The Hunger Games best-selling novel, by Suzanne Collins, is about a dystopia where each year 24 individuals are forced to fight to the death in a well anticipated televised event (Blasdel, 2012). The Capitol is the omnipotent center controlling this event. The main character, Katniss Everdeen, selflessly volunteers for the Games in place of her younger sister (Blasdel, 2012).
While the situation presented is fictional, research has been conducted in less severe measures to investigate altruism-dictator human behaviour. In this case, over 200 university students were part of an online “Dictator Game” (Knafo et al., 2008). Each pair of students had Player A with 50 shekels and the power to distribute them with Player B, who had no shekels. Real money was involved. The results showed that at the extremes about 15% of the players gave nothing while about 7% gave all of their money (Knafo et al., 2008). More individuals chose to give away half of their shekels away. The genotype, arginine vasopressin 1a receptor (AVPR1a), was sequenced in all the players and their parents as it has been identified as coordinating social memory and behaviour. It was found that the promoter region of this gene influenced the individuals’ behaviour (Knafo et al., 2008). To be specific, the Player As who had shorter regions had a tendency to give away fewer shekels, while those with longer regions gave significantly more shekels (graph below).
Arginine Vasopressin is an antidiuretic hormone, instructing the formation of antidiuretic hormone – ADH (Genetics Home Reference, 2012). It has two receptors, with V1a as the receptor of interest. The mutation of this gene is primarily associated with research of neurohypophyseal diabetes insipidus (Genetics Home Reference, 2012). The results of the Dictator Game are novel in terms of research on this gene.
The study suggests that human altruism could be evolutionary as it is based on a specific gene distinguishing factor found in populations (Knafo et al., 2008). This may be a new, counter-intuitive observation since individual evolutionary fitness is perceived as a selfish method for gaining the best resources in order to have the most offspring.
In the Hunger Games, Katniss and her friend Peeta become the remaining survivors (Blasdel, 2012). They decide to eat poisonous berries to overcome and defeat the authoritarian Capitol. This would be a sacrifice of their lives for the greater good of their society. Could it be possible that Katniss’ self-sacrificing character could lead to a conclusion that her genome had longer AVPR1a regions?
Works Cited:
Blasdel, 2012. ClifNotes on The Hunger Games. [online] Available at: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/literature/id-331.html [March 23, 2012].
Collins, 2012. ‘Hunger Games’ Inspired by Iraq War? Interviewed by Dan Harris. [Interview] ABC news, March 21, 2012.
Genetics Home Reference, 2012, Genetics Home Reference. [online] March 26, 2012. Available at: http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/gene/AVP [March 29, 2012].
Knafo et al., 2008. Individual differences in allocation of funds in the dictator game associated with length of the arginine vasopressin 1a receptor RS3 promoter region and correlation between RS3 length and hippocampal mRNA. Genes, Brain and Behavior, [online] 7, 266-275. Available through: PubMed [March 23, 2012].