Evil Genes and disfunctional personality traits; The Cool Factor: is calmness genetic?

[davidfcooper]

Barbara Oakley discusses her book Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend on CSPAN's BookTV.

About the Program

In "Evil Genes" Barbara Oakley argues that the immoral behavior of Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, and Slobodan Milosevic has a genetic basis. She argues, further, that certain dysfunctional personality traits, such as narcissism, vindictiveness, and black-and-white thinking, are often found in politicians because these traits are advantageous in achieving political success.

About the Author

Barbara Oakley is a retired captain in the U.S. Army, worked as a translator on Soviet trawlers in the Bering Sea, and served as a radio operator at the South Pole Station in Antarctica. She is currently an engineering professor at Oakland University in Michigan.

Although she is not a psychologist the author has certainly done her homework. Her discussion of borderline personality disorder matches the dysfunctional traits of some of my relatives and friends. Do these traits remind you of anyone in your life, and does knowing that these traits are hard wired in their neural circuitry makes it easier to forgive?

Likewise according to Never Let Them See You Sweat conscientiousness is often considered the least dependent on genes, and extroversion and openness the most. Neuroticism, the closest barometer of calmness, is also highly determined by inheritance. Here are my results on the OCEAN personality test

Comments

[doc-neuro.livejournal.com]

I wouldnt necessarily buy into all of that. genetics doesnt really work that way. Genes are really very blunt instruments. things as concrete as personality traits do not generally have a correlating genetic marker. it can be argued that they may predispose people to certain things but generally speaking with most genetic disorders you are either born with a critical genetic flaw whose processes begin in utero but may not be recognized by outward signs until adulthood or you have some sort of breakdown in gene transcription that results in a critical structural error in a cell (such as cancer). personality traits are not part of the equation. those are factors of complicated neuronal interactions. Fancy binary code algorithms combining input, which varies from person to person of course, and processing incorporating changes from all previous input. In other words nurture and environment.

There was a nature vs. nurture debate but as the sciences advanced nurture won out as the more dominant factor. Genetics still has far reaching implications, but frankly more for diagnosis than for correction. There is a reason nobel prizes are not being awarded for genetics work anymore, but rather for neuroscience research.

As for your family members, it is worth noting that particularly in the case of personality disorders, the DSM-IV description and listed diagnostic criteria is so broad and vague that it could encompass a wide variety of completely normal behaviors. Hence it is common for psych students and for med students taking their psych classes to assume they have just about everything in the book. what is not properly emphasized is that the traits listed are extremely and violently exaggerated in those diagnosed cases, and yet the imprecise nature of it still makes diagnoses tricky and unreliable. Diagnosing someone with a personality disorder is a nice way of saying "you are incredibly fucked up in the head, and we may or may not be able to fix what's wrong with you." Its basically saying your condition is completely mental, with no underlying pathology or chemical imbalance, and that you basically have a head full of bad wiring in terms of conscious thought processes and learned behaviors.

BPD in particular matches just about everyone to a greater or lesser degree. I wouldnt assume your friends and relatives actually have it. More likely they just have a few issues and/or a set of obnoxious learned behaviors.