Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T19:03:43.577Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Nature, nurture, and psychopathology: A new look at an old topic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

Michael Rutter
Michael Rutter
Affiliation:
Medical Research Council Child Psychiatry Unit, Institute of Psychiatry, London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The important implications for developmental psychopathology that derive from advances in psychiatric and behavioral genetics are discussed in relation to a series of mistaken stereotypes: that strong effects mean that environmental influences must be unimportant; that genes provide a limit to potential; that genetic strategies are of no value for studying environmental influences; that nature and nurture are separate; that genes for serious diseases are necessarily bad; that diseases have nothing to do with normal variation; that genetic findings will not help identify diseases; that genetic influences diminish with age; that disorders that run in families must be genetic; that disorders that seem not to run in families cannot be genetic; and that single major genes lead only to specific rare diseases that follow a Mendelian pattern. The reasons why these stereotypes are mistaken are considered in relation to genetic concepts and findings.

Type
Research Article
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , April 1991 , pp. 125 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bock, G., & Collins, G. M. (Eds.). (1987). Molecular approaches to human polygenic diseases. Ciba Foundation Symposium, No. 130. Chichester: Wiley.Google Scholar
Cadoret, R. J. (1985). Genes, environment and their interaction in the development of psychopathology. In Sakai, T. & Tsuboi, T. (Eds.), Genetic aspects of human behaviour (pp. 165–175). Tokyo: Igaku–Shoin.Google Scholar
Capron, C., & Duyme, M. (1989). Assessment of effects of socio-economic status on IQ in a full cross-fostering study. Nature, 340, 552–554.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cloninger, R. C., Reich, T., Suarez, B. K., Rice, J. P., & Gottesman, I. I. (1985). The principles of genetics in relation to psychiatry. In Shepherd, M. (Ed.), Handbook of psychiatry. The scientific foundations of psychiatry (vol. 5, pp. 34–66). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chadwick, D., Bock, G., & Whelan, J. (1990). Human genetic information: Science, law and ethics. Ciba Foundation Symposium, No. 149. Chichester: Wiley.Google Scholar
DeFries, J. C., & Fulker, D. W. (1985). Multiple regression analysis of twin data. Behavior Genetics, 15, 467–473.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
DeFries, J. C., & Fulker, D. W. (1988). Multiple regression analysis of twin data: Etiology of deviant scores versus individual differences. Acta Geneticae Medicae et Gemellologiae, 37, 205–216.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dunn, J., & Plomin, R. (1990). Separate lives: Why siblings are so different. New York: Basic.Google Scholar
Eaves, L. J., Eysenck, H. J., & Martin, N. G. (1989). Genes, culture and personality: An empirical approach. London: Academic.Google Scholar
Folstein, S., & Rutter, M. (1977). Infantile autism: A genetic study of 21 twin pairs. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 18, 297–321.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fuggle, P., & Graham, P. (in press). Metabolic/endocrine disorders and psychological functioning. In Rutter, M. & Casaer, P. (Eds.), Biological risk factors for psychosocial disorders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gottesman, I. I. (1963). Genetic aspects of intelligent behaviour. In Ellis, N. (Ed.), Handbook of mental deficiency. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Hahn, M. E., Hewitt, J. K., Henderson, N. D., & Benno, R. H. (Eds.) (1990). Developmental behavior genetics: Neural, biometrical and evolutionary approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hitman, G. A., & Niven, M. J. (1989). Genes and diabetes mellitus. British Medical Bulletin, 45, 191–205.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnson, C. A., Ahern, F. M., & Johnson, R. C. (1976). Levels of functioning of siblings and parents of probands of varying degrees of retardation. Behavioral Genetics, 6, 473–477.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Le Couteur, A., Bailey, A., Rutter, M., & Gottesman, I. (1989, August). Epidemiologically based twin study of autism. Paper given at the First World Congress on Psychiatric Genetics, Churchill College, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Lewis, E. O. (1933). Types of mental deficiency and their social significance. Journal of Mental Science, 79, 298–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Locurto, C. (1990). The malleability of IQ as judged from adoption studies. Intelligence, 14, 275–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macdonald, H., Rutter, M., Rios, P., & Bolton, P. (1989, August). Cognitive and social abnormalities in the siblings of autistic and Down's syndrome probands. Paper given at the First World Congress on Psychiatric Genetics, Churchill College, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Matheny, A. P. (1989). Children's behavioral inhibition over age and across situations: Genetic similarity for a trait during change. Journal of Personality, 57, 215–235.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Matheny, A. P. (1990). Developmental behavior genetics: Contributions from the Louisville twin study. In Hahn, M. E., Hewitt, J. K., Henderson, N. D., & Benno, R. H. (Eds.), Developmental behavior genetics: Neural, biometrical and evolutionary approaches (pp. 25–39). Oxford:Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McCartney, K., Harris, M. J., & Bernieri, F. (1990). Growing up and growing apart: A developmental meta-analysis of twin studies. Psychological Bulletin, 107, 226–237.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McGuffin, P., & Gottesman, I. I. (1985). Genetic influences on normal and abnormal development. In Rutter, M. & Hersov, L. (Eds.), Child and adolescent psychiatry: Modern approaches (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell Scientific.Google Scholar
