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Dopaminergic polymorphisms associated with self-report measures of human altruism: a fresh phenotype for the dopamine D4 receptor

Molecular Psychiatry volume 10, pages 333–335 (2005)Cite this article

SIR—The paradox of human altruism, helping others and thereby reducing one's own fitness, has confounded evolutionary biologists since the days of Darwin.1 Nevertheless, altruistic behavior is commonplace and a unique feature of human altruism is that it extends beyond Hamilton's concept of ‘inclusive fitness’, which explains altruistic acts by including helping genetically related individuals, and even beyond reciprocal altruism and reputation-based altruism. However, almost nothing is known regarding specific genes contributing to this behavior despite twin studies2 demonstrating that a significant proportion of the differences between people regarding prosocial attitudes is due to heredity.

Towards the goal of identifying specific genes associated with altruism, 354 nonclinical families with multiple siblings were inventoried for scores on the Selflessness Scale.3 This questionnaire measures the propensity to ignore ones own needs and serve the needs of others, or in other words altruism. Subjects were also inventoried on Cloninger's TPQ4 since the Reward subscale of this questionnaire taps into elements of human altruism such as empathy. We examined two dopaminergic genes in these subjects that we hypothesized might contribute to prosocial or altruistic traits based on the role a single variant of these genes plays in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), often comorbid with antisocial behavior. Meta-analyses5, 6 show that the dopamine D4 receptor (DRD4) exon III 7 repeat (D4.7) and the DRD5 148 bp microsatellite variant have both been associated with ADHD in some but not all studies. We reasoned that if one variant contributes to antisocial traits, then conversely the absence of this variant or the presence of other variants might contribute to altruistic behavior. We also genotyped three SNPs7 in the insulin-like growth factor 2 gene (IGF2), an imprinted gene on chromosome 11p15.5 that is an attractive candidate since some studies connect this class of growth factors to survival of dopamine neurons specifically8 and with neural development overall.

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Acknowledgements

This research was partially supported by the Israel Science Foundation founded by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (RPE).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

    R Bachner-Melman & R P Ebstein

  2. Scheinfeld Center of Human Genetics for the Social Sciences, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

    R Bachner-Melman & R P Ebstein

  3. S Herzog Memorial Hospital, Jerusalem, Israel

    I Gritsenko, L Nemanov & R P Ebstein

  4. Department of Behavioral Sciences, Ruppin Academic Center, Emek Hefer, Israel

    A H Zohar

  5. Génétique Maladies Multifactorielles—Institut de Biologie de Lille, UPRES, A 8090, Lille, France

    C Dina

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  1. R Bachner-Melman
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Correspondence to R P Ebstein.

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Bachner-Melman, R., Gritsenko, I., Nemanov, L. et al. Dopaminergic polymorphisms associated with self-report measures of human altruism: a fresh phenotype for the dopamine D4 receptor. Mol Psychiatry 10, 333–335 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.mp.4001635

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