"Warrior gene" linked to violence, weapon use, new study finds

[Lone_Star_Dem]

Boys who have a so-called "warrior gene" are more likely to join gangs and also more likely to be among the most violent members and to use weapons, a new study finds.

<snip>

But it's no surprise that genes would be involved in aggression. Aggression is a primal emotion like many others, experts say, and like cooperation, it is part of human nature, something that's passed down genetically. And almost all mammals are aggressive in some way or another, said Craig Kennedy, professor of special education and pediatrics at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, whose research last year suggested that humans crave violence just like they do sex, food or drugs.

"Previous research has linked low-activity MAOA variants to a wide range of antisocial, even violent, behavior, but our study confirms that these variants can predict gang membership," says Beaver, the Florida State researcher. "Moreover, we found that variants of this gene could distinguish gang members who were markedly more likely to behave violently and use weapons from members who were less likely to do either."

Violent traits are hereditary
The MAOA gene affects levels of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin that are related to mood and behavior, and those variants that are related to violence are hereditary, according to a statement from the university.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31128684/

I found it disturbing how they were exploring the idea of using this to pinpoint potential gang members without mention of any socio-economic factors influence on potential gang members.

[shadowknows69]

1. I agree with your last statement, but it would explain a lot about a few people I know.

[Odin2005]

2. Oh god, what simplistic BS typical of Evolutionary Psychology.

"I found it disturbing how they were exploring idea of using this to pinpoint potential gang members without mention of any socio-economic factors influence on potential gang members."

And that is the whole flaw of a lot of this research, they give lip-service to the complex interaction between genes and environment and then revert back to genetic determinism. Someone with a genetic predisposition to violence, if raised well, will be a good person who has learned to channel the "violent" tendencies into socially productive activities. Who is not to say that such "violent" predispositions do not express themselves, say, as aggressive and assertive social and political activism in a well-raised individual?

[DBoon]

4. there are plenty of well paid occupations for the agressive

plaintiff attorney, commodities trader....

High levels of agression are only a problem if the "wrong" people have this trait

[anonymous171]

5. +1. nt

[aikoaiko]

60. well, in all fairness, the environmental deterministics do the same thing

Very little social science consider genetic determinants in their research. Few researchers can master both domains and usually only suggest possibilities of interaction.

Almost all behavioral scientists today start with the assumption of behavior as a result of cyclical interactions of genes and evironment, but usually focus on one or the other.

[Jade Fox]

3. If this were true there would be just as many gangs in the 'burbs....

as there in poverty-stricken ghettos.

Undoubtedly genetics plays some role in a propensity for violence, but sweeping genetic explanations always make me uncomfortable.

Just look at how different many of us are from our siblings, our closest genetic match.

[TahitiNut]

6. There are. But in the 'burbs they call 'em football teams.

:shrug:

[LWolf]

22. Sports teams, political parties, faiths and denominations,

social cliques, social/economic classes: gangs dominate human culture.

[JerseygirlCT]

31. I think you're right about that

I think our culture has devised all sorts of "socially acceptable" ways over the years to keep the warriors busy like that.

[TahitiNut]

37. I think it's more about exploiting such propensities.

I don't believe it has anything to do with amelioration or "healthy outlets" ... and, instead, is a matter of taking advantage of them while, at the same time, claiming some "higher consciousness" or "better" status. "Society" is, I think, basically hypocritical in this regard.

[JerseygirlCT]

38. Unfortunately, you could be right, nt

[Hannah Bell]

7. junk science.

[kristopher]

14. Is that the right application of the term?

My understanding, which could be wrong, is that the term 'junk science' is used to denigrate the actual science behind claims made by
people involved in political or ideological debates. Since this report concerns a study at Brown University and was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it seems unlikely that the study is 'junk science' and much more likely that the weak link is the sensationalism that 'science reporting' nowadays relies upon so heavily.

There doesn't appear to be an agreed upon usage, though. On my part, I use it to refer to some of the stuff put out as 'science' by groups such as creationists (under the guise of intelligent design) and climate change deniers - almost all of which can be recognized by the fact that it is never submitted for peer review. But when something is published by the National Academy, well IMO, there aren't too many better seals of authenticity.

