In: Psychology
TBehavior refers to the term used to indicate what a person tends to do or how a person tends to act in a situation. Gentics means the effect of genes from the parents in a person. Together when we talk about behavior genetics it is a scientific study of the behavioral differences using genetics and its effect. It also considers environmental factors of a particular behavior but the focus is only on genetics. The origin of behavior was studied using twin and family studies to find out their genetic basis. It was developed by Francis Galton in 19th century. The findings indicate that most of the studied behavior had some or the other genetic basis of ots occurence. The twin and adoption studies were conducted to see the variations in family designs. The basic assumptions of the twin study was that monozygotic twins would have 100% similarity in genotype and hence the only difference will be because of the environmental factors and dizygotic twins have 50% similarity in genotype hence they will have genetic as well as environmental causes of the differences. If the environment is kept same for the monozygotic and dizygotic twins then the difference in their average similarity of behavior will be the behavior caused by genes. This study was criticised in the modern times as it is not neccessary that everyone is raised in the same family hence an adoption study was also conducted. In this the childs similarities with the genetic mother and the adopted mother are compared. The result of the twin and the adoption studies show that there were high levels of similarities in behaviors of people from the same genetic familyand a comparatively lower level of similarity in the adopted family and the childs behavior. Overall it can be said that it considered both the environment and genes and both effect our behavior . Behavioral is genetically as well as environmentally effected and this explains the behavioral genetics and its objective stated in the beginning.