Together, these studies about nature and nurture interplay and behaviour have led to a paradigm shift in the way people think about the old nature versus nurture debate. In essence, this notion of one or the other is moribund. As popularised by Matt Ridley in his book, “it’s more a case of “Nature via Nurture” [95]. The impact of these findings stretches well beyond the academy and the popular press. For example, several years ago, an Italian judge overturned a sentence based on the argument that the MAOA gene conferred susceptibility to violence, and this could be used in mitigation at sentencing. Putting aside the rights and wrongs of this decision, it is also clear that the basic associations reported by the Dunedin Study at the population level have spurred a great deal of neuroscience work in the laboratory, trying to uncover the mechanisms that might be involved.
