David C. Rowe
David C. Rowe | |
|---|---|
behavior genetics | |
| Institutions | Oberlin College University of Oklahoma University of Arizona |
| Thesis | Temperament, School Adjustment and Peers (1977) |
| Doctoral advisor | Robert Plomin |
David Christian Rowe (September 27, 1949 – February 2, 2003) was an American psychologist known for his work studying genetic and environmental influences on adolescent onset behaviors such as delinquency and smoking.[1] His research into interaction between genetics and environment led to the discovery of the Scarr–Rowe effect.
Life and career
Rowe earned his
Rowe was well known for his work on the genes and the environment: how they interact, what the limits of environment and genes might be, and what mechanisms implement these effects. He also focussed on articulating the different realms of the social environment: shared in families, unique to individuals, neighbourhood or nation level social and cultural effects. His book The Limits of Family Influence: Genes, Experience and Behaviour[2] brought together much of this work.
This work led to several substantive findings on shared and nonshared environmental influences; seminal work on the heritability of parenting behaviors (the
Rowe's work highlighted the often surprising immunity of mental states to social circumstances, reporting that "great fortune does not guarantee happiness; neither does great misfortune assure depression".[3] This led to his positing of biological set points as a mechanism for stability, as well as arguing for indirect genetic effects: that different genotypes would cause different people to react to the same environment in different ways, and, moreover, that individuals expose themselves to different social environments. This led to ideas about active seeking and environment construction, as well the idea that exposure to (controllable) life events may result partly from genetic predisposition. He was an advocate of Consilience: including biological individuality along with social, psychological, and cultural factors in any understanding of human behavior.
In 1994 he was one of 52 signatories on "Mainstream Science on Intelligence,"[4] an editorial written by Linda Gottfredson and published in The Wall Street Journal, which declared the consensus of the signing scholars on issues related to intelligence research following the publication of the book The Bell Curve. Rowe's work identified gene-environment interactions in cognitive traits, and contributed to understanding of the Scarr-Rowe Effect, which posits that the heritability of intelligence is higher in children with higher socioeconomic status. His final paper, published posthumously, advocated for impartial testing of genetic versus environmental influences on racial differences.[5]
References
- ^ a b J. L. Rodgers, K. Jacobson and E. van den Oord. (2003). "Obituary: David Christian Rowe". Behavior Genetics, 33, 627–628.
- ^ D. C. Rowe. (1994). The Limits of Family Influence: Genes, Experience and Behaviour Archived 2016-10-19 at the Wayback Machine. Guilford Press. London
- ^ D. C. Rowe. (2001). "Do people make environments or do environments make people?" Archived 2014-08-08 at the Wayback Machine Ann N Y Acad Sci, 935, 62–74.]
- ^ Gottfredson, Linda (December 13, 1994). Mainstream Science on Intelligence. The Wall Street Journal, p A18.
- PMID 15641922.
Books
- Rowe DC (1995). The Limits of Family Influence: Genes, Experience, and Behavior. The Guilford Press, ISBN 0-89862-148-8
- Rowe DC (2001). Biology and Crime. Roxbury Publishing Company, ISBN 1-891487-80-9
External links
- David C. Rowe publications indexed by Google Scholar
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