causes of conditions long thought psychodynamic. As one genetic psychiatrist put it, using talk therapy on some forms of mental illness is like trying to talk a patient out of a kidney disorder. Freud himself saw the potential in biochemical knowledge when he wrote: “The shortcomings of our description would probably disappear if for the psychological terms we could substitute physiological or chemical ones.… Biology is truly a realm of limitless possibilities.”
The new genetic perception has a potential for dispelling guilt on both the part of those with behavioral problems and on the part of parents who, in the environmental paradigm, have been wrongfully accused of causing it. One’s heart goes out to the couple who stares at the floor as a therapist explains that their lack of love and support for their son has turned him into the depressed addict they now confront. Often, they are too cowed by the degree-holder before them and too ashamed of their inevitable parental failings to cite less supportive parents whose kids turned out okay. Recognition of a genetic component does not explain, much less exonerate, all behavioral dysfunctions, but it should lead to more realistic efforts to alter or remedy them. It should also deter the glib indictments of parents and others in the vicinity.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS of behavioral genetics perceptions for the majority of people who are not retarded, mentally ill, or a member of a despised genetic minority? What difference does it make to know that our DNA is telling our RNA to tell our ribosomes to make proteins that will influence our behavior? As long as all parties are doing their job and not mandating a problem-plagued life, of what use is this new understanding?
An important answer is that it can overhaul the self-view of every individual. And alter it in ways that could be useful and beneficial, not just provide a new framework for self-contemplation like astrology and other let’s-talk-about-me quackeries. (You are a sensitive, feeling person for the following reasons …) It should change the way each of us thinks about our wants, our decisions, our emotions, our responses—change the way we view all the dynamic mechanisms that make us who we are. It might also have the humbling effect of making us less quick to assume a purely rational basis to our every thought, action, and emotion. It should make us skeptical of the facile rationales we assign to behaviors other parts of our brain have already ordained—for unconsidered or unreachable reasons. It should foster a hard-nosed skepticism about our choices and judgments and make us alert for atavistic, perhaps gene-propelled, impulses like racism and sexism that we don’t want and that make no sense in today’s world.
In contemplating human events that don’t touch us directly, a genes-behavior awareness might render us more curious about underlying causes rather than cultural-historical circumstances. This would be particularly useful when we are rocked by stupefying examples of human violence—the Holocaust, Stalin’s eradication of Ukrainians by the millions, the Khmer Rouge’s slaughter of a million Cambodians. Invariably our reaction has been astonishment and horror at particular installments of humanity’s periodic mass killings. If we reflect, we ponder the murderers’ rise to power, their punishment, their present whereabouts. In this century, we also show interest in the technology that permits such large numbers of corpses in such a short time—Dresden and Hiroshima, for example.
With the genes-behavior link in mind, we might now also direct our attention toward the one element common to all of these sorry events: the aspects of human nature that permit such atrocities with a regularity we prefer to ignore. We should look beyond environmental exigencies and killing techniques and reserve at least some of our curiosity for the neuronal receptors and latent genetic impulses that enable these perpetual eruptions of homicidal frenzy.
For all our species’ dazzling evolutionary success, we have carried with us from Neolithic times some ugly and counterproductive genetic baggage. As Robert Wright said in The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life, most evolutionary psychologists agree that natural selection does not aim for the overall good of the group and that the nature we humans have inherited is heavily freighted with ruthless self-interest. Some evolutionary thinkers (George Williams in Adaptation and Natural Selection) even go so far as to see natural selection as intrinsically evil, a built-in enemy we must continually resist in order to achieve a moral life. For this conflict to exist at all, an innate drive for good must exist within us as well, so it would follow that we must continually battle portions of our own natures to make a viable and just society.
This model merely reframes old paradigms about human duality—original sin, Plato’s conflicting winged horses, man’s moral ambiguity, and so on. But if the evolutionary psychologists are right about an inherited ruthless component to human nature, it adds a deeper understanding to the perception of the human predicament and, if the theory is confirmed by the evidence, would inject a large dose of empirical reality to concepts that had previously only been intuited and expressed in allegorical and sometimes lovely myths and belief systems.
It is not necessary to see ourselves as walking good-evil battlefields, Milton’s “plains of heaven,” but just as collections of countless genetic impulses—some good, some evil, some depressing, some joyous, some altruistic, some selfish, some prudish, some bawdy, some sad, some hilarious, some wise, some silly—all those unconnected neurons that we call a personality firing at different times and with different intensity in each of us, the human variation that makes for great novels and plays. The genetic cacophony can also produce searing inner conflicts and total breakdowns.
Still, it is unnecessary to see your DNA as an enemy, merely as a tricky friend, or more aptly, a battery of friends, some with considerable, but not total, powers of manipulation. Instead of brooding about the relative power of this or that nucleic nudge, however, we should be heartened by the simple fact that whatever power genes have to influence our behavior, that power is greatly diminished by an awareness of their incessant lobbying.
