Behavior-Genetic Strategies in the Study of Emotion

Abstract

Behavior-genetic studies of emotionality in rats and human studies of adult personality and childhood temperament provide evidence of genetic effects on emotion-relevant trails. Twin studies of autonomic reactivity suggest that psychophysiologic responses to stress are heritable. Genetic analyses of fears reveal that the magnitude of genetic influence varies across fears and across development. Finally, recent findings in psychiatric genetics shed light on the role of heritable variation in emotional functioning in major psychiatric disorders. Thus, there is evidence from a variety of sources that characteristics relevant to emotion are influenced by genetic factors. However, behavior-genetic methods generally have not been applied in laboratory-based studies of the psychophysiologic, cognitive, or expressive correlates of emotion. Because recent developments in quantitative genetics permit us to go beyond the simple estimation of heritability, a broader application of behavior-genetic strategies to the study of emotion, one which incorporates elicitation of emotion in the laboratory, promises to elucidate the interrelationships among the components of emotional systems.