A Publication of 2008 APA CONVENTION.... The Society for General Psychology A Preview of Convention Attractions Division One by Nancy Segal - Cal State Fullerton of the American Psychological Association ivision 1 (General Psychology) when the 2007 Awards chose Evolutionary Psychology and evolutionary Addresses DBehavioral Genetics as its central interests of Inside! themes for the 2008 convention program. males and Evolutionary Psychology is concerned females di- with identifying behavioral and physical verge. Jason characteristics, functions and processes Young chairs INSIDE THIS ISSUE that foster individual survival and repro- a session duction. Behavioral genetics is concerned that takes an Convention Preview: with the inherited and experiential influ- evolution- Cesarini.................2 ences on individual differences in behav- ary look at Michalski...............4 ior. Both perspectives continue to receive perceptions Nancy Segal McGuire.................7 considerable attention in the psychologi- of facial and physical attributes across the Salmon..................9 cal literature and in the popular press. menstrual cycle, and at unknown visual Segal..................13 An impressive list of speakers and top- illusions. Division 1 President Thomas J. Hill & Durante............16 ics have been assembled for the upcoming Bouchard, Jr. presents new evidence for convention. Invited Talks: David Cesarini the evolution of the “traditional moral vir- 2007 Awards Addresses and Bjorn Wallace present results from an tues triad.” McAdams..............20 identical twin-fraternal twin comparison Other Division 1 highlights include a Hyde.....................28 of strategies applied during an Ultimatum conversation hour honoring the legendary Thompson...............32 Game. David Haig examines the behav- psychologist Anne Anastasi on the 100th RetroReview: Milgram.....39 ioral correlates of Prader-Willi syndrome, anniversary of her birth. Anastasi made a condition suggesting that parent-off- seminal contributions to many areas of What They’re Reading.....43 spring conflict played a role in the evo- psychological theory and practice. In ad- From the SGP President...46 lution of a distinctive human childhood. dition, a symposium on basic emotions Symposia: Sarah Hill chairs a session con- considers the basic emotions paradigm, as Introducing the Pres Elect..47 cerned with evaluating decisions in light well as various biological and neuroscien- Exec Committee Meeting..48 of evolutionary theorizing. Catherine tific views of emotional development. Salmon, editor of Family Relationships: An On the following pages you will find APA Council Report.........50 Evolutionary Perspective, leads a discus- “preview” pieces by several of the Divion 1 New Webmaster............51 sion of parent-child and sibling relations presenters on evolutionary psychology at with reference to evolutionary concepts this year’s APA Convention. Ad Hoc Committees........52 and principles. Aaron Goetz chairs a ses- Division 1 Officers..........53 sion on old and new topics in behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology— Nancy Segal and Jason Young are Co- 2008 Awards Addresses ...55 contributions from the famous Bar Harbor Chairs of the 2008 convention program for Laboratory, and the conflict that ensues Division One. Volume 43, No. 1 - Spring 2008 The General Psychologist Page 1 APA CONVENTION PREVIEW Genes and Games by David Cesarini - Massachusetts Institute of Technology iro, rationality is a much more plausible behavior Experimental econom- assumption for individuals of high cognitive abil- ics, the use of controlled ex- ity. periments to test economic One might conjecture that one reason why theory, has surged in popular- there exists relatively little published work on ity in recent years. The Nobel individual differences in economic games is that prize awarded to the psychol- it has been notoriously difficult to find variables ogist Daniel Kahneman and which robustly predict individual differences. the economist Vernon Smith is Indeed, as noted for instance by Colin Camerer, both a cause and an effect of many of the correlations between individual this development. By now, the behavior in experiments and various demo- use of these methods has tran- graphics measures that have been reported in David Cesarini scended into other fields such the literature are either small or do not survive as evolutionary theory, psychology and neuro- replication. Yet, absence of evidence does not im- science . ply evidence of absence. In light of the ubiquity The bulk of experimental work has focused of genetic influences, documented by behavior on testing whether theoretical predictions hold geneticists, for most human traits a reasonable on average. Though