[Odin2005]

29. Evolutionary Psychology is a pseudoscientific fad that is popular because...

...it originated in the late 70s as a needed backlash against notions of humans an blank slates. Unfortunately it got hijacked in the early 90s by those with reactionary or libertarian ideological agendas opposed to social programs and gender and racial equality.

A funny, though accurate, caricature of Evo-Psych:

[kristopher]

35. I think that is an unfair and short-sighted characterization

Every field in its infancy is prone to producing some garbage; that is nothing more than evidence that the process of science is actually working. Look how long it took for economic theory and practice to identify the flaws in ideological adoptions of socialism and capitalism; we are still working on it. What I see on this thread is exactly the type of anti-intellectualism I associate with the Bushbots and Palinites; only here it is cloaked in class based language instead of having a religious orientation.

[Odin2005]

36. That is exactly why such criticism is necessary, to get rid of the garbage.

For Evo-Psych to become a fully legit science it needs to as much as possible drop assumptions derived from cultural and ideological biases and to keep in mind that the interaction between genes and the environment is extremely complex, things I'm not really seeing.

[kristopher]

41. I haven't read the study.

Have you? If so, do you have a link for download? Thanks.

I think we are basically on the same page...

[Odin2005]

42. Unfortunately not yet. I'll look for it sometime today and post it if I can find it.

[Hannah Bell]

44. that's funny cuz it's too true.

[Hannah Bell]

43. it's junk science.

[anigbrowl]

52. Repetition does not constitute an argument.

[Hannah Bell]

61. i wasn't trying to make an argument. the junkness of it is so obvious on its face that it would be

tiresome.

this gene for "aggression," through what physiologic channels does it operate, especially such that its workings result in gang membership?

i want to know which gene makes people believe stupid things.

[leftstreet]

8. Why don't rich kids join street gangs? (Other than Wall Street gangs)

Hmm...they must 'inherit' that 'warrior gene' in a different way

What a bullshit article

[anonymous171]

10. The poor are genetically inferior to the rich.

:sarcasm:


But you know that's what they are going to say eventually.

[leftstreet]

11. Sadly, these rich Ruling Class f**ks really believe that

:scared:

[anonymous171]

19. Just like the how Monarchs believed that they were given the right to rule by God.

Just replace crap religion with crap science and Feudalism with Capitalism and you have our current system.

[Odin2005]

12. Anyone remember Charles Murray from the AEI and his "bell curve" BS?

This is exactly the same thing, "they are genetically damned so social programs are useless, lets give tax breaks to the genetically superior wealthy instead."

[anonymous171]

20. No wonder racism and conservatism seem to mesh so well.

If you believe in those kinds of social/genetic hierarchies, then believing in racial hierarchies would not seem that far off.

[Odin2005]

26. Exactly.

Modern Conservatives are the inheritors of the ideologies of Eugenics, Scientific Racism, and Social Darwinism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

[conspirator]

32. Rich people control (so no need to join) the police, the armed forces and private goons

Want a better gang than those. Some rich people do like to bully, although that desire may be somewhat dormant, because they have others to do the bullying for them.

[anigbrowl]

46. They join frats and sports teams instead.

Or to put it another way, kids from wealthy families with the same gene expression have more outlets for their aggressive impulses.

[amandabeech]

55. They form nasty cliques instead while they're waiting to join the Wall Street

or K Street (DC Lobbyist) tribes.

[cliffordu]

9. Riiiiiiiiiiight.......

Which is why people with lifelong historys of non-violent behavior take up arms and kill during war worldwide, only to return to farming or whatever when the war is over...

(See WWI, WWII....)

Yet another weak attempt at blaming violence on the swarthy races while ignoring the socio-economic realities....

It all conveniently ignores warrior-states like Sparta, where the entire society was devoted to developing warriors while other greek states, although from the same gene pools, most decidedly did not.

Load o' hooey.

