Deck 9: The Inheritance of Personality: Behavioral Genetics and Evolutionary Theory

Question 1

What might explain the difference in heritability coefficients between twin and non-twin studies?

A) increased measurement error in non-twin studies
B) the presence of interactive genetic effects
C) the greater statistical power of twin studies
D) the rarity of non-twin studies

Answer 1

B

Question 2

According to studies of non-twin relatives, the average heritability coefficient for most traits is about ________.

A) .20
B) .40
C) .60
D) .80

Answer 2

A

Question 3

Which factor below would be part of the so-called nonshared environment?

A) family SES
B) genetic attributes
C) different friendships for siblings
D) general parenting styles

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Half-siblings share about how much genetic material on average?

A) 0
B) .125
C) .25
D) .50

Question 5

The field of study that attempts to explain how patterns of behavior characteristic of the entire human species originated because of the survival value they had for our ancestors is called ________.

A) evolutionary psychology
B) behavioral genetics
C) heritability science
D) behavioral Darwinism

Question 6

What behavioral genetic research finding seems to support the conclusion that the effect of growing up in the same home environment is rather minimal?

A) The personality traits of monozygotic (MZ) twins are correlated at .50 on average.
B) The personality traits of dizygotic (DZ) twins are correlated at .30 on average.
C) The personality traits of adoptive siblings raised in the same family are correlated around .05.
D) The personality traits of adoptive siblings raised in the same family are correlated above .25.

Question 7

The field of study that attempts to explain how individual differences in behavior (i.e., personality traits) are shared by biological relatives is called ________.

A) evolutionary biology
B) behavioral genetics
C) heritability science
D) behavioral Darwinism

Question 8

Monozygotic (MZ) twins share ________ percent of the genes that vary across individuals, and dizygotic (DZ) twins share, on average, ________ percent of the genes that vary across individuals.

A) 50; 25
B) 90; 10
C) 50; 100
D) 100; 50

Question 9

Which of the following is NOT indicated by a heritability statistic?

A) whether genetic factors play some role in shaping individual differences
B) whether the etiology of certain conditions such as mental retardation is environmental
C) whether genes and environments interact to produce behavior
D) how much variability in a trait is due to nonshared environmental factors

Question 10

The notion that humans could be improved through selective breeding is called________.

A) eugenics
B) cloning
C) behavioral Darwinism
D) heritability

Question 11

If the correlation between the shyness of a sample of dizygotic twin pairs is .25 and the correlation between the shyness of a sample of monozygotic twin pairs is .50, then the heritability coefficient for shyness is ________.

A) .125
B) .250
C) .500
D) 2.00

Question 12

Which of the following attributes seems to have the lowest heritability coefficient?

A) severe mental retardation
B) moderate mental retardation
C) extraversion
D) depression

Question 13

The presence of schizophrenia was measured in both monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins. The correlation between the MZ twins was .50 and the correlation between the DZ twins was .30. What is the heritability coefficient for schizophrenia?

A) .80
B) .20
C) .40
D) .65

Question 14

What is the correct formula for calculating heritability?

A) 2 (rMZ - rDZ)
B) 2 - (rMZ - rDZ)
C) 2 + (rMZ - rDZ)
D) 2 (rDZ - rMZ)

Question 15

If a trait is influenced by genes, then it ought to be more highly correlated across pairs of ________ than across pairs of ________.

A) genetic siblings; fraternal twins
B) fraternal twins; identical twins
C) identical twins; fraternal twins
D) adoptive siblings; genetic siblings

Question 16

When personality psychologists measure trait differences in extraversion, what kinds of direct observations are they making?

A) phenotypic
B) genotypic
C) allelic
D) genome-wide

Question 17

Behavioral genetics, like trait psychology, focuses on aspects of personality that ________, whereas evolutionary psychology more typically focuses on aspects of personality that ________.

A) all humans share; differ from one individual to another
B) vary among groups of individuals; vary among individuals
C) differ from one individual to another; all humans share
D) are species-specific; are individual-specific

Question 18

Drawing on research about the impact of the shared family environment on personality development, Judith Harris argued that ________.

A) parents have no important long-term effects on their children's personalities
B) parents have important long-term effects on their children's personalities
C) parental behavior affects the personalities of their genetic offspring more than their adopted children
D) shared environmental factors were substantially larger than nonshared factors

Question 19

The ________ refers to the underlying genetic structure that leads to the observable ________.