there are important excep- place to start is to ask if there is genetic variation tions, most notably a nascent literature on be- which explains differences in how individuals act havioral anomalies and IQ, the study of individ- in economic games. ual variation in economic behavior has suffered Therefore, a Swedish team of researchers, of from a comparative neglect. For instance, in an which I am a member, collected experimental early experimental paper, Vernon Smith was in- data using a subject pool of mono- and dizygot- terested in testing whether competitive price ic twins. Independently, the political scientists theory holds, that is to say, if prices converge to Christopher Dawes and James Fowler at UCSD the equilibrium in a laboratory experiment. The recently conceived of and executed a similar bat- advantage of the laboratory setting here is obvi- tery of experiments on US twins. Comparing the ous; supply and demand curves can be created behavior of identical and nonidentical twins is a by the experimenter, whereas in market data form of quasi-controlled experiment. Both share only equilibrium prices are observed. His conclu- the same upbringing, but their degree of genetic sion: “the outcome was unbelievably consistent relatedness differs. To the extent that genetically with competitive price theory”. identical twins make more similar choices in eco- In one sense, the science of economics re- nomic experiments, one can deduct that these sembles the branches of psychology that focus choices have a genetic component. In all of these on human universals, or study the aggregate experiments, twins interacted with anonymous effects of numerous individual actions, thereby partners in the laboratory (not their co-twin). relegating discussion about individual variation This is not the first time economic experi- to a footnote. Ultimately, abstracting from indi- ments are carried out on twins. Previous studies vidual differences is likely to reduce the predic- have shown that monozygotic twins cooperate tive accuracy of any model of human behavior. more with each other than dizygotic twins in For example, as demonstrated by economists prisoner’s dilemma type situations. These papers Dan Benjamin, Sebastian Brown and Jesse Shap- therefore offer a laboratory test of inclusive fit- Volume 43, No. 1 - Spring 2008 The General Psychologist Page 2 Cesarini: Genes & Games ness theory. These experiments corroborated ulation specific, so it is interesting to note that the hypothesis, and illustrate a second use of similar estimates are obtained in two different genetically informative data in economic experi- samples, despite manifest cultural differences ments. between the United States and Sweden. Consider the simple example of the ultima- tum game, where two players are offered a chance What is one to make of these to earn a certain sum of money. A proposer sug- findings? gests how to split the sum. The responder can ac- There are at least a few areas where it is im- cept or reject the deal. If the deal is rejected, nei- mediately obvious that this research may prove ther player gets anything. If the deal is accepted, helpful. For instance, heritability estimates can both players are paid in accordance with the pro- be used to discriminate between different mod- posed split. Previous research has demonstrated els of the evolution of cooperation. Typically, that individuals care not only about monetary such models differ in their predictions about payoffs, but also take fairness considerations into equilibrium genotypic variation, and the persis- account, routinely rejecting stingy offers, some- tent finding of moderate heritability might lend thing a narrowly profit maximizing agent would some support to theories featuring polymorphic not do. Little is known about why some players’ equilibria. behavior is relatively well approximated by the More generally, our findings, together with rational model, whereas other people, a vast previous findings in the behavioral genetics liter- majority, are willing to forfeit monetary payoffs ature it is also time to take seriously the proposi- out of “fairness” concerns. In a recent paper, we tion that humans are endowed with genetic vari- estimate that heritability of responder behavior ation which underlies heterogeneity in strategies in the ultimatum game is 40 %, suggesting that and preferences elicited in economic games. We any attempt to understand responder behavior hope that this finding can make a small contri- which ignores this genetic influence is incom- bution toward ending the almost singular preoc- plete. cupation with social and cultural transmission Or consider the trust game, developed by in economic research, and taking genetic varia- Joyce Berg, John Dickhaut and