Behaviour genetics

Behavioural genetics, also referred to as behaviour genetics, is a field of scientific research that investigates the nature and origins of individual differences in behaviour. Behavioural genetic findings have had broad impact on our understanding of the role of genetic and environmental influences on behavior. General conclusions include: nearly all researched behaviors are under some degree of genetic influence; environmental influences on human behaviours are important; environmental influences shared by family members tend to be smaller than environmental influences unshared by family members; most behaviours are influenced by a very large number of genes; and that the individual effects of these genes are very small. While the name "behavioural genetics" connotes a focus on genetic influences, the field broadly investigates genetic and environmental influences, using research designs that allow one to remove the confounding of genes and environment. Behavioural genetics is highly interdisciplinary, using methods and techniques from biology, neuroscience, genetics, epigenetics, ethology, psychology, and statistics. Psychiatric genetics, epigenetic research on behaviour, and genetic research in neuroscience are related subfields within behavioural genetics.

Behavioural genetics was founded as a scientific discipline by Francis Galton in the late 19th century, only to be discredited through association with eugenics movements before and during World War II. In the latter half of the 20th century, the field saw renewed prominence with novel research on inheritance of behaviour and mental illness in humans (typically using twin and family studies), as well as research on genetically informative model organisms through selective breeding and crosses. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, technological advances in molecular genetics made it possible to measure and modify the genome directly. This led to major advances in model organism research (e.g., knockout mice) and in human studies (e.g., genome-wide association studies), leading to new scientific discoveries.

...
Wikipedia