A) phenotype; genogram
B) genotype; phenotype
C) phenotype; genotype
D) genetic map; genetic architecture

Question 20

According to estimates based on twin studies, the average heritability coefficient of many traits of personality is about ________ when using self-reports of personality.

A) .20
B) .40
C) .80
D) 1.0

Question 21

A scientist who tries to determine how differences in a particular trait are correlated with differences in a particular gene is using the ________ method.

A) behavioral genetic
B) association
C) covariance structure
D) causal isolation

Question 22

A recent study indicates that a serotonin-related genetic allele seems to influence the development of depression in conjunction with ________.

A) stressful life events
B) high neuroticism
C) low extraversion
D) childhood maltreatment

Question 23

According to a recent study, the kind of depression that follows failure, such as a job loss, is characterized by ________.

A) emotional pain, crying, and seeking social support
B) aggression, hostility, and anger
C) fatigue, pessimism, and guilt
D) sexual dysfunction, increased cortisol, and increased motor activity

Question 24

What gene seems to be related to the trait of neuroticism?

A) DRD4
B) SSRI
C) 5-HTT
D) APOA

Question 25

If there is no phenotypic variation in a trait, then the heritability of that trait will be approximately ________.

A) 1.0
B) .50
C) .25
D) 0

Question 26

The idea that feelings of self-esteem evolved to gauge social acceptance is known as the ________ theory.

A) sociometer
B) social self
C) social self-acceptance
D) self-esteem as survival

Question 27

According to a recent study about types of depression, the kind of depression that follows a social loss is characterized by ________.

A) emotional pain, crying, and seeking social support
B) aggression, hostility, and anger
C) fatigue, pessimism, and guilt
D) sexual dysfunction, increased cortisol, and increased motor activity

Question 28

What gene seems to be related to the trait of sensation seeking or novelty seeking?

A) DRD4
B) SSRI
C) 5-HTT
D) APOA

Question 29

A gene that produces low levels of ________ activity in conjunction with ________ seems to increase the risk for developing antisocial behavior.

A) serotonin; childhood maltreatment
B) MAO; childhood maltreatment
C) DRD4; exposure to antisocial peers
D) dopamine; exposure to antisocial peers

Question 30

What book marked the beginning of evolutionary thinking?

A) Lorenz's On Aggression
B) Wilson's Sociobiology
C) Pinker's How the Mind Works
D) Darwin's Origin of Species

Question 31

As a result of Timothy's genes, he went through puberty later than his peers. Because he was much smaller than other boys, they tended to pick on him, and he fought back to protect himself. As a young adult, Timothy is more aggressive than his peers. This scenario illustrates that his aggression is ________.

A) completely the result of his genetic inheritance
B) completely the result of his early social environment
C) the result of an interaction between the genetic expression and the resulting social environment
D) the result of his social environment in adulthood because genes cannot affect behavior in adulthood

Question 32

________ searches for specific genes that are linked with particular personality attributes.

A) An epigenetic scan
B) An epigenetic association study
C) An allelic frequency study
D) A genome-wide association study

Question 33

What term refers to different forms of the same gene?

A) chromosome
B) genotype
C) allele
D) nucleotide

Question 34

What is the biggest confound in a typical parenting study that examines the correlation between parenting practices and the behaviors of offspring?

A) Most studies use adoption designs so there is no genetic link between parents and children.
B) It is difficult to measure parenting behavior with much reliability.
C) In most studies of parenting, parents and kids share genetic material.
D) Shared environmental factors were substantially larger than nonshared factors.

Question 35

What is the precise meaning of a heritability coefficient?

A) the proportion of total variance in a trait that is due to genetic influences
B) the proportion of genetic influences in a trait that is due to inheritance
C) the chance that reliable genetic effects are statistically significant
D) the chance that genetic effects will replicate in an additional sample

Question 36

According to evolutionary biology, altruistic behavior might help assure the survival of one's own genes into succeeding generations primarily because ________.

A) altruistic individuals take fewer risks than nonaltruistic individuals, so they are more likely to survive and produce children
B) altruistic people tend to attract more mates, thereby increasing the likelihood that altruistic people will reproduce
C) some of your genes will make it into the next generation if the people who share your genes also survive
D) altruism promotes physical health and longevity

Question 37

In the past, some psychologists have concluded that shared family environments have little or no effect on personality development. Recent research has cast doubt on such conclusions by finding that ________.

