AP Psychology: Heredity and Environment — Drill 1

About This Drill

AP Psychology: Heredity and Environment — Drill 1 is a Multiple Choice practice drill covering Unit 1: Biological Bases of Behavior. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.

Test your understanding of how genes and environment interact to shape behavior with these AP Psychology practice questions on heredity and environment — ideal AP exam prep for Unit 1 of the course.

Questions in This Drill

1. A researcher wants to determine the relative contributions of genetics and upbringing to adult personality. She studies pairs of identical twins who were separated at birth and raised in different households, comparing them to identical twins raised together.
2. Kayla was born with a genetic predisposition to anxiety. Her parents, aware of this, raised her in a calm, structured household and taught her stress-management strategies from an early age. As a teenager, Kayla shows only mild anxiety and copes effectively. Which concept best explains the role that Kayla's upbringing played in shaping her outcome?
3. A behavior geneticist reports the following heritability estimates for three traits in a large adult sample: General intelligence: 0.50 Extraversion: 0.49 Neuroticism: 0.48 A student concludes: "Because heritability is about 50% for each trait, roughly half of any individual's score is determined by genetics." Which of the following best evaluates the student's conclusion?
4. A developmental psychologist wants to study whether children raised in highly stressful home environments show different brain development than children raised in stable homes. She proposes randomly assigning families to either a "high-stress" condition or a "stable" condition for two years. Which of the following is the most significant problem with this proposed study?
5. Two studies examine the heritability of depression. Study A uses a sample of adult twins living in a diverse range of socioeconomic environments and reports a heritability estimate of 0.37. Study B uses a sample of adult twins who all grew up in middle-class households with similar educational access and reports a heritability estimate of 0.61. Which of the following best explains why the heritability estimate is higher in Study B?