McKusick, V. A. (Ed.). (1969). Human genetics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
McKusick, V. A. (1983). Mendelian inheritance in man. Catalogs of autosomal dominant, autosmal recessive and X-linked phenotypes (6th ed.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Nichols, P. L. (1984). Familial mental retardation. Behavior Genetics, 14, 161–170.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paul, D. L., Towbin, K. E., Leckman, J. F., Zahner, G. E. P., & Cohen, D. J. (1986). Evidence supporting an etiological relationship between Gilles de la Tourette syndrome and obsessive compulsive disorder. Archives of General Psychiatry, 43, 1180–1182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pembrey, M. (1989). Advances in genetic prediction and diagnosis. In Doxiadis, S. (Ed.), Early influences shaping the individual. New York: Plenum.Google Scholar
Pembrey, M. (in press). Chromosomal abnormalities. In Rutter, M. & Casaer, P. (Eds.), Biological risk factors for psychosocial disorders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Plomin, R. (1986). Development, genetics and psychology. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Plomin, R. (in press). Genetic risk and psychological disorders: Links between the normal and abnormal. In Rutter, M. & Casaer, P. (Eds.), Biological risk factors for psychosocial disorders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Plomin, R., & Bergeman, C. S. (in press). The nature of nurture: Genetic influences on “environmental” measures. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.Google Scholar
Plomin, R., & Daniels, D. (1987). Why are children in the same family so different from one another? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 10, 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plomin, R., DeFries, J. C., & Fulker, D. W. (1988). Nature and nurture during infancy and early childhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plomin, R., Rende, R. D., & Rutter, M. (in press). Quantitative genetics and developmental psychopathology. In Cicchetti, D. & Toth, S. (Eds.), Rochester Symposium on Developmental Psychopathology, Vol. 2: Internalizing and externalizing expressions of dysfunction. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Robins, L. N. (1966). Deviant children grown up. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins. (Reprinted 1973, Melbourne: Krieger.)Google Scholar
Rotter, J. I., & Diamond, J. M. (1987). What maintains the frequencies of human genetic diseases? Nature, 329, 289–290.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rutter, M. (1991). Autism as a genetic disorder. In McGuffin, P. & Murray, R. (Eds.), The new genetics of mental illness (pp. 225–244). Oxford: Heinemann Medical.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rutter, M., Bolton, P., Harrington, R., Le Couteur, A., MacDonald, H., & Simonoff, E. (1990a). Genetic factors in child psychiatric disorders–I. A review of research strategies. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 31, 3–37.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rutter, M., Macdonald, H., Le Couteur, A., Harrington, R., Bolton, P., & Bailey, A. (1990b). Genetic factors in child psychiatric disorders-II. Empirical findings. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 31, 39–83.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Scarr, S., & Kidd, K. K. (1983). Developmental behavior genetics. In Mussen, P. (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology (vol. 2, pp. 345–433). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Scarr, S., & McCartney, K. (1983). How people make their own environments: A theory of genotype → environment effects. Child Development, 54, 424–435.Google Scholar
Schiff, M., & Lewontin, R. (1986). Education and class: The irrelevance of IQ genetic studies. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Sing, C. F., & Moll, P. P. (1989). Genetics of variability of CHD risk. International Journal of Epidemiology, 18, 183–195.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smalley, S. L., Asarnow, R. F., & Spence, M. A. (1988). Autism and genetics: A decade of research. Archives of General Psychiatry, 45, 953–961.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spence, J. E., Corey, L. A., Nance, W. E., Marazita, M. L., Kendler, K. S., & Schieken, R. M. (1988). Molecular analysis of twin zygosity using VNTR DNA probes. American Journal of Human Genetics, 43, A159 (Abstract).Google Scholar
Tizard, J. (1975). Race and IQ: The limits of probability. New Behaviour, 1, 6–9.Google Scholar
Todd, J. A., Bell, J. I., & McDevitt, H. O. (1987). HLA-DQB gene contributes to susceptibility and resistance to insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. Nature, 329, 599–604.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waller, N. G., Kojetin, B. A., Bouchard, T. J., Lykken, D. T., & Tellegen, A. (1990). Genetic and environmental influences on religious interests, attitudes, and values: A study of twins reared apart and together. Psychological Science, 1, 138–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar