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Understanding “What Could Be”: A Call for ‘Experimental Behavioral Genetics’

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Abstract

Behavioral genetic (BG) research has yielded many important discoveries about the origins of human behavior, but offers little insight into how we might improve outcomes. We posit that this gap in our knowledge base stems in part from the epidemiologic nature of BG research questions. Namely, BG studies focus on understanding etiology as it currently exists, rather than etiology in environments that could exist but do not as of yet (e.g., etiology following an intervention). Put another way, they focus exclusively on the etiology of “what is” rather than “what could be”. The current paper discusses various aspects of this field-wide methodological reality, and offers a way to overcome it by demonstrating how behavioral geneticists can incorporate an experimental approach into their work. We outline an ongoing study that embeds a randomized intervention within a twin design, connecting “what is” and “what could be” for the first time. We then lay out a more general framework for a new field—experimental BGs—which has the potential to advance both scientific inquiry and related philosophical discussions.

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Funding

The funding for this research was provided by the Templeton Foundation through the Genetics of Human Agency Initiative.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, 107D Psychology Building, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    S. Alexandra Burt & David Z. Hambrick

  2. Department of Knowledge Integration & Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada

    Kathryn S. Plaisance

Authors
  1. S. Alexandra Burt
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  2. Kathryn S. Plaisance
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  3. David Z. Hambrick
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to S. Alexandra Burt.

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Conflict of interest

S. Alexandra Burt, Kathryn S. Plaisance, David Z. Hambrick declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Human and animal rights

The described study has been approved by the Michigan State University IRB.

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All participants give informed consent (informed consent is obtained by one parent since the twins are younger than 18 years old).

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Burt, S.A., Plaisance, K.S. & Hambrick, D.Z. Understanding “What Could Be”: A Call for ‘Experimental Behavioral Genetics’. Behav Genet 49, 235–243 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-018-9918-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-018-9918-y

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