cpsylist: cpsyalumni: Empathy and DNA

[Leslie Leve]

Hi CPSY colleagues,

As someone who uses genetic methods in my own psychiatric research in the COE, I feel compelled to share some brief comments with you all, because genetic research is often misinterpreted by practitioners and by the general community.

I think it is important to recognize that even when something is genetic and genes can be identified for a trait or condition, it does NOT mean that that trait is “fixed” or unchangeable. Take a person’s height for example. It is highly genetic. However, we know that at a population level, the average height has increased by about 6 inches over the past couple centuries. We also know that diet and medical care have a significant impact on height. I think it’s important when you hear about genetic influences on behavior to remember that you, as counseling psychologists, can still make a difference! Genetic methods account for individual differences in variance in behavior – but they do NOT say anything about the potential for mean level improvements in an outcome.

I hope this is helpful to those of you working with clients with some of the behaviors and conditions mentioned in this article, thanks for reading my little blog about this!

Leslie


***********
Leslie Leve, PhD
Alumni Faculty Professor, College of Education
Associate Vice President for Research
Associate Director, Prevention Science Institute
University of Oregon

President, Society for Prevention Research

Phone: 541-346-9601
Web: https://education.uoregon.edu/users/leslie-leve



From: <cpsyalumni-bounces at lists.uoregon.edu> on behalf of Krista Chronister <kmg at uoregon.edu>
Date: Tuesday, April 3, 2018 at 9:21 AM
To: "cpsylist at lists.uoregon.edu" <cpsylist at lists.uoregon.edu>, CPSY Alumni <cpsyalumni at lists.uoregon.edu>
Subject: cpsyalumni: Empathy and DNA

An interesting new article…

Subject: Empathy and DNA

Researchers claim that our ability to “feel” the emotions of others stems partly from our genetic makeup. A study of nearly 47,000 adults found that genes seem to explain 10% of the variance in empathy from one individual to another and that these genes are also associated with the risk of autism, schizophrenia, and anorexia. Researcher Dr. Varun Warrier writes, “We've known for a few decades now that differences in empathy have been observed in various psychiatric conditions… Understanding how genes contribute to differences in empathy may provide us with insights into the genetic basis for some of these psychiatric conditions.”
Translational Psychiatry, March 2018

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-017-0082-6







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