When questioning what part heredity and hormones play in on human behavior, we have to look at the role each plays in coalition to each other. For example: Heredity. Many things can be “handed down” though our parental make up or genes. As technology evolves, and as more knowledge is gained by those who study so many different parts of the human body and brain, so does the discovery of how many things are actually inherited.
The example that I will use for this paper will be mental disease. Scientist over the years have determined that some mental disease is hereditary. Schizophrenia is a mental disease that has been linked to having a family relationship. Morris and Maisto (2005) have stated that “Siblings of people with schizophrenia are about eight times more likely, and the children of schizophrenic parents about ten times more likely, to develop the disorder than someone chosen randomly from the general population." When reading something like this it explains how something as recent as Marie Osmond, whom herself has dealt with depression for years and years is now having to deal with the death of her son who committed suicide because he too was depressed. So with this type of knowledge, what can be done with it? Does this mean that when we have a mother for example who suffers from a mental illness, we are to keep close watch on her child as they grow? Or does this type of information and findings give the right to medicate children even before there are signs of any mental disease? Both are questionable and quite debatable but mental illness is one of many things that are passed down to us and can affect us from our health to our mental states or even something as simple as a mood swing. It is a subject that is heavily debated today but is also a subject that has been debated probably since the beginning of the study of these things. Sir Francis Galton was the father of behavioral genetics, who was also a cousin of Charles Darwin who studies the...