Genetic risk, parent-child relations, and antisocial phenotypes in a sample of African-American males

Gene x environment interactions have been found to be associated with the development of antisocial behaviors. The extant gene x environment research, however, has failed to measure directly the ways in which global measures of genetic risk may interact with a putative environmental risk factor. The current study addresses this gap in the literature and examines the interrelationships among a global measure of genetic risk based on five genetic polymorphisms, a measure of parent-child relations, and eight antisocial phenotypes. Analysis of African-American males (N = 145 to 159) drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) revealed two broad findings. First, the genetic risk and parent-child relations scales were inconsistently related to the outcome variables. Second, genetic risk and parent-child relations interacted to predict variation in all of the eight antisocial phenotype measures. These findings point to the possibility that measures of genetic risk that are based on multiple polymorphisms can be employed to examine the gene x environmental basis to antisocial behavioral phenotypes.