A main pilar of behavioral psychology is that the previously learnt behavior is activated in a certain context, the antecedent. The presence (or absence) of con

A main pilar of behavioral psychology is that the previously learnt behavior is activated in a certain context, the antecedent. The presence (or absence) of consequences following the behavior affects the probability of such a behavior occurring again a smiliar context. This operant conditioning has been shown extensively in behavioristic research by Skinner and beyond. Genes can be thought of as learnt behavior in an organism accumulating over time. This behavior is also activated in certain contexts. Thus the sentence does not necessarily separate environmental influence from genetic influence although it is easy to interpret it as such.