That isn't quite true, of course (as you probably guessed). There is no single gene that accounts for all the various empathetic phenotypes you'll observe around you. Furthermore, the study examined one possible effect of one variable base pair, not an entire gene. The OXTR gene alone consists of 19,221 bases. Only 372 of those are considered SNPs*, according to the NIH GeneCard, but that's still a pretty big number to explore.
I have to feel sorry for the plight of mainstream media science writers, who are constantly tasked with the impossible. They are supposed to report accurately on scientific findings while describing matters in terms that people with a sixth grade education can easily comprehend. And no doubt there is also pressure from above to phrase things in the most titillating and click-inducing way possible. The boss doesn't care if millions of people are running around parroting bad information, so long as those millions provide ad revenue and the news corporation isn't sued.
Personally, I would prefer precision over general accessibility if one of the two must be sacrificed, so this science news situation strikes me as a grand fuck up. But that's a topic for another day. In the meanwhile, fortunately, there are scientist-bloggers and science-writer-bloggers out there who often do a much better job of synopsizing this type of news in their own space (Ed Yong, Emily Willingham, Carl Zimmer, Scicurious, etc).
Back to the study now. I want to yak about it.
Some background:
Firstly, I am not an expert, just a flaming wannabe.... so keep your BS goggles on. I will not shit you on purpose but I might make some mistakes in terminology or interpretation.
The SNP in question is rs53576, possible genotypes being GG, AG, or AA. There has already been a lot of investigation into the effects of this particular area. It's not the be-all-end-all of empathy because nothing is, but it does appear to be significant. Among other things, those with the GG genotype are thought to either be more in tune with social affect expectations or simply more likely to display positive affect. GGs are not exempt from autism and don't necessarily have great social skills across the board, but they seem to be more sensitive to some select aspects of social interaction. In the United States, GGs tend to reach out more to other people in times of acute crisis than their AA and AG counterparts. In Korea, where reservation and self-control are more valued, GGs are more likely to keep their feelings to themselves and not ask others for help.
According to various studies, GGs tend to be better than non-GGs at non-verbal interior reasoning and visual pattern recognition, as well as recognition of the emotions of other people. GGs tend to empathize more easily with children and have a more attuned parenting style. They display more gullibility, warmth, and willingness to trust in general, but not if repeatedly abused, badly parented, or otherwise traumatized during formative years, in which case they rate as less trusting and (by some measures but not others) evince more emotional dysregulation as compared with AAs or heterozygotes. Under those same pressures they have a higher suicide rate than non-GGs as well.
In short, the pattern seems to suggest that that GGs are in general more responsive to the emotional temperature of their environment. If stuff is good, they do really good. If stuff is bad, they have a harder time dealing with that.
The Berkeley Study:
Basically, a bunch of romantic couples were rounded up. In each couple, one person was told to relate a story about a time when he or she had suffered a lot, and the other person was genotyped and told to sit opposite their partner and listen to the sad tale of woe. Then the listeners were filmed.
Later on, other people who did not personally know these couples were asked to view the films (which are silent) and rate how the listeners came across in terms of trustworthiness, kindness, and compassion. Surprise! GGs were rated the highest.
The above video is a sample of five of these clips. You can guess for yourself who is or is not a GG. I will spoil this shortly, so don't scroll down yet if you want your views untainted.
The study results have been criticized as being statistically insignificant, due to the small sample size (23 couples). But the observer group was significantly larger (100 people) and I wonder if some critics are overlooking that fact. The researchers themselves state that they believe further inquiry is warranted. I respect that and (speaking as a layperson) I do think that the results are interesting and worth having published.
Personal Reaction:
Well, first off, when I heard about this study, I looked up my own genotype at this locus (I got a DTC SNP analysis last year for Christmas). I am a GG, of course.
(Yessssss. I knew it. I was a magical sparklevamp the entire time!)
Only... wrong, because it's actually more common to have the G allele than the A.
(Awww...)
You can look up the allele frequency for rs53576 in several different places. My favorite is Yale's ALele FRequency Database (aka ALFRED), which will give you charts and graphs showing rates of heterozygosity and frequency for over 50 population samples. ALFRED shows that in almost every part of the world, G is the most common allele at this locus. There were no A alleles at all in the Oceana population sample nor in two of the African samples. The highest rate of all for A was in native Siberians at 68%, but this looked exceptional and far beyond any other group.
According to other sources, around 50% of white USians are GG. Rates of AA are around 8-15% and the rest are GA. Good to know.
My thoughts on the video, along with the real answers:
Person 1: Within a couple seconds I felt strongly that this guy was a GG. I kept wanting to go back and see him listening to his partner again because it was so sweet the way he was looking at her. At one point he appears to have a very organic urge to reach out and touch her with his right hand and he automatically starts in that direction, but he realizes the clipboard will fall if he does, so he puts his hand back down. I found this very moving and honestly probably would have teared up if the clip had been longer. He was indeed a GG.
Person 2: Gut reaction says very strongly: this guy is super bad news. Do not like. At all. (sorry dude) Not a GG.
Person 3: Seemed nice and good-intentioned but lacked a certain something that the first person had (such as the ability to judge that this wasn't a good moment to fidget a lot), and just didn't seem so attuned to his mate, not even as he verbally reacted to the story. I know a couple people who have the uncontrollable urge to jiggle their legs the way this guy is doing, and I really like those people... they're good people... but this still didn't feel quite right. Passable behavior, but not warm. I couldn't decide what he was, though. Turns out he was not a GG.
Person 4: She seems nervous and self-conscious, but she's also paying good attention and at the end seems almost apologetic for her nervousness as she laughs. She doesn't scream "GG" to me the way the first guy did, but she seems caring and likable. She was GG.
Person 5: Uh, no. Just no. Immediate no. And she wasn't.
I only got three right, since I waffled on numbers 3 and 4. I would really have liked to see all 23 video clips.
Also, as others have mentioned, I would love to know whether GGs and non-GGs read these people differently. Aside from issues of statistical significance (which I don't well understand), I am curious if any positive results could just be a matter of "like prefers like" rather than real detection of empathetic traits. I saw one confirmed non-GG online say that persons 1 and 4 came across as impatient to him, which surprised me.
ABRUPT ENDING! ...for I am le tired.
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*If I understand correctly, in order to be considered a SNP, the less common allele at a given base pair position has to be present in no less than 1% of the members of a reference population. I am guessing that there must be some exceptions to that rule in cases of very rare disease mutations, but I don't know for sure.
2 comments:
Fascinating. This may be less about empathy, though, than about how people visibly show their feelings and perceive the feelings of others. As an AA, and like the other non-GG you mentioned, I didn't read these people in the same way you did, either. In fact, like that other observer I thought person 1 was bored with having to listen to the story and was struggling to conceal that. I wonder what percentage of the observer group was GG and whether a significant part was anything else.
Thanks for the comment and for sharing your reaction to the video.
I agree with you re: empathy vs. different styles of emotional expression and interpretation. At the very least, it's an explanation that deserves to be probed further, since the results of this study are exactly what one would expect to see if a majority of raters were GG and prefer a GG style of relating. (Although I did not read the full text myself, so I don't know whether the authors acknowledged this.)
It seems likely, too, that some of the other studies on the same SNP might be overlooking this possibility.
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