WIRED FOR SUCCESS

       Are some people’s brains hardwired for success? It turns out that this may be the case for highly successful individuals in business, politics, or even the clergy. One of the newest and most interesting trends in behavioral psychology today is the “gene-environment interaction.” Researchers have identified dozens of variant genes that appear to be responsible for a susceptibility to depression, Attention Deficient Disorde

(ADD), Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Violence, and Antisocial Disorders (Bakermans-Kranenburg, 2004), but the negative effects of the gene alleles only occurs in stressful environments or as a result of traumatic experiences. In other words, a Dr. Jekyll can become a Mr. Hyde in certain environments. However, in the right context we have also seen that the same genes are responsible for individual’s great success. We suspected genes that could be so deleterious to the species had redeeming value; otherwise selection would have eradicated it from the gene pool. Researchers Bruce Ellis and Thomas Boyce (2009) stated, “At first glance, this idea, which I’ll call the orchid hypothesis, may seem a simple amendment to the vulnerability hypothesis. It merely adds that environment and experience can steer a person up instead of down. Yet it’s actually a completely new way to think about genetics and human behavior; risk becomes possibility, vulnerability becomes plasticity and responsiveness.”