How Far Do Genes Explain Human Behavior?

[Masha]

In what ways (if any) does genetics conflict with the Marxist priority of the social over the biological when it comes to a scientific understanding of human behavior?

I keep reading all these articles about "the aging gene" and other such things. I'm convinced that genetics is valid when it comes to describing the process of protein production with the result of definite phenotypes of an organism. Yet, I am not so sure when I hear talk about more abstract genes, e.g., the gene for longevity -- or even more troublesome, "criminal genes" and other genes that supposedly account for psychological characteristics in humans (and other branches of the phylogenetic tree, for that matter -- though I don't know where I should draw the line there either, tbh).

Perhaps if we look at how phenotypes are delineated...

genotype (G) + environment (E) → phenotype (P)

...we can understand ideology as a key factor of E. (?)

It still seems too much like that "nature vs nurture" hokum though...

So, how do you understand the relationship between the social to the biological?

[Rafiq]

I've dealt with this very subject extensively, in quite a diverse amount of threads actually. I don't mean to fault you - just telling you that if you were to put in some of these key words in the advanced search, with my name, you would find a lot.

Most recently: http://www.revleft.com/vb/lysenkoism-and-cooperation-t195104/index.html?t=195104&highlight=genetic

There's also this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/would-women-stop-t194288/index.html?p=2853916&highlight=nurture#post2853916)and this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/woman-pretends-black-t193327/index.html?p=2836889&highlight=nurture#post2836889).

In short, the degree that genes 'influence' human behavior is zero. Genes don't explain human behavior, or more specifically, they are not a causal determinate in the constitution of the individual, even if they make an individual more likely to do something than otherwise not - the reason why it is more likely, or not likely, is purely social. It is no different than a psychical environment - it's totally arbitrary and it's totally a matter of proximity. If you have genes that make broccoli taste like shit, that gene isn't responsible for your unwillingness to eat broccoli, the 'tasting like shit' is an externality from your consciousness, something external like a physical environment. You resolve not to eat something that tastes like shit as an active subject, unconsciously or consciously, the means that which you do this does not escape representation through language - it does not escape what Lacan called the symbolic order. This order is what facilitates and forms the basis of the social in each human physical individual. But that same exact person can resolve, for any reason they want, to eat that brocolli that tastes like shit. The reasons here are social ones, if they weren't social, you wouldn't be able to make the choice to begin with - you'd be no different from a machine, you wouldn't even exist to think about it as an individual.

Insofar as you are actually an individual - a social being - your genes have no effect. They mean nothing. The only degree that which genes can 'influence' an individual is only AFTER what is being influenced is articulated through processes of consciousnesses. So genes 'influence' individuals just as much as something like, say, the weather. This is always and infinitely irreducible to anything directly physical, it is instead social - the social which constitutes a reality itself, one that subsumes all others, including the empirically observable reality - which is only differentiated at the level of our practical relation to it - defined only in a social way. This is exclusively true for humans. For all other animals, including Chimpanzees, no matter how 'social' they are, this sociality has a definite basis in their physical constitution as a fixed state of being, because it was a sociality that was adapted for in relation to a fixed environment. That's what an ecology is. Humans don't have a natural habitat, conversely.

Nature and nurture are false dichotomies. They are both worthless. That's because people aren't simply the 'product' of their environment either, they actively relate to their environment as conscious subjects, as ethical subjects, in a social way. The social dimension proper is what is being ignored here - or worse, it is assumed to be a 'natural habitat' (which begs the question, considering this natural habitat is made up only of actual people, who are allegedly 'adapted' to it) the one that is historical where human genetics are fixed and unaltered throughout this same course of history. This dimension has no basis in 'genetics' or the 'environment'. If you want to ask the degree that which genes 'influence' human behavior, ask yourself this: What degree did your genetics determine you asking the question in the first place? The same ethical contours that define how you as an individual as such a question, which you presuppose for yourself as a free rational agent, determine one's propensity to be a criminal, and so on. These are matters that relate to a person's consciousness, both their unconscious and conscious dimension. To say otherwise is a vicious anti-democratic logic that excludes the damned, the poor, the archetypal precarian from our collective space of reason.

[ComradeAllende]

Recently there's been a research trend trying to identify the "genetic basis" of political affiliations, i.e. what genes/neural structures make you liberal, conservative, etc. I shit you not.

