Kathryn Paige Harden on How Genetics Shapes Human Behavior

I think that can be part of the sort of implicit negative reaction to genetics is we love control. And thinking about this factor that's not fully within our control can be, again, it's both liberating and horrifying in in equal measure. And now the good fight with Yasha Monk. To what extent is our behavior determined? by genetic influences.

Are many social outcomes downstream from the genes we have, or do they depend on things like our parents' wealth, the kind of household we grew up in, the kind of opportunities we had? And why are so many people resistant to uh looking at the scientific evidence that comes from things like twin studies, which do seem to suggest that uh one important component of these outcomes is driven by genetics. Why more broadly is much of that work right-coded? Why do people tend to assume that when you look at genetic

influences on behavior, you must be favoring right-wing policies to deal with questions of education or social ills like crime. Well, the best scholar who has thought about these topics and who combines an emphasis on the genetic influences on our behavior with left-wing political commitments. around questions like education and crime is Catherine Paige Harden. Paige is professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, and she is the author of two really interesting books, The Genetic Lottery, Why DNA Matters for Social Equality, which came out about five years ago and was widely discussed, and a new book called Original Sin, How We Became Evil and What We Can Do. about it.

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