Impact of migration on the expression of aggression and empathy in urban populations

Abstract

Background: Migration is a very important and powerful factor of population dynamics. It can lead to evident genetic consequences, like allele frequency change, as well to non-direct effects by creating new environment for migrant genes to be realized, and different personality and somatic traits, governed by these genes, to be expressed, accordingly.

Aim: The aim of this research was to assess the impact of migration on the level of empathy and aggression among native population and migrants of the Ukrainian megapolis.

Subjects and methods: Altogether 444 males and 597 females – permanent residents of Kharkov aged 45–65 years passed a test for the level of aggression by Assinger’s questionnaire and for the level of empathy by Mehrabian-Epstein’s questionnaire.

Results: Place of birth of both subjects and their parents was taken into account. The migration and the ‘‘alien” genes appear to increase the level of aggression and reduce the level of empathy. Combined action of these factors resulted in an average level of empathy by 15–16% and aggression by 5–6%.

Conclusion: Variation in the level of aggression is much more dependent on the genetic factor (4%) rather than on the environmental (1.8%). The rate of the environmental factor in the empathy variation is 9%, when the genetic - 7%.

Keywords: Migration, Ukraine, Aggression, Empathy