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There are quite a few studies about humans, fruit flies also make an appearance (since you can rapidly breed them). All in all, there is quite a bit of evidence that genetics can influence animal behavior both across and within species.

Based on my reading, I'm quite confident in my belief that genetics explain at least 25% of behavioral differences. I haven't been convinced that it explains 50-90% (as some folks claim). I've appended below a dump of papers which I've either read or are in my queue.

Most results in this space find that white (particularly if you exclude Ashkenazi Jews) people are not the superior race, at least in popular metrics like intelligence, criminality, drug use and divorce. Those westerners trying to "prove that non-white men are inferior" probably should have realized that isn't how evidence works: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ii/conservation_of_expected_evidence...

http://ussc.edu.au/ussc/assets/media/docs/publications/44_Ha...

http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v47/n7/full/ng.3285.html

https://infotomb.com/g99o4.pdf

https://infotomb.com/sy7jn.pdf

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/57897#files-area

https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/38881/HECER...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1758921

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/neu.10160/pdf

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/opinion/45_Hatemi_...

http://unamusementpark.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/boucha...

http://www.matthewckeller.com/16.Hatemi.et.al.2010.Nuc.fam.a...

https://infotomb.com/evkop.pdf

https://infotomb.com/cwnp1.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2923822/#!po=50....




Interesting - I'll check these out.

But again, I'm not arguing that genetics don't have any impact on behavior - I'm arguing that getting from someone else's experience of appearance to genetics to the 20% of behavior that's affected is a pretty long jump to make.


See my link to a college math study (in a separate comment thread); you can improve predictions of math skill significantly above random (50% -> 55%) chance simply based on appearance.

I was totally shocked when I saw this, but there is at least some evidence that appearance predicts more than I would otherwise expect.




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