Minnesota Twin Studies

For millions of years, Homo sapiens have ruled the face of the earth. Over this course of this time, the human species have evolved in order to sustain and reproduce. We have evolved in ways that make us think faster and more efficiently. But we also evolved in ways that made us stronger so we can adapt to situations. Nevertheless, there have been endless debates on whether human behavior is predetermined by genetic inheritance. Although some genes are the complete effect on different human behaviors, other factors also play an important role. These factors, such as environment and social influences control the outcome on how human beings can react. Intelligence and obesity are two different human characteristics in which scientists debate

The Minnesota Twin study is vastly known as one of the most important studies in human behavior in today’s word of phycology. In this study monozygotic twins and dizygotic twins were studied and questioned identically to show to what extent environmental factors differentiated these subjects. The procedure of the study was that each individual twin was separated at birth and sent of to different families. The conclusion ended up with very similar results, where both twins shown the same intelligence results as well as the same characteristics. Although this experiment was controlled, We can still debate that environment factors can change their inherited traits. The Leachy and Burks study is another case in which genetics are seen to be inherited. In this study, nonadoptive families and adopted families were being tested to see if there was a correlation between environmental factors on the child’s development and how genetics play a role in determining their IQ. The hypothesis of this study assumes that adoptive children in their homes show different intelligence then that of their adoptive parents. The case study itself shows that there was almost no correlation between these two subjects. On the other hand, parents with their biological children show a correlation in having almost the same IQ scores. Therefore this evidence supports the claim that intelligence is an inherited