Human behavior is an extremely sensitive element in psychological discussions. The source of certain forms of behavior has always been of concern to various people. However, nature and nurture debates have always come up to seek understanding for different human behavior. According to Andreas Reif and co-authors “aggressive behavior is influenced by variation in genes of the serotonergic circuitry and early-life experience alike”. The group of authors concluded that as behavioral traits are quantitative they are not only influenced by one, but many interacting genes.
The results of the research are agreeable. Out of the 184 individuals undergoing forensic assessment, 39.1%, had a history of recurrent violent behavior. It is true to say that the elderly are less violent than the young. It is true to say that recurrent violent behavior is common among young people. The results touch on the issue of drugs which is a major motivation to violence among young people. The results would be agreeable with based on the techniques used to gather the outlined data. There has been a balanced selection of elements of the sample used. This means youths, elderly people, sober, and drug influenced people have been involved in the research. Life history, genotyping, and statistical analysis are critical scientific tools that have been employed to bring forth the above results. After following exclusively reliable research techniques, excellent analysis has also been conducted to ensure research tools bide to meaningful findings. In return, the excellent findings have been used to conclusively define the high extent of recurrent violent behavior with the mainly affected individuals being youths who are mainly exposed to ill behaviors of drug and substance abuse.
The results are reliable in defining recurrent violent behavior as a function of nature versus nurture. The article argues that recurrent violent behavior is mainly among the young people with only a few adults being attached to the social element. This is an indication that there is an element of nature influence in the behavior of an individual. The high number of youths indicates that there is an element that is genetically borrowed from their parents (Keating, 2011). Adults may have been exposed to the behavior following long time attachment to genetic inheritances. However, extensive interactions of people within the environment of their residence might have been the main element of motivation to certain elements of behavior (Keating, 2011). Youths may learn from their parents following exclusive exposure to same activities in the same environment.
The results for this study support my opinion in that aggressive behavior is mainly influenced by genes. At birth, children are not aware of how they are expected to behave. Therefore, they depend on biological given connection of genes to define how they are required to behave. Genes are transmissions that are supposed to transmit behavior to children. In most cases, children will possess extremely high traits that resemble their parent’s behaviors (Grayling, 2008). This is the reason there is a high number of youths in this research retaining recurrent violent behaviors compared to a small number of adults in the same line of behavior. However, it would be inconsiderate to ignore how influential the environment would be to behaviors. It is untrue to dictate that all individuals in the above results were as a result of genes influence (Grayling, 2008). Behaviors are mainly dependent on genes but the environment may equally play a critical role.
References
Grayling, A. (2008). Mindfields: Revisiting Nature Versus Nurture. THE NEW SCIENTIST,197(2640), 54-54.
Keating, D. P. (2011). Nature and nurture in early child development. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