I personally think this is part of a cyclical process where transformational discoveries in biology, physics, etc. are "transcribed" into the social sphere to explain or justify major social problems. Like how "physical anthropology" and phrenology were used to justify the subjugation of blacks and the working class.

In other words, biology is nothing more than a foundation for human behavior. Yes, some people have serious genetic disorders that affect mental health, but for the broader section of the population, it's the material conditions that cause them to "act out." The unequal distribution of wealth and power breeds vice and "moral corruption" (as contemporary society defines it) across the class spectrum, whether it be rich white kids and their "affluenza" or poor working-class kids and drug abuse, crime, etc.

[odysseus]

Interesting fact: There are laws limiting how much lead can be put in the air through cars and stuff like that, and when the did, the crime rate dropped like a rock. So chemicals interacting with your body certainly influence your mind and emotions.

[Guardia Rossa]

Interesting fact: There are laws limiting how much lead can be put in the air through cars and stuff like that, and when the did, the crime rate dropped like a rock. So chemicals interacting with your body certainly influence your mind and emotions.

Interesting fact: I drank a cup of water and Daesh killed more 8 people.

So water consumption directly affects how much people Daesh kills.

[Masha]

Ah, it is apparently a critical point! I am halfway through the Lysenkoism thread. What you are saying makes sense. It's funny -- I actually had bookmarked it to read later, when I asked this question. So thanks for your comments here too :grin:

P.S. What do you think of the book "Not in Our Genes"? Would you add any disclaimers to it, or do you more or less support the arguments they make in it?

I'm starting reading it right now is why I ask.

[Rafiq]

Interesting fact: There are laws limiting how much lead can be put in the air through cars and stuff like that, and when the did, the crime rate dropped like a rock. So chemicals interacting with your body certainly influence your mind and emotions.

Right, at the same time the war on drugs intensified, the prison population exploded, society became increasingly socialized/atomized as a result of information technologies, which made less room for crevices outside of state control and so on.

But no you're right: Lead.

[Kilij]

Interesting fact: I drank a cup of water and Daesh killed more 8 people.

So water consumption directly affects how much people Daesh kills.

Shit! Really? So I'm an agent of death behind the loss of over a hundred people a day? I hope tea doesn't count too. I'm an even worse offender if tea is included.

Lol, anyhow, I was always used as some sorta living example of "Nature over Nurture" by my mother who constantly pointed out how I was similar to my father, of whom I've never met. It's all bs though, I don't like history because of my father, I even remember how I first started reading about history because I had homeroom with a classical antiquity history teacher and was too lazy to pick up a book at the library and didn't enjoy fiction as a kid. It was a result of my circumstances and decision-making. Same for anything else I happen to share with him she mentions, our interests, love for learning new things, tendency to do things alone(probably because of being raised an only-child), and disrespect for higher authority. I have only took one anthropology class so far in uni, about eating habits and identity, which really made me realize how much my awareness and ability to make healthy choices improved along with factors such as family salary, time off, and my education. I easily could've turned out completely different in behavior and lifestyle. Genes really didn't make me who I am as a person.

[ckaihatsu]

It's the modern scientific equivalent of 'the divine right of kings' -- if it happened to you it's because of your genes, and now it's time to take your lumps, from us....

[cyu]

I was recently given a rundown of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopsychosocial_model

My interpretation was that it's basically all of the above, and it's very difficult to separate them, and the different spheres in fact change the other spheres. For example, your biological state affects how you think, and society, which in turn affects how others think. Education and thought patterns also feedback into neural pathways in your mind that turn into automatic reflexes.

As far as a political position on this goes, all politics starts with the social realm. To me, it just means societal changes can affect both your thought patterns and neural pathways (and vice versa, but that's less useful for politics).

[Masha]

I was recently given a rundown of Biopsychosocial_model[/url]

My interpretation was that it's basically all of the above, and it's very difficult to separate them, and the different spheres in fact change the other spheres. For example, your biological state affects how you think, and society, which in turn affects how others think. Education and thought patterns also feedback into neural pathways in your mind that turn into automatic reflexes.

As far as a political position on this goes, all politics starts with the social realm. To me, it just means societal changes can affect both your thought patterns and neural pathways (and vice versa, but that's less useful for politics).

