David C. Rowe (27 September 1949 – 2 February 2003) was an American

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...

professor known for his work studying genetic and environmental influences on adolescent onset behaviors such as

delinquency Delinquent or delinquents may refer to: * A person who commits a felony * A juvenile delinquent, often shortened as delinquent is a young person (under 18) who fails to do that which is required by law; see juvenile delinquency * A person who fa ...

and smoking.J. L. Rodgers, K. Jacobson and E. van den Oord. (2003)
"Obituary: David Christian Rowe"
''Behavior Genetics'', 33, 627–628. His research into interaction between genetics and environment led to the discovery of the Scarr-Rowe effect. Rowe earned his

A.B. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

and his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

from the

University of Colorado at Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado sy ...

, where he was a student at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics. Rowe was well known for his work on the genes and the environment: how they interact, what the limits of environment and genes might be, and what mechanisms implement these effects. He also focussed on articulating the different realms of the social environment: shared in families, unique to individuals, neighbourhood or nation level social and cultural effects. His book ''The Limits of Family Influence: Genes, Experience and Behaviour''D. C. Rowe. (1994)
''The Limits of Family Influence: Genes, Experience and Behaviour''
. Guilford Press. London brought together much of this work. This work led to several substantive findings on shared and nonshared environmental influences; seminal work on the heritability of parenting behaviors (the genetics of the environment for children); on the heritability of

antisocial behavior Antisocial may refer to: Sociology, psychiatry and psychology * Anti-social behaviour *Antisocial personality disorder *Psychopathy *Conduct disorder Law *Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 *Anti-Social Behaviour Order *Crime and Disorder Act 1998 * ...

; race differences and their causes; for testing the interaction of education, and social class with genes in the development of intelligence; and for blending behavioral and molecular genetics. He made several methodological contributions, including work on modeling of means and covariances with raw data, the utility of the DeFries–Fulker analysis, and measured genes and environmental influences. The Add Health data featured in much of his research, and he served as the main geneticist on this large and influential survey of over 90,000 adolescents across the United States. Rowe's work highlighted the often surprising immunity of mental states to social circumstances, reporting that "great fortune does not guarantee happiness; neither does great misfortune assure depression".D. C. Rowe. (2001)
"Do people make environments or do environments make people?"
''Ann N Y Acad Sci'', 935, 62–74.] This led to his positing of biological set points as a mechanism for stability, as well as arguing for indirect genetic effects: that different genotypes would cause different people to react to the same environment in different ways, and, moreover, that individuals expose themselves to different social environments. This led to ideas about active seeking and environment construction, as well the idea that exposure to (controllable) life events may result partly from genetic predisposition. He was an advocate of

Consilience In science and history, consilience (also convergence of evidence or concordance of evidence) is the principle that evidence from independent, unrelated sources can "converge" on strong conclusions. That is, when multiple sources of evidence are ...

: including biological individuality along with social, psychological, and cultural factors in any understanding of human behavior. In 1994 he was one of 52 signatories on "

Mainstream Science on Intelligence "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" was a public statement issued by a group of researchers of topics associated with intelligence testing. It was published originally in ''The Wall Street Journal'' on December 13, 1994, as a response to criticis ...

,Gottfredson, Linda (December 13, 1994).

. ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'', p A18." an editorial written by

Linda Gottfredson Linda Susanne Gottfredson (née Howarth; born 1947) is an American psychologist and writer. She is professor emeritus of educational psychology at the University of Delaware and co-director of the Delaware-Johns Hopkins Project for the Study of I ...

and published in ''

'', which declared the consensus of the signing scholars on issues related to intelligence research following the publication of the book ''

The Bell Curve ''The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life'' is a 1994 book by psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray, in which the authors argue that human intelligence is substantially influenced by ...

''. Rowe's work identified gene-environment interactions in cognitive traits, and contributed to understanding of the Scarr-Rowe Effect, which posits that the heritability of intelligence is higher in children with higher socioeconomic status. His final paper, published posthumously, advocated for impartial testing of genetic versus environmental influences on racial differences.

References

Books

* Rowe DC (1995). ''The Limits of Family Influence: Genes, Experience, and Behavior.'' The Guilford Press, * Rowe DC (2001). ''Biology and Crime.'' Roxbury Publishing Company,

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rowe, David C. 1949 births 2003 deaths University of Colorado alumni University of Colorado faculty Harvard University alumni 20th-century American psychologists Psychology educators American psychology writers American male non-fiction writers Behavior geneticists 20th-century American zoologists 20th-century American male writers