Christine Pett1 & Jim Stevenson1
There has been a tendency for behaviour genetic studies to concentrate on disruptive and antisocial aspects of children's behaviour. By contrast work on more positive and prosocial aspects has been limited. Indeed the issue of whether prosocial and antisocial are influenced by the same or different genetic and environmental issues has yet to be explored. One of the difficulties in undertaking studies on these more prosocial aspects of behaviour has been the lack of well validated measures. Recently Goodman (R. Goodman, 1997, J. Child Psychol. & Psychiat. 38, 582-586.) has published a Strengths and Difficulties scale which meets this need. The parent of a sample of 147 MZ, 133 DZ same sex and 102 opposite sex twin pairs were given the Strengths and Difficulties questionnaire. The data were analysed to examine whether there were genetic influences on prosocial behaviour, whether these effects were more or less marked than for antisocial behaviour or conduct problems and whether prosocial behaviour was influenced by the same factors that impact on more negative aspects of behaviour. Multivariate model fitting was undertaken to test these relationships. Preliminary analyses indicate that there are both shared and independent genetic influences of prosocial and antisocial aspects of behaviour in childhood and adolescence.
Address: cp5@crpd.psy.soton.ac.uk, Tel: +44 (01703) 594593, Fax: +44 (01703) 594597
1Department of Psychology, University of Southampton, Hampshire. SO17 1BJ United Kingdom.