This seems interesting -- though kind of like a way of conflating common sense too. No one is going to argue that the social and the psychological and the biological aren't inter-related -- I think the point of controversy is more how are we to understand human behavior to begin with (which we then conceptually break down into subsequent categories, as ways of articulating the relevance of different material systems to our behavior or functioning). This model seems a bit "soupy" to me. If politics starts with the social realm, what are you implying doesn't "start" with the social realm?

[Lord Testicles]

Interesting fact: I drank a cup of water and Daesh killed more 8 people.

So water consumption directly affects how much people Daesh kills.

If Daesh killed more people when you drank more and killed less when you drank less and this was measured and recorded then you might be onto something.


Right, at the same time the war on drugs intensified, the prison population exploded, society became increasingly socialized/atomized as a result of information technologies, which made less room for crevices outside of state control and so on.

But no you're right: Lead.

I don't think anybody is saying that violent crime is solely caused by lead poisoning but you can't dismiss the evidence that increased levels of lead in your body may cause cognitive changes. The reasons you give for the increase in crime doesn't account for why the crime rate has dropped since the 1990's. However as odysseus correctly points out there is evidence for a causal relationship between the amount of lead in the atmosphere and violent crime.

[Masha]

Interesting fact: There are laws limiting how much lead can be put in the air through cars and stuff like that, and when the did, the crime rate dropped like a rock. So chemicals interacting with your body certainly influence your mind and emotions.


I think this can be explained in pretty much the same terms as Rafiq was talking about earlier


So genes 'influence' individuals just as much as something like, say, the weather. This is always and infinitely irreducible to anything directly physical, it is instead social - the social which constitutes a reality itself, one that subsumes all others, including the empirically observable reality - which is only differentiated at the level of our practical relation to it - defined only in a social way.

Are you implying, Odysseus, that emotions are a chemical phenomenon?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Interesting fact: I drank a cup of water and Daesh killed more 8 people.

So water consumption directly affects how much people Daesh kills.

While it is wrong to say lead "makes" people violent, I wouldn't dismiss the serious developmental consequences of lead poisoning as mere correlation.

[Rafiq]

I don't think anybody is saying that violent crime is solely caused by lead poisoning but you can't dismiss the evidence that increased levels of lead in your body may cause cognitive changes.

It is known that led poisoning causes cognitive impairments, yes.There is no supernatural basis for human consciousness, we know. The point is that it's irreducible to the physical processes which sustain it - it is a social category.

So it doesn't tell us anything about the basis of 'crime', or more specifically the fact that marginalized peoples of the ghettos are less inclined to follow the great laws of the US than suburban white kids. The police there - are after all - known to be 'just another gang'. Their conditions of life are so different that it's almost as if the ghettos in relation to the American state, are like the west bank in relation to the Israeli state.


The reasons you give for the increase in crime doesn't account for why the crime rate has dropped since the 1990's. However as odysseus correctly points out there is evidence for a causal relationship between the amount of lead in the atmosphere and violent crime

In fact it does - increased socialization and 'atomization' is something which occurred specifically at this period. There are a thousand other complex factors too, which is why it's nonsense to think that one can talk about the decrease of crime in terms of some contingent factor. It's not even that there is more than one factor - it's that the decrease in crime is a wider historical trend, one that isn't even the sum total of various different 'factors' but relates to something much deeper in the course of capitalism's (or neoliberalism, whatever you want) development.

The real reason is quite simple: The rise in crime a decade or so after the war correlated with the rise of the new precariat/mass 'lumpenized' demographics, specifically (but not only) in black communities, who were excluded from being elevated to the cold war 'middle class'. This process was only intensified after the complete nail in the coffin in the American 'welfare state', with the rise of neoliberalism, the defeat of the civil rights movement and the rise of gang violence, mass drug epidemics, and so on. It is anti-democratic, disgusting and reactionary to speak of 'enviromental' factors in this rise of crime, for the simple reason that the criminals were not passive animals, this was their active means to express their resentment, total hopelessness, feelings of humiliation, degradation and so on as it always was and still remains.

The reasons for the drop in the rate of crime can only be understood within the wider context of the American state's attempt to curtail crime by means of violent force, coupled with the basis of crime at some levels largely being eradicated not simply because of the rise of state power, but because of the increased socialization of labor, which made for a more 'inter-connected' society as far as common standards being in place was concerned (though of course, the rise of the American 'police state' was a huge factor).

