Gene-driven Social Connectedness in the Divergence Between East and West

Abstract

The divergence of Eastern and Western civilizations is conventionally explained by a combination of historical, economical, and geographical factors. Here I explored the contribution of DRD2 and CYP2A6 gene variations, that were shown to contribute to homophily and heterophily in friendship in social networks and differ in their frequencies in East Asia and European ancestry populations. Modeling suggests that allelic frequencies, profoundly affect the abundance of predicted social connections in the two populations: in the European ancestry populations, the total number of predicted connections was almost twofold higher than that of the East Asian population. A plausible hypothesis is that abundant connections between individuals, likely supersede the coherence of hierarchical structures in societies, promoting individualism. In East Asia, the reduced prevalence of DRD2-associated connections favors a more collectivistic society at which the hierarchy is not compromised by the complex interpersonal relationships among individuals. These trends were reenforced by the observation that in the European populations only, the predicted social connections derived by the actual DRD2 genotypes were elevated compared to those calculated by the corresponding frequencies of the DRD2 alleles. The presence of the heterophily-linked CYP2A6 variations in the EUR population may also contribute to this as it may operate as a “social disruptor” gene, conferring to the establishment of relatively isolated clusters, increasing the overall complexity of the resulting social network. These approaches may provide paradigms contributing to our understanding of cultural divergence between populations.