Psychology 2550A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Glucocorticoid, Intellectual Disability, Neurotransmitter

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2550A/B
• Professor: David Vollick

Document Summary

Behavior genetics: study of the role of genes in social behavior and personality. Dna is a long string of small units strung together called nucleotides of which there are 4 types: a, t, g, c. Human genome: the human genetic code consisting of roughly 30,000 to 40,000 individual genes contained in 23 chromosome pairs. Unrelated people share about 99. 9% of their dna sequence but a minor difference in dna sequence can lead to profound differences in people. What a cell becomes is determined by biological switches outside the cell that turn specific genes in the cell on or off. Genome provides the options but the environment determines the options. Example: foraging gene in insects like bees with 2 different variants and are affected by the environment. Twin method: method of assessing genetic influence by comparing the degree of similarity on trait measures for genetically identical twins versus dizygotic twins.