Progress in the Developmental Genetic Analysis of Behavior

Near the end of his illustrious career, Gottlieb lamented the continued dominance of heritability analysis in human psychology and the difficulties in winning support for the developmental point of view. Recent, spectacular progress in molecular genetic neuroscience and the genetic study of behavior, however, is rendering heritability analysis passé. In many recent articles that mention “heritability,” the term is employed in the generic sense of transmission of something, not necessarily genes, from parent to offspring, rather than as a claim to separate genetic and environmental influences on development. Increasingly, genetic analysis shows why genetic and environmental effects are not and cannot be additive in reality.