The notion that lead was even a small factor in this decline is laughable - any idiot can see that one simply couldn't get away with doing things you could get away with in, say, the 70's. Society is simply too socialized, and the power of the American repressive apparatus is infinitely more encompassing. This is literally just common sense. That crime rates dropped after the year 1993, the same year which we are told curtailing led pollution was the prerogative of the state, is literally just a coincidence (One that has no causal explanation for anything - the nature of the effects of lead poisoning last more than a day, or even a year - so that even if all lead pollution ended in 93', this wouldn't tell us shit about the actual rate that which crime dropped, insofar as we're talking about how long the effects of lead wouldn't make such an impact.

The reasons why people would think otherwise are quite simple: The rise of anti-democratic ideology, pervades not only the reactionaries but also the liberals, who - responding to the reactionary notion that crime is owed to the inherent stupidity of blacks, look for 'environmental' factors. Radicals need to understand that this is a false dichotomy and represents the succumbing of liberals to reactionary discourse, it's an ideological compromise.

I mean this is on top of the fact that this time period was exactly the same time period where young, 'psychopathic' killers were the center of national political discourse and attention. It's not like at the expense of all of this, somehow, the great decrease in crime was somehow related to the curtailment of lead pollution.

[Rafiq]

P.S. What do you think of the book "Not in Our Genes"? Would you add any disclaimers to it, or do you more or less support the arguments they make in it?

I'm starting reading it right now is why I ask.

I haven't read it, but I consider Kamin, Rose, and Lewontin to be heroes, an old guard of democratic decency in the sciences, just like Gould. But they are an old guard, however heroic, they aren't winning.

That doesn't change that they ought to be commended, though.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

That crime rates dropped after the year 1993, the same year which we are told curtailing led pollution was the prerogative of the state, is literally just a coincidence (One that has no causal explanation for anything - the nature of the effects of lead poisoning last more than a day, or even a year - so that even if all lead pollution ended in 93', this wouldn't tell us shit about the actual rate that which crime dropped, insofar as we're talking about how long the effects of lead wouldn't make such an impact.

I'm pretty sure leaded fuel stopped being used in the 70s, but I might be wrong about that.

[Rafiq]

Even better yet then.

[natarchive]

oh come on now... what about the twin studies where the two people are separated and raised in different conditions, yet essentially end up equally successful.

[ckaihatsu]

I was recently given a rundown of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopsychosocial_model

My interpretation was that it's basically all of the above, and it's very difficult to separate them, and the different spheres in fact change the other spheres. For example, your biological state affects how you think, and society, which in turn affects how others think. Education and thought patterns also feedback into neural pathways in your mind that turn into automatic reflexes.


This is useful, and is better than your own typical psychology-centric treatments....





As far as a political position on this goes, all politics starts with the social realm.


Not to split hairs too much here, but we might say that all politics begins with the material reality of artificial scarcity, meaning the advent of the class divide.





To me, it just means societal changes can affect both your thought patterns and neural pathways (and vice versa, but that's less useful for politics).


This sounds rather dismissive of the subjective factor, whether of the individual, or of ground-level solidarity and fightbacks.





This seems interesting -- though kind of like a way of conflating common sense too. No one is going to argue that the social and the psychological and the biological aren't inter-related -- I think the point of controversy is more how are we to understand human behavior to begin with (which we then conceptually break down into subsequent categories, as ways of articulating the relevance of different material systems to our behavior or functioning).


Glad to step in here -- please see the following....





This model seems a bit "soupy" to me.


Agreed.

The bourgeois Enlightenment has done much for the sciences, but class interests will inherently impede unmitigated approaches to science, particularly the 'softer', 'soupier' *social sciences*.





If politics starts with the social realm, what are you implying doesn't "start" with the social realm?


I'll jump in to suggest that the *physical* ('hard') sciences will usually be less controversial, due to the simplicity of access for verifying hard-science results and conclusions -- the more difficult and expensive it is to *begin* anything scientific, the more-*specialized* it will automatically be, and less-accessible to the average person.


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This seems interesting -- though kind of like a way of conflating common sense too. No one is going to argue that the social and the psychological and the biological aren't inter-related -- I think the point of controversy is more how are we to understand human behavior to begin with (which we then conceptually break down into subsequent categories, as ways of articulating the relevance of different material systems to our behavior or functioning).


