In this review, we have provided a summary of the genetic influences on conduct disorder, including the genetic epidemiology of conduct disorder, attempts to identify specific predisposing genes, and efforts to understand gene-environment interplay. Twin studies of conduct disorder and antisocial behavior consistently show that at least some of the risk for these outcomes is attributable to genetic factors. Importantly, however, these genetic predispositions have only a probabilistic relation to subsequent conduct disorder, and environmental factors can be correlated with and moderate these genetic predispositions. Attempts to identify the measured genetic variants associated with conduct disorder using hypothesis-free and hypothesis-driven approaches have had limited success to date, although there is evidence for association between conduct disorder related phenotypes and GABRA2, MAOA, SLC6A4, and AVPR1A across independent samples. This limited success is not surprising in view of difficulty of gene identification efforts for psychiatric and complex traits more generally. However, it has raised concerns about the replicability of cG × E effects.