A) molecular geneticists identified the specific alleles associated with each of the Big Five personality traits
B) the shared family environment actually has a larger effect on personality than does shared nonfamily environment (i.e., school)
C) the shared environment was related to certain aspects of personality when personality was measured through direct behavioral observation
D) the shared environment was related to personality when personality was measured through self-report data

Question 38

Studies focused on ________ are interested in learning how early experiences shape genetic expression.

A) eugenetics
B) ontogenetics
C) epigenetics
D) genome-wide associations

Question 39

In which sample would you expect the heritability of IQ to be the lowest?

A) low socioeconomic status twins
B) middle socioeconomic status twins
C) high socioeconomic status twins
D) None of the above; the heritability will be the same in all three groups.

Question 40

A high heritability coefficient can result when the trait ________ across individuals or when genes are important in ________ sense.

A) does not vary; a very limited
B) varies greatly; an absolute
C) varies greatly; a very limited
D) does not vary; an absolute

Question 41

Men who score high on ________ are especially accurate when it comes to judging their mate value, whereas women who score high on ________ are especially accurate when it comes to judging their mate value.

A) neuroticism; sociosexuality
B) sociosexuality; narcissism
C) sociosexuality; agreeableness
D) narcissism; sociosexuality

Question 42

Kevin is placing a personal ad in the local paper. According to evolutionary predictions about mate selection, he will most likely mention his ________ when describing himself.

A) physical attractiveness
B) propensity for jealousy
C) financial resources
D) young age

Question 43

All of the following are objections to evolutionary theorizing EXCEPT:

A) Evolutionary theorizing consists of after-the-fact speculations that cannot be put to empirical test.
B) Evolutionary theorists assume that everybody wants many children when, in fact, many people limit their own reproduction.
C) Evolutionary theorists assume that behavior patterns present today are essentially inevitable and unchangeable because they are rooted in our biology.
D) Evolutionary theory is unnecessarily complicated because it involves too many basic principles.

Question 44

In responding to evolutionary theorizing, Eagly and Wood (1999) suggest that ________.

A) societies' norms reflect men's greater size and strength and women's role in childbearing more than biologically hardwired behavioral tendencies
B) social norms are shaped by evolutionary forces and therefore impossible to change
C) social norms regarding child care vary dramatically from one culture to the next
D) the great diversity of gender roles across cultures undermines evolutionary perspectives

Question 45

Kara is placing a personal ad in the local paper. According to evolutionary predictions about mate selection, she will most likely mention her ________ when describing herself.

A) physical attractiveness
B) future goals
C) financial resources
D) personality traits

Question 46

There are controversies related to evolutionary theorizing with respect to the difficulty in providing an evolutionary explanation to rare behaviors. This has been called the ________.

A) low base rate fallacy
B) dilemma of the rarely exercised option
C) spurious causation fallacy
D) naturalistic fallacy

Question 47

A woman who mates with an unstable but attractive man seems to follow a different reproductive strategy than most other women. This idea is called ________.

A) the sexy son hypothesis
B) taking the reproductive high road
C) the adaptive option proposal
D) evolutionary roaming

Question 48

For both men and women, those who score high on ________ are especially concerned with finding attractive mating partners, whereas women and men who score low on ________ are concerned with traits related to parenting behaviors.

A) neuroticism; sociosexuality
B) sociosexuality; neuroticism
C) narcissism; agreeableness
D) sociosexuality; sociosexuality

Question 49

If Sally believes that anything natural is morally acceptable, she is committing a ________ fallacy.

A) naturalistic
B) reductionistic
C) justificationist
D) evolutionary

Question 50

When placing personal ads, women are more likely to specify that they are seeking someone who is ________, whereas men are more likely to specify that they are seeking someone who is ________.

A) younger; older
B) the same age; younger
C) older; younger
D) older; the same age

Question 51

So far, evolutionary psychology has been much more concerned with the origins of ________ than with ________.

A) unconscious processes; conscious processes
B) extraversion and agreeableness; neuroticism, openness, and conscientiousness
C) neuroticism, openness, and conscientiousness; extraversion and agreeableness
D) general human nature; individual differences

Question 52

A researcher interested in predicting patterns of helping behavior using the concept of inclusive fitness would want to know ________.

