ABSTRACT
Behavioral genetics (also known as quantitative genetics) became a field of inquiry in part in opposition to the developmental, or “environmentalist,” view that only factors from the environment are involved in interindividual variability in the development of children.1 Just as erroneous a view is that genes are the most important factors involved in interindividual differences. Recent advances in moleculargenetics techniques have greatly increased our ability to understand the contribution of genes to health and illness. The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) of the National Institutes of Health announced in June 2000 that it had developed a working draft of the human genome. However, the inclination to believe that genes account for all or none of the differences between people is “genetic determinism” that does not accurately represent the assumptions of behavior genetic methodologies.