I'll suggest that I have an objective approach to this topic, as seen in the following two diagrams -- imagine them 'overlapping', one on top of the other, on the basis of their common vertical 'macro-to-micro' axis of scale:


[6] Worldview Diagram



http://s6.postimg.org/50sd92sq9/6_Worldview_Diagram.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/87mwspd65/full/)


Generalizations-Characterizations



http://s6.postimg.org/rtrvqqoz5/2714844340046342459_Quxppf_fs.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/dakqpbvu5/full/)

[Rafiq]

oh come on now... what about the twin studies where the two people are separated and raised in different conditions, yet essentially end up equally successful.

Coincidence and extraordinary cases, that would pass for some cheap pop science article, that doesn't pass as a substitute for the scientific method. Twin studies are by default meaningless in explaining anything, because they don't empirically locate anything - and therefore can't control for THE important variables

Their methedological flaws are well known. Crass flaws in fact, almost juvenile.

Twin studies simply do not account for other variables. It'a that simple. There are so few twins reared apart studies that the grand majority are just embaressingly flawed: the grand majority consist of twins separated at a late age (i..e 5-9), and often times they were only separated temporarily... With relatives or family friends.

One case that was passed off in a twin study involved aunts as neighbors rearing twins separately. Literally next door neighbors. The few cases where twins are reared apart, but in different social contexts (city vs rural) they are as different as anyone else.

[Rafiq]

As stated before in the past:

For this reason, all of the 'examples' you've provided rely on tacitly recognized axioms from which ONLY AFTER we are able to work with numbers. My point is that it is impossible to directly quantify the background of designation itself, i.e. - it is for this reason we, for example, get nonsensical drivel about how "Intelligence" among other things (i..e political views) are heritable because of twin studies, unable to account for other variables, like shared proximity of social space, which makes "scientists" ignore class differences (NOT simply income differences) in measuring differences in "environment", moreso, even creating ridiculous dichotomies about what is our 'environment' and what is heritable, as though humans are merely passively shaped by their "environment". The reality that twins are more likely to share "beliefs", leads them to believe there is a genetic basis for it, completely impervious to the reality that shared physiological development in a similar social setting, of course will make humans more similar in other regards - for such stupid preferences are largely chosen at random. This is why when one twin is reared in a rural setting, and another in an urban setting - surprise surprise, they turn out to be vastly different. If we take evolutionary psychology, which rests upon false premises about taking Darwin to his "logical conclusions" vis a vis humans once scientists realize that god isn't real after all, and that there is no soul, and conceive sociology in terms of zoology.

...

The problem I have with twin studies in general as a means to measure what is biologically innate, besides various flaws pointed out by several geneticists themselves, is that it does not so much indicate genetic innateness as it does shared proximity to one's surroundings. That is to say, there are various factors which play into the development of the child, and how a child receives this is contingent upon very specific mechanisms of growth, learning, and so on. When you basically have factors which can only be deemed random - that is to say, if the possibility of a certain outcome can be either way (i.e. with things like class controlled for), then of course people with exactly the same genetic constitution are going to be more predisposed to be similar - even something as small as appearance, similar physiological development, and so on, can greatly affect the outcome of proximity. Of course, separately reared twin studies, legitimate ones that it is - are very scarce in terms of assessing these sorts of things. On top of that, what constitutes an "environment" is beyond vague. Have there been twin studies conducted across, for example, radically different social contexts - a twin raised in Paris, and its counterpart raised in Cairo? More or less, people of the same class are all going to share the same environment - I mean, share the same social, ideological space of collective reasoning, learning and so on. The basis of difference, when we Marxists speak of "environment" is not on the level of household to household, but social difference in environment having entirely different ramifications for consciousness. Hence, you never hear about miraculous twin studies being conducted wherein one is raised in the ghetto, with another raised in Silicon Valley.

