Examine Genetic Explanations for Aggression

Authors Avatar by ellouise1997hotmailcom (student)

Genetics

Genetic explanations of aggression suggest that its genes that have a large impact on aggressive behaviour. A lot of studies have been conducted on monozygotic twins (MZ) who share the same genes or dizygotic twins (DZ) who don’t. Christianson conducted research with MZ and DZ twins finding that MZ twins had a higher concordance rate for criminality than DZ twins. Concluding that genes do have an impact on aggression and MZ twins are likely to show aggressive behaviour if another does.

Supporting research was conducted by McGuffin. They found similar results to Christianson and found that MZ twins had higher concordance rates than DZ twins. This supports the claim that twins that share genes are more likely to both show aggressive behaviour.

However both studies never showed 100% concordance rates which means that there must be other factors that contribute to aggression.

Also another weakness is MZ twins get treated alike because they look the same. Evans et al argued that findings within twin studies had low validity as MZ twins get treated in the same way which could contribute to aggression.

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Furthermore, its measures was in criminality. Not all criminal offenses show aggressive behaviour such as stealing. Therefore, the findings validity is reduced.

Alike, twin studies fail to consider the environment and how it may impact the likelihood of twins carrying out aggression.

Therefore research was conducted on adoption and both accounts for the environment and genes. Mednick conducted research into children who were adopted and looked at the likelihood of them showing aggressive behaviour if biological or adopted parents had already. They found that children who had a biological parent who had a criminal conviction had a higher ...

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