Genes and Personality

This seems very close in subject matter to a recent debate between Mr. Jack and holmes on evolutionary psychology.

I am not aware of any explicit links between specific genes and specific behaviours or personality traits. There may be some links between certain psychological disorders and specific genes, but I don't know. Most of the evidence in favor of the heredity of personality traits come from attempting to observe how personality traits run in families, twin studies, and cross cultural comparisons. There are also some studies that show that some physical characteristics of the brain correlate with certain behaviours, like homosexuality in men.Some of the more pathetic "evidence" used to support the heredity of personality traits include trying to show how certain behaviours could have some sort of adaptive value. Like a long ago Newsweek article put it: it is clear that men have a biological preference for women in short skirts since women in long dresses would trip over the hem and squash their babies.I tend to be very, very biased against putting too much emphasis on genetics as a source of personality and behaviour, perhaps unreasonably so. One reason is that Stephen Jay Gould, whose popular science essays I greatly admire, was very critical of it. The other reason is that by the time I read about studies supposedly supporting a biological basis for certain behaviours in the popular media, it tends to be used to justify certain exploitive aspects of American culture.

The problem with memes is that, although it is an interesting idea that may have some validity, there is no well-developed "Theory of Memes" that can be tested, and so no data that supports it.