Genes and society: what more influences the choice of friends?
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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"Nature and animals teach to know their friends." These words of William Shakespeare became an aphorism. However, for people, nature is not a decisive factor in building friendly relations. To this conclusion came the scientists from the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Having carried out the first of its kind research, a team of scientists discovered that "fisherman sees a fisherman from afar", including because of similar genetic characteristics of different people, but the social environment in which people interact with each other is crucial.
Scientists have long argued about which factor has a greater impact on a person's social behavior - nature or upbringing. Professor of Sociology Jason Boardman is sure that this dispute is meaningless. "Any social and demographic activities that are of interest to us, whether it be the birth of children, marriage, migration or health care, never depend solely on nature or on education. Always influence on these actions have both nature and upbringing, "- explains the professor.
Last year, a scientific report was published that provided evidence that certain genes may condition a person's choice of friends. The magazine in which the report was published, invented for the designation of this phenomenon a special term - "genetic friends".
To test the validity of such conclusions and to broaden the understanding of the processes that influence friendships between people, Boardman and colleagues investigated the characteristics of 1,503 pairs of friends from more than forty American schools.
The Boardman team found that some of the friends actually had similar genetic characteristics. However, the researchers did not stop there. They made a logical conclusion: if genetic features are the main factor when choosing a friend by friends, then in schools with the most socially homogeneous collective of children, this influence of genes on friendship should be most pronounced. "But we found out that everything is just the opposite," Boyardman said.
It turned out that in a socially homogeneous environment, examples of "genetic friendship" are less than in a complex social environment with different segments of the population. "In an unequal social environment, we found the most examples of" genetic friendship ", explains Boyardman.
Scientists have yet to find out what this pattern is connected with, but now we can conclude that the social foundations of society are at least no less important factor in the choice of friends than genetic features.
"We can not say that genes condition friendship, without taking into account the context in which friendly relations can or can not get involved," Professor Boyardman said.
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