The Straits Times

The debate between nature and nurture has been a long drawn and highly contentious one. Professor Richard Ebstein from the Department of Psychology at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences has worked with a team of researchers to study 1,771 university students of Han Chinese origin. The research has found that the presence of the DRD4 gene in the research subjects may have affected the subjects’ political inclinations. The findings also suggest that “[t]he association between political attitude and DRD4 was highly significant for females” and less significant for men. While genetic determinants have been increasingly used to understand human behaviour, we should also take into account the complexities of human nature and that no one trait can fully explain how we conduct ourselves.

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