Foundations of Behavior Genetics

Behavior genetics addresses questions of fundamental importance to humanity. We seek to understand what makes us unique individuals, but also what we share with our families and with other species. We seek to explain why we tend to act in certain ways while others tend to act differently. We also strive to contribute to the development of treatments for behavioral problems. We ask these and many other questions with a limited set of tools in the human behavior genetic toolbox. Ethical and technological constraints on human behavior genetic research combined with the inherent complexity of pathways from genes to behavior mean that a firm grasp of causality may forever remain out of reach. Even in cases where causality can be known, moral and ethical constraints limit potential applications of human behavior genetic findings. Any such applications to human beings are fraught with concerns about human rights.