[seabeyond]

13. why is this exclusively male. if genetic it would hit both gender. n/t

[Odin2005]

15. Probably testosterone and the enviromental infuences they convieniently ignore.

In women such behavior is strongly redirected by upbringing into socially productive directions and/or is repressed in ways that result in psycho-somatic illnesses.

[seabeyond]

16. this is true, BUT the rate of female violence is escalating. the girls must be nice

command isn't dictating female behavior like in the past where it was played out from within (repressed in ways that result in psycho-somatic illnesses), instead of directing the violence out.

now a days, statistically, female violence is one of the fastest growing categories. female aggression is much more apparent today than yesterday.

[Odin2005]

18. Very good point.

[donco6]

33. No, lots of genetic traits don't.

Males have diff. chromosomes, don't forget.

[anigbrowl]

47. Not necessarily, no.

As a very simplistic example, if you are female and your father naturally has a lush, thick beard (ie, it would grow that way if he chose not to shave), you would not have one but your son might.

[seabeyond]

48. no... but you might have nice lush thick hair otherwise. also the bald gene comes from mother

and it can be given to both female and male. female just dont bald the same as men. also

wouldnt it be interesting to at least know....

instead of pretending females dont matter, count, or just not happening cause of a poorly run study that was out to hit a certain perspective and female having this gene doesnt work

it raises no questions?

[anigbrowl]

49. Your post makes no sense

I am not disagreeing with it, it's just incoherent.

[seabeyond]

50. i know the balding gene for males

comes from the mother, not the father. do you know the beard gene comes from father or is it an assumption cause the man has a beard and a woman does not? and the balding gene can hit both genders, they bald differently.

is that clear? not snarky, just askin

then... i would like to ask, why isnt it relevent. why, if studying a "warrior" gene that effects violence would we not automatically do it for both gender, and know if both gender. what would be the reason to study only one gender.

[anigbrowl]

51. No, I made the beard gene thing up.

That's why I said it was a 'simplistic example'.

A reason to study only one gender is because you have a certain amount of money available for your research and you're using data from an existing longitudinal study. Nobody is saying that it only affects men or that it only shows up in a certain socioeconomic class, only that in the studied population, this particular genetic configuration is predictive of a certain behavior.

[seabeyond]

53. then any given study that lacks so should clearly state these exceptions... n/t

[anigbrowl]

56. The TV news report =/= the study

Most people find scientific papers impenetrable and boring, the abstracts only marginally less so, and the same is true for the university departments that publish the press releases. News organizations pick on the most sensational aspects of the story in hope of getting people to look at it.

[seabeyond]

57. why it is a good thing to question. hey,

cute graphics.

[Odin2005]

59. LOL, that's funny, cuz it's true.

A study will say Gene A is correlated with Behavior B in Environmental Condition X and the "news" will report it as "A causes B".

Banghead:

[proteus_lives]

17. sounds like pseudo-crap.

[kristopher]

21. Most of the responses sound like they are taking the reporting out of context.

Nowhere does the article state that the genetic tendency is restricted to the poor or that it leads inevitably to gang violence.

What it *does* say is that when they looked at some of the most violent individuals involved in gangs they found a common gene that wasn't present in those less prone to violence. It doesn't say anything like "all (or most) people with this gene are destined to be extremely violent, it says that most extremely violent people seem to have this gene.
It is a basic case of set and subset. The gene holders are the set and those that are violent are the subset. The article never says anything to create an alternative impression.


If you are searching for a "violence gene" you don't look at Wall Street precisely because the expression of aggressive behavior is more difficult to identify as it is rechanneled. However, now that the gene has been identified, it may be possible to predict antisocial aggression as it is expressed in the corporate hierarchies. A lot of people think that the corporate and political worlds are ones where certain types of sociopaths are able to find great success, perhaps this is part of that that equation.

At least, that's the way I read the MSNBC article

[leftstreet]

23. But the Ruling Class decides what is/isn't considered 'violent'

They've determined that if my neighbor smacks me in the mouth, he's violent.

