Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 2: Biobehavioral Influences (1994)
Chapter: ANIMAL STUDIES
Genetics and Violence
Gregory Carey
ANIMAL STUDIES
There is no behavioral genetic literature on violence in infrahuman species. Rather, the phenotype (i.e., observable behavior) is termed aggression or agonistic behavior, often occurring as an appropriate, adaptive response to a particular set of environmental circumstances. The extrapolation of such evolutionarily preadapted responses to human homicide or robbery is, of course, tenuous. Nevertheless, the ability to control matings and the intrauterine and postnatal environment dictates that the study of behavioral biology in animals may yield clues to the conditions for onset and cessation of some violent encounters in humans.
The behavioral genetic literature on animal aggression focuses almost exclusively on rats and mice. It has been documented for more than half a century that there are strain differences in the agonistic behavior of male mice (Ginsburg and Allee, 1942; Scott, 1942). The extensive literature on these differences has been reviewed elsewhere (e.g., Brain et al., 1989; Maxson, 1981). Selection studies have also demonstrated significant heritability for murine aggression (e.g., Ebert and Sawyer, 1980; van Oortmerssen and Bakker, 1981). Hence, there is abundant evidence that genetic
Gregory Carey is at the Department of Psychology and the Institute for Behavioral Genetics, University of Colorado, Boulder.
