Do you want to blame your antisocial behavior on your lousy genetics? You now have some specific genes to blame it on thanks to a recent study which found that two dopamine receptor genes significantly influence men's chances of developing antisocial behavior. Neither gene has a significant effect by itself but there is a significantly higher risk of antisocial behavior in men who have the A1 allele of the DRD2 gene and the 7R allele of the DRD4 gene. We will probably discover more such gene interactions over the next few years but we already have a small part of the picture. Having the "bad" gene combination does not doom one to a life of crime and behavior problems, though, it only raises the risk in a statistically significant way.

This is more evidence that the progressive view of humans as blank slates whose life outcomes are determined mainly by their parents and teachers is dead wrong. I don't expect this study to change any progressives' minds, but over time this and other studies demonstrating how specific genes affect human neurology and psychology will eventually reach a critical mass which cannot be denied. Not that I expect progressivism and political correctness to ever give up, but at least I can hope that they will be a little more grounded in reality.

The bad news is that this cause of antisocial behavior does not have a good or easy solution. Gene interactions are tricky - two decent people can have a son with a genetic predisposition to antisocial behavior just because he happens to randomly pick up the wrong alleles from each of the parents. This isn't something which can be prevented by just not breeding with nasty people. We will soon be able to genetically screen parents and/or embryos to prevent boys with this gene combination from coming into the world which would solve the problem.

However, we may not really want to do that - perhaps under some circumstances (when combined with other genes or plain old luck) these genes make men more productive, creative or healthy rather than antisocial? This is something we'll need to find out first. Since we know what these genes are involved in we can perhaps develop drugs which would help combat antisocial behavior in people with this gene interaction, though I doubt many will want to take them voluntarily which opens all sorts of unpleasant scenarios for coercion. That's not much of a solution, either.

There is another piece of bad news in the study. Although the authors try to bury this information by mentioning it in two separate paragraphs and never making the obvious conclusion, the alleles involved are more common in Original men (to avoid offense I am using the term approved by the Nation of Islam) than in American whites or Hispanics. That means that some part of the problems of America's Original community, and perhaps also sub-Saharan Africa, is going to be very difficult to mitigate, and that not all those problems can be traced to differences in IQ averages.

These findings are supported by another study performed by criminologists, though it uses the same data source so it's not entirely independent. Overall the news is pretty depressing - we know that it will be very difficult to do much about at least one of the causes of antisocial behavior. If more studies come out uncovering more gene interactions then the picture will only get darker.