But if a group of corporate CEOs decides to use the US military to wipe out a village in some third world country to mine their copper/drugs/oil/whatever - they're not considered violent.

[vadawg]

24. lol dumbest post of the day, i think everyone knows what violence is when they see it.

[leftstreet]

25. It's still early, there will be dumber ones n/t

[kristopher]

27. Really?

Have you ever designed a study? Perhaps you could identify what the researchers should use as a benchmark for 'violence' in cases where the effects of the aggression gene are being rechanneled?

Is the benchmark you select as *unarguably* an example related to "violence" as the actual commission of violent physical acts? The researcher has limited resources, it would be irresponsible to squander those resources (meant to look for a genetic link to violence) on a study that is flawed because it used interpretive examples of behavior that isn't *clearly* violence.

Now that would be dumb.

[Hannah Bell]

45. apparently not.

[Mythsaje]

28. Interesting, but raises several different questions...

What genetic sequences are necessary to link the propensity to violence to being any good at it? What combinations are required to make someone who's possibly PRONE to violence actually resort to violent behavior far out of context with the situation? Are people who are allegedly more prone to violence because of this gene also marked with similar genes to increase reflex speed, enhance strength in combat situations, or to ignore pain when within the adrenaline surge of combat?

I remember reading an article several years ago that indicated that violent criminals had an adrenal condition that pushed them to go far beyond what the ordinary person might do.

And what does this mean with regard to military applications? Would the military WANT to recruit someone more prone to violent behavior, or someone who isn't?

[kristopher]

30. Good questions.

I think this is a very interesting line of inquiry. On my part I'll be interested in seeing how it links up with some of recent information coming from the advances in bioethics.

[conspirator]

34. They should take blood samples from cheney to study the evil gene nt

[Mythsaje]

40. Blood samples from the alien overlords dissolve when exposed to oxygen. n/t

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

39. Junk science's version of "The Devil made me do it."

[annabanana]

54. How does this relate to the "double 'Y' chromosome" that I remember

reading about, decades ago?

A guy with a YY would be violent and impulsive. A girl with an XX would be stupid, if I remember correctly.

[Hannah Bell]

62. that was a good one. more prevalent in mass murderers. richard speck had it,

as i recall. scary.

except it was bullshit, just like this one is.


"In December 1965 and March 1966, Nature and The Lancet published the first preliminary reports by British cytogeneticist Patricia Jacobs and colleagues of a chromosome survey of Scotland's only security hospital for the developmentally disabled, that found nine patients, averaging almost 6 ft. in height (range: 5'7" to 6'2"), had a 47,XYY karyotype,<12> and mischaracterized them as aggressive and violent criminals.<13><14><15>

In August 1966, based on those mischaracterizations, Eric Engel, a Swiss endocrinologist and geneticist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, wrote to Speck's attorney, Cook County Public Defender Gerald W. Getty, who was reportedly planning an insanity defense, and proposed confidentially karotyping the 6 ft. 1 in. tall Speck.<16><17> Getty agreed, a chromosome analysis was performed, and the results—showing Speck had a normal 46,XY karyotype—were reported to Getty in a September 26, 1966 letter,<17> one month before a court-appointed panel of six physicians concluded that Speck was mentally competent to stand trial.<18>

In January 1968 and March 1968, The Lancet and Science published the first U.S. reports of institutionalized XYY males by Mary Telfer, a biochemist at the Elwyn Institute. Telfer found five tall, developmentally disabled XYY boys and men in hospitals and penal institutions in Pennsylvania, and since four of the five had at least moderate facial acne, jumped to the erroneous conclusion that acne was a defining characteristic of XYY males.<19> In January 1968, Getty contacted Telfer for more information on her findings and she not only incorrectly assumed the acne-scarred Speck was an XYY male, but leapt to the egregiously false conclusion that Speck was the archetypical XYY male.<20>

