Genetics and Human Behaviour: The Ethical Context
The difficulty of defining and measuring traits
11.3 The traits on which research in behavioural genetics focuses are complex and multi-faceted. The difficulty of defining such traits in a rigorous and reproducible manner is a problem that equally affects psychologists and other researchers of human behaviour. Scores on scales of aggression, neuroticism or capacity for memory are useful tools for researchers and have applications in the realm of clinical psychology. However, broader claims from research in behavioural genetics about influences on human behaviour must be accompanied by a caveat about the necessarily artificial and limited context in which traits are considered.