The blunderous outcome of this kind of nonsense are ridiculous claims about political views having a genetic basis because of these twin studies. One should be skeptical of anything being attributed to genes unless the genes, DNA, etc. aren't actually isolated or found for. The point is that of course people have physical differences, and given that a plethora of factors go into the development of personality, of course if this is at random, then common physiology is going to make one more likely to develop in a certain way. That does not mean such development is inevitable, it means that - simply in the face of a non-random factor placed at random - it is more likely. What is hilariously erroneous about biological determinists is that they will make pretenses to something being, for example, 80% heritable. how does one quantify that? How could you ACTUALLY measure the proportions of ambiguous traits like that? What constitutes something as having a 20% environmental basis (what does that even MEAN?). If something has an inevitably biological basis, then it likewise follows that the same outcome should persist 100% of the time. When this is not the case, they will attribute differences to randomly different expressions of the same genes - completely incapable of actually tracing X behavior genetically itself, on an empirical level. I mean, these people are literally, overtly claiming today that "income differences" are owed to genetics, and that all social stratification is owed to IQ differences. It's so easy to see the real nature of this 'science', the basis of its vitality, and so on.

The same methodology which prattles of the "inheritance" of IQ, for example, also gives us drivel about how political views, religiosity, overall well being and happiness.... Have a genetic basis, again, all of which are because of these stupid twin studies. Something is seriously, seriously wrong here. To add, various studies have also found statistically significant data that would place the month you're born in to correlate with some personality traits - one study found that people born in February were more likely to develop schizophrenia. It goes without saying that - again, this doesn't confirm astrology, but shared proximity.

.....

It staggers beyond belief that people still speak of twin studies. Twin studies, which began with Francis Galton, represent the degeneration of the sciences - fewer kinds of study are as crass, lazy and frankly cheap as these are. In fact, it is quite clear to anyone who is familiar with the controversy that the reason people don't really care about twins reared apart studies in terms of methodological rigor, at least compared to twins living in the same household, is because they use these studies to dissuade any criticism of the twins-reared-together studies, the ones that actually compromise the overwhelming majority of all such studies. They already are confident in the conclusion they're going to draw, so they throw out these cheap, half-assed, worthless fucking twins 'reared apart' studies to say "Okay, see! We did it, we tested for that variable, now shut the fuck up and let us continue on!". Or even worse, their apologists will often times point to supposedly extraordinary cases, where twins reared apart at birth, will have happened to have girlfriends with the same names, dogs with the same names, rings worn on the same finger, the same kinds of jobs, and whatever, cases which are clearly anomalous and totally owed to chance.

[Thirsty Crow]

In what ways (if any) does genetics conflict with the Marxist priority of the social over the biological when it comes to a scientific understanding of human behavior?

It doesn't conflict with it in any way. That is, reasonable and scientific accounts of genetically determined outcomes, like genetically "transmitted" disease.




I keep reading all these articles about "the aging gene" and other such things. I'm convinced that genetics is valid when it comes to describing the process of protein production with the result of definite phenotypes of an organism. Yet, I am not so sure when I hear talk about more abstract genes, e.g., the gene for longevity -- or even more troublesome, "criminal genes" and other genes that supposedly account for psychological characteristics in humans (and other branches of the phylogenetic tree, for that matter -- though I don't know where I should draw the line there either, tbh).

The problem with all of this is not genetics, but popularization of science which reduces all matters of physiology (e.g. brain damage and structure) to genes. That's not biological determinism, it's genetic reductionism. As you note, protein production which further works in tissue formation and finally with the outcome of physiological constitution can't really be used to postulate stuff like "criminal genes", or even agression genes (since the proximate correlate of agressive behavior isn't found on the level of genes; and furthermore the idea of locating a specific gene for a specific hormonal outcome is complete nonsense).

[ckaihatsu]

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Publication bias is sometimes called the "file drawer effect", or "file drawer problem". The origin of this term is that results not supporting the hypotheses of researchers often go no further than the researchers' file drawers, leading to a bias in published research.[9] The term "file drawer problem" was coined by the psychologist Robert Rosenthal in 1979.[10]




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias

[LionofTepelenë]

Its not to say that genes don't affect society at all, but it just affects very little. Humans are animals, but a Marxist understands that human beings are not bound to the laws of evolution as in other animals. Some exceptions exist, such as chimpanzees and Orca whales of course, but that a topic for another day. Just keep in mind that humans are bound in societal and socioeconomic effects on their behavior, and also class relationships.

Some of these ancient evolutionary behaviors come back however, in specific behaviors. Say a fight or flight situation, humans rely on their evolutionary drive for survival in extreme cases.

I have also read before that children of Jews who survived the holocaust also had less levels of dopamine in their bodies, which resulted in increased levels of depression. Is this not a change in behavior from obvious genetic causes, given it is still an extreme situation?