Extending and testing Tom Bouchard’s Experience Producing Drive Theory

In several papers in the 1990’s, Tom Bouchard outlined and developed his Experience Producing Drive Theory, the idea that complex organisms have evolved through natural selection to be agents actively seeking circumstances in which they can optimally survive. Thus genes exert their influences on the development of patterns of human and other animal behaviors known as traits through their control of motivations, preferences, and emotional responses. Over time, these motivations, preferences, and emotional responses drive the acquisition of experiences that result in the development, practice, and pursuance of skills, habits, patterns of response, and environmental circumstances. In turn, these reinforce the underlying drivers through the creation of gene–environment interactions and correlations. This paper describes how recently emerging understandings of gene–environment interplay and behavioral genetic methodology can be used to extend and test this important theory.