In April 1968, The New York Times introduced the XYY genetic condition to the general public for the first time, using Telfer as a main source for a three-part series on consecutive days that began with a Sunday front-page story.<14><21> The second story in the series, "Ultimate Speck appeal may cite a genetic defect", incorrectly reported that a chromosome analysis of Speck by Chicago geneticist Eugene Pergament in the summer of 1967 had shown Speck to be an XYY male.<22> The third story in the series included a denial by Pergament that he had done a chromosome analysis of Speck, but continued to incorrectly report that a chromosome analysis had shown Speck to be an XYY male.<23><24><25>

The following week, a Time article using Telfer as a main source reported that "Richard Speck is said to be one such" man with two Y chromosomes<26> and a Newsweek article using Telfer as a main source reported that "according to some doctors" Richard Speck "exemplifies the XYY type" and that "His chromosomes have in fact been analyzed, but his lawyer will not reveal the results of the test."<27>

In May 1968, after reading news stories about Speck being an XYY male, a dumbfounded Engel contacted Getty and learned that the news stories were false—other than Engel's September 1966 chromosome analysis which had shown Speck to have a normal 46,XY karyotype—no other chromosome analysis of Speck had been done.<17> Engel performed a second chromosome analysis of Speck in June 1968 and the results—again showing Speck had a normal 46,XY karyotype—were reported to Getty in a July 3, 1968 letter,<17> three weeks before Getty filed his 193-page brief in Speck's appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court.<28>

In November 1968, five days before the Illinois Supreme Court's decision on Speck's appeal, a Sunday front-page article in the Chicago Tribune that again used Telfer as a main source, reported that prison records showed that blood samples were taken from Speck in Stateville prison in June 1968 to determine whether he was an XYY male, and that Getty had confirmed that a chromosome analysis had been performed outside of Illinois, but refused to disclose the results.<29><30> On November 25, 1968, three days after the Illinois Supreme Court upheld Speck's conviction and death sentence, Getty held a press conference at which he outlined the basis of his forthcoming appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and also made public the chromosome analysis results from Engel showing Speck to have a normal 46,XY karyotype.<31>

In September 1972, Engel published his account of the story and a photograph of Speck's normal 46,XY karyotype in the American Journal of Mental Deficiency,<17> but by then the false association of Speck with the XYY genetic condition had been incorporated into high school biology textbooks, college genetics textbooks and medical school psychiatry textbooks, where misinformation still persists decades later.<15><32>"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Speck.


Most often, the extra Y chromosome causes no unusual physical features or medical problems. 47,XYY boys have an increased growth velocity during earliest childhood, with an average final height approximately 7 cm above expected final height.<3> Severe acne was noted in a very few early case reports, but dermatologists specializing in acne now doubt the existence of a relationship with 47,XYY.<4>

Testosterone levels (prenatally and postnatally) are normal in 47,XYY males.<5> Most 47,XYY males have normal sexual development and usually have normal fertility. Since XYY is not characterized by distinct physical features, the condition is usually detected only during genetic analysis for another reason.

Developmental delays and behavioral problems are also possible, but these characteristics vary widely among affected boys and men, are not unique to 47,XYY and are managed no differently than in 46,XY males.<8><12> Aggression is not seen more frequently in 47,XYY males.<1><6><8><9><10>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XYY_syndrome

[annabanana]

63. Thanks Hannah!

I learn something new every day around here. . .

[omega minimo]

58. any mention of testosterone?

[armyowalgreens]

64. Genetic predisposition does not mean certainty.

Someone could be genetically predisposed to have anger issues, but it is up to their environment whether or not they dwell on that trait or not.

[Odin2005]

66. Exactly what I said!

Genes that are involved in behavior do not operate in a vacuum. Gene expression is strongly dependent on the enviroment, give the child a good and loving home and a good school and community and the conditions that cause that gene to be expressed in brain development will not occur. THAT is the true value of such research, to find such vulnerable individuals BEFORE so they can be protected from things that would trigger those genes. This is why I find the mantra of the genetic determinism to be BS, our genes are not destiny, genes are freedom, we with 18,000 genes, are a lot more behaviorally flexible and free then a bacterium with 1,000 genes.

[old mark]

65. Neo-Nazi nonsense. nt