Don't throw the bathwater in with the baby

Abstract

The Presidential Address of the European Association of Developmental Psychology, Goossens (2012, this issue), this year concerned how genes and environments interplay to shape loneliness and other developmental psychological relevant outcomes. This is a very welcome. However, when developmental psychology is now ready to integrate recent genetic and neuroscience knowledge and methods, I think it would be very wise not to go uncritically through the mistakes that have been made in other disciplines and instead to learn from their hard lessons. I discuss some problems (genes vs. environments, identifying genes for a phenotype, environmental causes of developmental outcomes, and gene×environment interaction and epigenetics) and some suggestions for solutions that can be used to avoid throwing the bathwater in with the baby.

Keywords:

• Behaviour genetics
• Gene–environment interaction
• Epigenetics
• Gene identification

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul Lichtenstein

This study was supported in part by the Swedish Research Council, Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research, the Swedish Prison and Probation Services, and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD061817).