Because most of us are masters at dressing up genetic impulses with logical rationales, it is not always easy to recognize neucleotide interference in our thought processes. A spiteful remark makes you angry, for instance, or a friend’s good news makes you envious and hostile. Such responses may spring from unadulterated thought or from genetic wiring; it is not easy sorting out which is which. It would be nice if science would develop a pocket brain monitor that buzzed each time our thinking was invaded by a reptilian instinct. But until such a device comes along, the best we can do is to develop a high level of suspicion about thoughts, desires, and actions that prove difficult to justify—even in terms of self-interest. A good place to start is with blatantly destructive and counterproductive emotions—like jealousy—over which most of us have no more control than we have over the pain felt when placing a hand over a flame. When attitudes and feelings trip us up or are hurtful to our interests, our pocket buzzers should go off. Knowing that a reaction stems from genes doesn’t assure our controlling it, but we might hesitate to respect it and outfit it with the trappings of rationality.
As AWARENESS OF DNA over the details of our personalities spreads, it might throw light on the great debates that appear to be permanently embedded in modern society. The Minnesota Twin Study and other research projects have revealed genetic components to social attitudes, even political leanings. In the sentry’s soliloquy in Iolanthe, W. S. Gilbert poked fun at the deep thoughts of a dull-witted man by having him sing,
Every boy and every girl
That’s born into the world alive
Is either a little liberal
Or else a little conservative.
It now appears the sentry may have been right. In 1954, well after Gilbert but many years before t
he flowering of behavioral genetics, H. J. Eysenck did a study with more than three hundred pairs of English twins that examined two broad personality factors: “radicalism” and “tough-mindedness.” The former was based on left-right configurations of British politics; the latter was extrapolated from attitudes on corporal punishment and the death penalty. The heritability of both attitudes proved to be substantial.
Other studies have indicated that genes may influence, not just overall political leanings, but also rigidly held positions on such controversial issues as gun control, capital punishment, and gay rights. At first glance, such precise targeting of genetic influence may seem wildly improbable—or explainable by a broad genetic predisposition that leads, not so remarkably, to the specific stance. But before dismissing this notion of genetic underpinnings to specific attitudes, it should be remembered that the Minnesota study found even more specific behaviors and personality facets to have genetic origins. If the odd MZA identicalities have no other scientific utility, they can at least serve to raise the possibility of pinpointed genetic foundations in attitudes and opinions. If precise choice of hobbies, pet names, and wardrobe items can spring from a bit of DNA, as the reared-apart twin studies strongly suggest, the notion appears less far-fetched that genes might play a role in more fundamental aspects of an individual’s persona, such as intense positions on contentious issues.
The most easily digestible findings in the area of social attitudes have been with broad, personality-defining tendencies that have societal ramifications. In 1981 Sandra Scarr found a degree of heritability for authoritarianism, an affinity for strict discipline. If such a trait can be transmitted genetically, it might explain why some individuals (or nations) thrive under authoritarian political and religious systems and others rebel against them.
A 1975 Australian study of 3,810 pairs of twins discovered a genetic component to a broad range of attitudes, everything from a liking for modern art to respect for divine law. Perhaps the most significant findings had to do with racial attitudes. Of three questions relating to this subject—belief in white superiority, acceptance of mixed marriages, and feelings about nonwhite immigration—all had a significant degree of heritability. These findings raise the intriguing possibility that the racists who reveled in The Bell Curve’s genetic allegations about I.Q. winners and losers may themselves be in the genetic grip of some unattractive evolutionary residue.
While indulging in such freewheeling speculations about possible genetic underpinnings to social attitudes, it should be remembered that hard evidence of gene involvement says zero about a trait’s desirability or moral value. It also says zero about its immutability or its power over individuals. On the plus side, the mere awareness of possible genetic foundations for strong opinions holds out hope for mitigating venerable antagonisms.
Should, for instance, a biochemical basis be clearly established in our attitudes toward such stubborn problems as racial hostilities or capital punishment, it might explain why the endless appeals to reason and fairness, from both sides, have historically had so little effect. Strong environmental influences—whether New York Times editorials, Pat Robertson sermons, or Aryan Nation propaganda—can, I suspect, reinforce the positions of those whose genes make them receptive to the ideology being pitched. I strongly doubt if such appeals can persuade people whose genes point them in a different ideological direction. Fortunately, many people are neutral on issues—perhaps in genetic balance—and it is they, the ever-popular undecided, that the political strategists go after.
Even if genes could be proven to tilt us one way or another on an issue, that is not to say we don’t have other genes working to tilt us back again. One gene might underwrite a strong belief in harsh punishment of crimes yet from somewhere further down a chromosome another gene also prompts a revulsion at killing. On the death penalty issue, this would make for a genetic teeter-totter that a well-written editorial or a dinner-table argument could tilt one way or the other.
One of those most prolonged and intractable debates of contemporary society concerns abortion. Many today are gripped by the tragedy of neglected children and other grim consequences of unwanted pregnancies. From the evolutionary point of view, by contrast, it is not difficult to see an adaptive advantage—in an ancient planet with few humans and many predators—to a revulsion at killing fetuses becoming an element of human hard wiring. It could be one entry in our catalog of inherited behaviors, probably a variant of the instinct for protecting offspring seen in most species, and it could be stronger in some individuals than others.
