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Longitudinal Analysis Psychology

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The biological level of analysis is a branch of psychology that tries to help understand how the brain influences the way we act and think, along with understanding the structure of the brain and the nervous system. That is why, whenever there is some research involving genetics, researchers need to be very careful. The concerns arise whenever there’s search for specific genes in their participant, known as genetic mapping. Genetic mapping is a chromosomal map that shows the position of genes, genetic markers and relations between them. Scientists use them in order to try to determine the effect of a particular gene on behaviour, like psychological traits, psychological disorders or various psychological conditions. However, when conducting …show more content…
When the researchers don’t get an informed consent from their participants or they don’t tell them why the research is conducted, it is considered a violation of their rights in the study. Also when researchers use their information to make generalizations and release their findings to the public, it is considered to be a violation of their rights. Two experiments that dwell on the topic about violation of ethical considerations are Caspi et al.(2003) and Bouchard et al.(1990). Capsi et al. is a longitudinal study where the correlation of depression and the gene 5-HTT is examined, while Bouchard et al. is a longitudinal study where the inheritance of intelligence is …show more content…
Bouchard collected his participants through an ad, so this was opportunity sampling. All of his participants were either monozygotic or dizygotic twins and regular siblings. He used monozygotic twins for this study because they had 100% of genetic correspondence, acting as a control group and he chose the rest of the participants so that the genetical inheritance of intelligence can be assessed. Some of the siblings were raised together and others were raised apart because Bouchard also tried to evaluate whether environmental factors had an effect on the development of intelligence. Around 50 hours were spent in interviewing each twin and a conclusion was reached. It was found that around 70% of intelligence is inherited, however, the environment played a large role. The difference in the development of IQ with the twins was smaller than the one of the regular siblings because the twins inherited a similar amount of intelligence, and with the regular siblings, the difference was larger, due to the difference in the inheritance of certain genes. The data that Bouchard collected proved that there was a correlation between genetic inheritance and intelligence, however, a cause-effect relationship cannot be established. Genes are very complicated and there isn’t clear information about them, thus we cannot generalize that 70% of intelligence is inherited and 30% arises

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