Behavior genetic findings figure in debates ranging from urgent public policy matters to perennial questions about the nature of human agency. Despite a common set of methodological tools, behavior genetic studies approach scientific questions with potentially divergent goals. Some studies may be interested in identifying a complete model of how individual differences come to be (e.g., identifying causal pathways among genotypes, environments, and phenotypes across development). Other studies place primary importance on developing models with predictive utility, in which case understanding of underlying causal processes is not necessarily required. Although certainly not mutually exclusive, these two goals often represent tradeoffs in terms of costs and benefits associated with various methodological approaches. In particular, given that most empirical behavior genetic research assumes that variance can be neatly decomposed into independent genetic and environmental components, violations of model assumptions have different consequences for interpretation, depending on the particular goals. Developmental behavior genetic theories postulate complex transactions between genetic variation and environmental experiences over time, meaning assumptions are routinely violated. Here, we consider two primary questions: (1) How might the simultaneous operation of several mechanisms of gene-environment (GE)-interplay affect behavioral genetic model estimates? (2) At what level of GE-interplay does the 'gloomy prospect' of unsystematic and non-replicable genetic associations with a phenotype become an unavoidable certainty?

中文翻译：

---

解释行为遗传模型：需要理解的七个发育过程。


行为遗传学的发现引起了从紧迫的公共政策问题到关于人类能动性本质的长期问题的争论。尽管有一套通用的方法论工具，但行为遗传学研究以潜在不同的目标来解决科学问题。一些研究可能有兴趣确定个体差异如何形成的完整模型（例如，确定基因型、环境和发育过程中表型之间的因果路径）。其他研究将首要重点放在开发具有预测效用的模型上，在这种情况下，不一定需要了解潜在的因果过程。尽管当然不是相互排斥的，但这两个目标通常代表与各种方法相关的成本和收益的权衡。特别是，鉴于大多数经验行为遗传学研究假设方差可以巧妙地分解为独立的遗传和环境成分，违反模型假设会对解释产生不同的后果，具体取决于特定的目标。发育行为遗传理论假设遗传变异和环境经历之间随着时间的推移会发生复杂的变化，这意味着假设经常被违反。在这里，我们考虑两个主要问题：（1）基因-环境（GE）相互作用的几种机制的同时运行如何影响行为遗传模型的估计？ (2) 在 GE 相互作用的什么水平上，与表型的非系统性和不可复制的遗传关联的“悲观前景”成为不可避免的确定性？