Although admittedly a freewheeling conjecture, if a horror of abortion, in some people, has lingering genetic roots, it might throw light on the imperviousness to argument of most abortion opponents. It could suggest a reason why for so many decades of heated debate the opposing sides have not heard each other. The pro-choicers’ reasons-maternal rights, children’s welfare, benefits to society—could be colliding with a gene in a portion of the population that says simply, “Killing fetuses is wrong.” It is, to me, conceivable that this law, in those who see it as bedrock truth, may have been reinforced by religious indoctrination, ethnic tradition, or moral persuasion but stemmed originally from a gene.
While contemplating the possibility of genes influencing attitudes and opinions, it is useful to remember the genes-environment mix-ups discussed in chapter 9. Do book lovers come by their passion through upbringings in book-filled homes or did they inherit a book-loving gene from their parents? Abortion opponents may have come by their aversion through religious upbringings, or their antiabortion stands as well as those of their parents may result from a family gene, one that possibly combined with other “morality” genes to make them and their parents religious.
If some distant scientific discovery could prove genetic foundations to such unbending positions, where would it leave us? Nowhere, as far as morality is concerned, since genetic impulses span the good-evil gamut. If, however, an individual’s racial hatreds or another’s fervor for animal rights could be shown to be genetic, this might, just might, make them less dogmatic, more receptive to argument. A genetic element in no way means that we can’t reject such feelings, only that should our intellects decide against them, we would have to work harder than others to overcome them.
Evidence of genetic links to attitudes does not sanction a passive resignation to one’s makeup. It certainly does not imply absolution. To shrug one’s shoulders in this way assumes an impossibility to countermanding genetic impulses that is a myth I hope this book has put to rest. We still have the ability to sift through the endless blips and flashes emanating from our DNA, go with those we approve, and reject those we dislike. In fact, it is the ones that seem to come from nowhere, that clash with our self-view, that should be most guarded against, viewed with the highest skepticism. Few of us haven’t struggled against an unwanted attitude, convinced ourselves that reason decrees we must abandon it, only to have it snap back when we stop thinking about it. A distaste for physically deformed people might be an example, or a racist attitude that our reason says is uncivilized and unfair. I also suspect the attitudes we cling to most tenaciously, the causes and beliefs that inspire the highest passions (or the ones we most vehemently deny have any connection with genes), are prime suspects for emanating from the genome rather than the intellect—if only because of their power over us.
Militants on either side of intractable social issues would surely welcome a silver-bullet pill, a gene-altering chemical, that would bring about conversions in their opponents. But it is unnecessary to conjecture molecular magic wands for resolving long-running arguments to foresee benefits to establishing a genetic component to these battles, should science arrive at such a conclusion. The benefit most easily visualized would be a softening of stances on both sides of public debates. With abortion, for example, those believing in reproductive choice might see their adversaries not as religious fanatics or brainwashed extremists but as people impelled by stron
g signals from their hard wiring. The antiabortionists, in turn, might see their opponents not as baby murderers but as individuals lacking this particular genetic dictate. Either view, in my opinion, points, if not to acceptance of opposing stances, at least to greater patience, perhaps tolerance.
There is an even more ambitious hope. If the pro-lifers could be persuaded that their revulsion has a genetic foundation, this might tend to disconnect their position from divine law, church dogma, or other rationales beyond the reach of argument (or, in the eyes of a few, beyond the reach of law). Genetic impulses, at times, can also be impervious to argument. You can’t argue yourself out of hunger, for example. But if antiabortionists, or any cause crusaders (whether “right” or “wrong”), could see their stands as grounded in their biochemical makeup, rather than as moral convictions swathed in a religious majesty, they might be more amenable to persuasion and compromise. Nucleotide nudges can be overruled; God’s law cannot.
Such a revolution in thinking about our opinions would surely require hard proof of genetic foundations of attitudes; to date, such a connection has been little more than suggested by the evidence. Behavioral geneticists are currently more concerned with acute personality problems like addiction, depression, and mental illness. Still, even the possibility of specific genetic links between genes and attitudes, to my mind, makes this line of genetic research particularly auspicious.
STARTLING RESEARCH ON brain function conducted by Michael Gazzaniga, the director of the University of California’s Center for Neurobiology, promises to deepen understanding of gene-based behavioral impulses. It also has implications for group actions, even the epic events of history. In elaborate experiments with patients with severed brain hemispheres, Gazzaniga and colleagues have learned much about left-right functioning and about the numerous brain modules, perhaps thousands—configurations of neurons that seem to be operating independently like little minds. (If you think this is hard to swallow, try the belief of N.Y.U.’s Rodolfo Llinas, one of the world’s top brain experts, who believes each of the brain’s billions of neurons has a mind of its own.) Because each eye is hooked up to a different hemisphere, and because the damage prevents the two sides from communicating as usual, the neuroscientists are able to “talk” to just one hemisphere in these individuals by covering an eye and holding up written signs. In this way, a lot has been discovered about the origins and mechanics of mental processes.
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