I am wondering whether a behavioral trait (e.g. fear or stress experienced in th

Question

I am wondering whether a behavioral trait (e.g. fear or stress experienced in the lifetime of the parent) can be transmitted genetically to its offspring?

I understand that a behavioral tendency for stress acquired through evolutionary time can be transmitted from parent to child, but I'm wondering whether a trait not present before can be transmitted between 2 generations.

For example many studies claim that offsprings of holocaust survivors inherit psychopathological disorders. I'm wondering how this inheritance could occur genetically given such a short time period?

Explanation / Answer

Strictly speaking no.Cultural inheritance theory uses the plasticity of the human brain as the evidence for the underlying genetics of culture. I.e. we aren't born with the ability to speak English because our parents learned it but we have an the underlying brain structure that is controlled by genetics to learn cultural traits. It seems far more likely that the phenomenon you describe with holocaust survivors is more related to some environmental effects (from their parents) than anything genetic. In the comments stress hormones in pregnant mothers were mentioned. Any impact these have on the offspring are not truly "genetic", they're termed "maternal effects" in the evolution literature. In fact most selection studies go to great lengths to control for them or eliminate them. They aren't truly genetic because these traits would never get passed down to the grandoffspring of the original mother.

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