A) how strongly helping behavior in biological parents correlates with helping behavior in their offspring
B) how much genetic material you share with someone you might help
C) the similarity between adopted siblings on measures of helping behavior
D) monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) correlations for helping behavior

Question 53

The point of view that scientists will eventually be able to explain everything about the mind via biology is called ________.

A) biological reductionism
B) the naturalistic fallacy
C) psychophysical structuralism
D) evolutionary theorizing

Question 54

Across a wide variety of cultures, ________ are more likely than ________ to place a higher value on physical attractiveness.

A) women; men
B) introverts; extraverts
C) extraverts; introverts
D) men; women

Question 55

According to evolutionary theory, a man's greatest worry is that ________.

A) his partner will leave for another person
B) he is not the biological father of the children that he is supporting
C) his partner will form an emotional bond with another person
D) his partner will share resources with another person

Question 56

What might be the evolutionary function of crying, according to recent research described in the text?

A) a way to elicit social support
B) an aversive motivator of behavioral change toward more adaptive pursuits
C) an index of social acceptance
D) a way of preventing wasteful energy expenditures on lost causes

Question 57

What term describes the willingness to engage in sexual activities in the absence of a committed relationship?

A) openness to experience
B) sensation seeking
C) sociosexuality
D) sociometry

Question 58

The evolutionary explanation of sex differences in mate selection is that ________.

A) men and women seek very different things; men seek just sex and women seek commitment
B) the differences are the result of a biological fluke and will disappear completely in the next hundred years
C) men and women seek essentially the same thing; both are trying to increase the likelihood that they will produce viable offspring who will survive
D) the differences are the result of socialization practices

Question 59

According to evolutionary psychology, which of the following does NOT account for individual differences?

A) Certain levels of maladaptive traits such as neuroticism ensure that populations are not so excessively large that it threatens the survival of the group.
B) Behavioral patterns evolve as reactions to specific environmental experiences (and if different individuals inhabit different environments, they will then exhibit different behavioral patterns).
C) Individuals differ in terms of the behavioral strategies that make the most sense, given their other characteristics.
D) Some biologically influenced behavior may be "frequency dependent" (only appearing in some subset of the population).

Question 60

Much of the world is changing toward a setting where physical strength matters less and alternative child-care arrangements are possible. The view that men's and women's behavioral tendencies are determined by social structure implies that ________.

A) their behavioral tendencies will change over thousands of years
B) their behavioral tendencies will change relatively quickly (over hundreds of years)
C) their behavioral tendencies will probably never change
D) men will primarily adopt child-rearing duties and women will primarily adopt the duties of rulers and warriors

Question 61

The prevalence for the short allele of 5-HTT is higher in Caucasians than in Japanese populations.

Question 62

According to the sociometer hypothesis, depression evolved as a way to monitor how much we are accepted by others.

Question 63

According to an evolutionary analysis of reactions to depression, crying is a wasteful use of energy and resources.

Question 64

A researcher who attempts to show how self-serving biases may have facilitated survival is taking a behavioral genetic approach.

Question 65

If a trait is influenced by genes, then dizygotic (DZ) twins should be more similar than monozygotic (MZ) twins.

Question 66

It is widely argued that single genes have strong links to personality attributes.

Question 67

The amount of time one spends watching television is genetically influenced.

Question 68

The heritability of moderate mental retardation is higher than the heritability of severe mental retardation.

Question 69

A researcher who measures the extent to which genetic factors influence the trait of narcissism is taking an evolutionary approach.

Question 70

There is little reason to believe that the effects of genes are multiplicative rather than simply additive.

Question 71

According to evolutionary explanations of mate selection, women and men seek essentially the same thing from a mating partner-an increased likelihood that the partner is physically attractive.

Question 72

The fact that the same environment affects different individuals in different ways illustrates the principle of gene-environment interactions.

Question 73

DRD4 is linked to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Question 74

The heritability of IQ is higher in impoverished families than in more economically advantaged families.

Question 75

Most epigenetic studies have been conducted with humans.

Question 76

There is a reasonable evolutionary explanation for the finding that men are quick to conclude that women are sexually interested in them even when they are not.

Question 77

There is evidence that particular genes are related to certain personality characteristics and psychological difficulties.

Question 78

Humans share about 98 percent of their genetic material with chimpanzees.

Question 79

The risk of divorce is not genetically influenced because it involves an interaction between two people.

Question 80

The short allele form of 5-HTT is thought to be the riskier form for a high level of neuroticism.