PSY 1102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Epigenetics, Social Learning Theory, Heritability

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 1102
• Professor: Najwa Haddad

Document Summary

Heritablility ( individual difference due to genetics) How do they determine the difference (what studies did they do?) uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu. Heredity versus environment: twin, adoption, and family studies. Identical twins, or monozygotic twins, are siblings whose genotypes are duplicates of each other. They are most likely the best indicator of whether biology affects traits and psychopathology in human beings. Fraternal twins, or dizygotic twins, share exactly half their genes with each other. Fraternal twins are similar to first-degree relatives, except they are sure to share the exact same age, as do identical twins. Twin studies usually rely on samples of identical and fraternal twins; if biology has a greater hand than environment, then identical twins should behave or possess psychopathology similar to each other more so than fraternal twins. Adoption studies are important because they include two sets of factors that may account for differences in behavior, personality, and psychopathology: biological parents and environmental parents.