A few months ago I blogged a paper, Individual differences in allocation of funds in the dictator game associated with length of the arginine vasopressin 1a receptor RS3 promoter region and correlation between RS3 length and hippocampal mRNA. Now these results have hit the press with really wack titles. Jake at Pure Pedantry and Joseph at Corpus Callosum offer the appropriate scientific caution. Caution is warranted, but I think the next decade at the intersection of behavioral economics & genetics is going to be very big. Papers such as Heritability of ultimatum game responder behavior & Heritability of cooperative behavior in the trust game are just the tip of the iceberg.
More like this
The post below on AVPR1A and fidelity alluded to the fact that this locus has been implicated in many other behavioral traits. I spent some of today digging through the literature. So check it....
Variation in neural V1aR predicts sexual fidelity and space use among male prairie voles in semi-natural settings:
Individual differences in allocation of funds in the dictator game associated with length of the arginine vasopressin 1a receptor RS3 promoter region and correlation between RS3 length and hippocampal mRNA:
I wasn't sure whether to put the quotes around "Ruthlessness Gene," or
"Discovered." I suppose I could have just left them out
entirely, but I have this urge to spice things up a bit with
punctuation marks. Don't blame me...it's genetic.
Here's a hyperchristian take on this discovery:
But here's a much more interesting, if off-topic, item, which I hope someone who knows much more about this than I can explain or debunk:
Oops: Radio Lab link for above is http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2008/03/14
I hope someone who knows much more about this than I can explain or debunk
Easy: chimerism!