Aggression from a Heritability Perspective

There is a social bias against the idea of aggression, so that many people conflate the ideas of aggression and violence, so that they cannot separate them. This suggests that aggression is negative, which is not necessarily the case. The result has been that suggestions that aggression is somehow genetic have been morphed into the notion that people carrying those genes must somehow be inferior to the rest of the population. This is untrue on a number of different levels. First, it assumes that aggression must be negative. Second, it assumes that acting on aggressive behavior must be a maladaptive behavior. Neither of those assumptions is warranted. However, they highlight some of the pitfalls in examining aggression.

Examining the whether aggression can be inherited is a very morally risky topic. It cannot be ignored that prior attempts to link genetics and anti-social behavior, such as...
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