Can Behavior Genetics Contribute to Evolutionary Behavioral Science?

Since the quantitative synthesis accomplished by Fisher, Wright, and Haldane, genetics and evolutionary selection theory have been inextricably linked. The link is not merely historical. For example, the journal Evolution commonly publishes articles concerning population genetic findings in nonhuman species. In contrast, the relatively recent disciplines of human behavior genetics and evolutionary behavioral science have developed virtually independently. The most representative journals of the two disciplines, Behavior Genetics and Ethology and Sociobiology, respectively, have little author overlap. Representative books from each discipline (e.g., Barkow, Cosmides, & Tooby, 1992; Neale & Cardon, 1992) ignore the other. Ironically, there is much more overlap among the disciplines’ opponents (e.g., Gould, 1981; Gould & Lewontin, 1978; Lewontin, Rose, & Kamin, 1984) than among their practitioners.