Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

William Wright grew up in Philadelphia and graduated from Yale University. He is the author of many books and articles. Wright lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and Key West, Florida.

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Born That Way

Routledge

Chapter One

THE CHEMISTRY OF SELF

ON A MONDAY MORNING Of a typical workweek, a single woman inher early thirties is awakened by k.d. lang coming over her clock radio.She switches to a classical station and is pleased to hear a Haydn symphony;the soothing rationality of classical music is her preference forstarting the day. After a hot shower, she applies her usual discreetmakeup, then selects a beige suit with gold buttons to wear to theoffice. She wore it only four days ago, but she feels good in it andknows it's becoming.

    She brews a pot of Yuban French Roast and drinks a cup--milk butno sugar--while skimming the morning paper, which annoys her forhaving nothing about a major film star's arrest on drug charges thathad been mentioned on the eleven o'clock news. An article on theobstructed relief efforts in Zaire upsets her and she resolves to donateanother fifty dollars to Save the Children. On her way to the street, theelevator stops at a lower floor and an unfamiliar man in his fortiesenters and greets her cheerfully. She grunts and feels a complicatedmix of obligatory civility, stranger-fear, violated space, and anger atmale sexual presumption. She yearns for the elevator to reach thelobby.

    Once outside her building, she resists splurging on a taxi and waitsfor a bus. Finding a seat next to a teenaged boy with books on his lap,one open to a page of graphs, she feels a rush of satisfaction at her successsince leaving college, where her grades were lackluster. But then apang of regret hits-her about career opportunities missed, misstepstaken. The boy indicates he is getting off. She slides into his seat andlooks out the window to see an old man carrying a suitcase stumble onthe curb and almost fall. An urge to help comes over her.

    The empty seat beside the woman is taken by a tall slender man inhis forties. From the corner of her eye she sees that he has curly brownhair, a trim mustache, and glasses--three of her favorite attributes in amale. She reads her newspaper, but glances at his pants leg so close toher skirt and wonders if his leg is hairy. She forces down an erotic surgeby plunging into an editorial on redistricting. Traffic is moving slowly;she fears she'll be late. A Hispanic man who looks drunk boards thebus and fumbles for the fare as the traffic light turns red. She wants toscream.

    All of these reactions, concerns, judgments, and decisions mightseem products of conscious thoughts. Or, with more reflection, somemight be traced to the woman's experience, upbringing, or social conditioning.They may, in fact, have sprung from none of these, but mayhave been prompted, wholly or in part, by her genes, those infinitesimalbits of DNA, which thirty years of research tells us influences ourpersonalities, our behavior, and how we respond to the world aroundus. As the woman goes about her day, she draws on her reasoningpower to deal with special situations. Much of the time, however, sheis, like most of us, on semiautomatic pilot, reacting to whatever theenvironment throws at her with ebbs and surges, blips and flashes, ofchemical, gene-rooted responses. As with all humans, her behavior isshaped and guided by signals from the biochemical motherboards thatgenes have created in each of us.

    The interaction between genes and environment is, we now know,essential to the developing child--and for psychologists the term "environment"means every influence on an organism that is not genetic.Not only in children, but in adults too, the environment can havepowerful effects. But to a greater degree than ever before realized, thegenetic influences on behavior, barring an extraordinary childhood(malnutrition, social deprivation, prolonged abuse), express themselvespretty much as configured before birth.

    Scholars have traditionally divvied up the human into an arrayof discrete vantage points--anatomy, psychology, anthropology, sociology,economics, political science, history. We now see these disciplinesconverging on a component of our physical selves that mountingevidence indicates is the underlying basis of it all: the twenty-threepairs of chromosomes, containing approximately 100,000 genes, thatexist in every human cell. Whatever the term--chromosomes, genes,DNA, the double helix, nucleic acids, ribosomes, alleles--all refer toour biochemical blueprints.

    Genetic discoveries have been receiving so much press that non-scientistscan be forgiven for seeing the DNA furor as a fad, a NewThing steamroller, this year's channeling or biorhythms. The worldappears so in the grip of a double-helix dither that less excitable typesshrug it off as a hyped-up media ploy to make the news of the dayappear different from the news of last week. Unfortunately for peoplealready bored with gene palaver, the ramifications of this scientificearthquake will continue unfolding, and making news, well into thenext century. And the possibilities this knowledge opens up are vast.

    Many of the most riveting findings have been of a high-prioritymedical nature, the genetic roots of birth defects and diseases that,throughout time, have plagued humanity. Because of the widespreadsuffering caused by these genetic mishaps--British geneticist SteveJones states that one child in thirty is born with a genetic irregularity ofone sort or other--the excitement over genetic therapies is understandable.More recently, the sensational news about cloning a sheepfrom a mature cell has seized the spotlight from even the landmarkmedical breakthroughs.

    Important as these advances are, they have overshadowed a concurrent,and in some ways more momentous, revolution--the burgeoningunderstanding of genetic links to personality and behavior. Amass of research that has been building over the past two decades hasforced most psychologists and other social scientists to acknowledgewhat they had long denied: Genes influence not just physical characteristicssuch as hair color and susceptibility to cancer but ourpersonalities, temperaments, behavioral patterns--even personal idiosyncrasies,the quirks and foibles that make each person unique.

    Since behavior is the subject of this book, and the term is broadenough to glaze the eyes of nonprofessionals, it might be a good idea toconsider what the word means to scientists. For them, behavior iseverything the organism does and thinks--from crying for its motherto delivering a Nobel acceptance speech. Ambition is behavior; so arelaziness, rebellion, and compassion. Patriotism, sexism, hating yourboss, and loving the Lakers--all are forms of behavior. Virtually anythingthe individual does, any product of the brain, any action, anymood, emotion, mannerism, or tic, is lumped under the umbrella word"behavior."

    From the beginning of the brief hundred years that the mechanicsof inheritance have been unfolding, science understood that geneswere the building plans for our bodies and brains, the human machinethat seemed to be able to think and behave in unlimited numbers ofways. Patterns and constraints were imposed on behavior from theexternal world, especially from the culture and its primary agents, parents.Now we see that this picture is not accurate. Many patterns andconstraints are imposed by culture, but many others, the new evidenceshows--along with batteries of impulses, leanings, attitudes,...