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Genetic Essentialism
Essentially Biased: Why People Are Fatalistic About Genes
Steven J. Heine1
Ilan Dar-Nimrod2
Benjamin Y. Cheung1
Travis Proulx3
1Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
2Department of Psychology, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
3Department of Psychology, University of Cardiff, Cardiff, Wales, UK
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Genetic Essentialism
Contents
1 Psychological Essentialism
1.1 Genetic Essentialism
1.2 Are These Biases Irrational?
1.3 Genetic Essentialism is Widespread and Distorts People’s Understanding
2 The Impact of Genetic Attributions on People’s Perceptions
2.1 Sex and Gender
2.2 Sexual Orientation
2.3 Health
2.4 Race and Ancestry
2.5 Criminality
2.6 Political Orientation
2.7 Essences and Eugenics
2.8 Genetic Engineering
3 Perniciousness of Genetic Essentialism
3.1 Short-Term Efforts to Reduce Genetic Essentialism
3.2 Long-Term Efforts
4 Conclusion
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Genetic Essentialism
Abstract
We propose that people are genetic essentialists – that is, they tend to think of genetic
attributions as being immutable, of a specific etiology, natural, and dividing people into
homogenous and discrete groups. Although there are rare conditions where genes operate
in these kinds of deterministic ways, people overgeneralize from these to the far more
common conditions where genes are not at all deterministic. These essentialist biases are
associated with some harmful outcomes such as racism, sexism, pessimism in the face of
illnesses, political polarization, and support for eugenics, while at the same time they are
linked with increased tolerance and sympathy for gay rights, mental illness, and less
severe judgments of responsibility for crime. We will also discuss how these essentialist
biases connect with the burgeoning direct-to-consumer genomics industry and various
kinds of genetic engineering. Overall, these biases appear rather resistant to efforts to
reduce them, although genetics literacy predicts weaker essentialist tendencies.
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Essentially Biased: Why People Are Fatalistic About Genes
By all accounts, the genomics revolution has arrived. Since the first human
genome was sequenced in 2003, the cost of sequencing genomes has fallen by more than
a million-fold, with the technical advancements of genotyping technologies far outpacing
the rapid speed of improvements in computer transistors that was famously encapsulated
in Moore’s law (National Human Genome Research Institute, 2016). As a result of these
dramatic technical innovations, the new industry of direct-to-consumer (DTC) genomics
companies has recently emerged, allowing individuals to have their genomes sequenced
at a relatively affordable price. Customers can be provided with information that
purportedly speaks to their likely genetic ancestry, their risks for developing various fatal
diseases, and their children’s future career possibilities. Alongside this development, a
vast scientific enterprise that links specific genetic variants to various human conditions
continues to receive wide coverage in the popular media. How will people make sense of
this brave new world of genomics? A growing field of psychological research has
emerged to address this question.
It may seem strange to ask how people will understand a new scientific
revolution. Won’t they just come to learn this new information in the same way that they
learn other information? That is, we might expect that people will respond more or less
like scientists themselves do, whereby they slowly integrate their new insights with their
existing ones, and ultimately developing a richer understanding that empowers them to
more effectively interact with their world (cf., Kuhn, 1962/1996). On the other hand,
much research has revealed that people don’t process information about genetic
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attributions in a rational and even-handed way (for reviews, see Dar-Nimrod & Heine,
2011; Heine, 2017). Rather, genetic causes are often understood fundamentally
differently from other kinds of causes, and as we’ll elaborate below, this has significant
implications for the ways that people make sense of their worlds.
As a case in point, consider the following study (Dar-Nimrod, Cheung, Ruby, &
Heine, 2014; Study 3): participants were randomly assigned to read one of three
newspaper articles that discussed actual research related to obesity. Those who were
assigned to a “Genetics” condition read about research describing how “obesity genes”
relate to one’s weight. Another group was assigned to an “Experiences” condition and
read about research describing how people’s social networks relate to their weight. A
third group was assigned to a Control condition where they read an unrelated article
about corn production. Following a series of food-related assignments to mask the
purpose of the study, participants took part in a food tasting task; they were given some
cookies to sample and evaluate their flavors. The key dependent variable was the amount
of cookies that people ate. The results revealed that those in the “Genetics” condition
consumed approximately one-third more cookies than those assigned to either the
“Experiences” or the “Control” condition, who did not differ significantly from each
other. The results of this study, together with those from several correlational studies in
the same paper, suggest that people became more fatalistic about their weight when
learning about genetic causes for obesity, but not when learning about experiential causes
for obesity. This relative overweighing of genetic causes occurred even though both
genes and experiences contribute to risk for obesity. Why might genetic causes be
perceived differently than experiential ones?
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1. Psychological Essentialism
We can gain insight into how people consider genetic causes when we consider
the broader question of how people make sense of why things in general are the way they
are. Aristotle provided an answer to this metaphysical question by proposing that all
entities are as they are because of an underlying essence that they possess which makes
them so (Moravcsik, 2001). Essences were described by John Locke (1671/1959) as “the
very being of anything, whereby it is what it is.” They are imagined to be deep, internal
forces that form the basis of identity of entities, and cause the entities to function as they
do. For example, essences are what gives rise to a cat’s agility, aloofness, hunting
prowess, soft furry coat, curiosity, and penchant for catnip – without such an essence, cats
would be very different creatures. Of course, trying to specify what precisely is the
underlying essence of a cat, and how this essence leads to all those cat-like
characteristics, is metaphysically intractable. But the question embraced by psychologists
is not whether there actually are essences that undergird the reality which we live in, but
whether people believe that these kinds of essences indeed make things so (Medin &
Ortony, 1989). This belief that essences gives rise to entities is termed psychological
essentialism.
Evidence for psychological essentialism is widespread. Indeed, there are few
psychological phenomena which have been identified in a broader array of samples than
essentialism: studies have found support for essentialism in samples of Chaldean and
Hmong immigrants in Detroit (Henrich & Henrich, 2007), Mongolian herders (Gil-
White, 2001), Vezo children in Madagascar (Astuti, 2001), Menominee in Wisconsin
(Waxman, Medin, & Ross, 2007), rural Ukrainians (Kanovsky, 2007), children from poor
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neighborhoods in Brazil (Sousa, Atran, & Medin, 2002), and several dozens of studies
involving children and adults from Western countries (see Gelman, 2003, for a review).
However, despite this universality in prevalence, there is evidence that some populations
are more committed to essentialist thinking than others (e.g., Giles, Legare, & Samson,
2008). For example, higher SES Americans hold more essentialist views than those of
lower SES (Kraus, Piff, Mendoza-Denton, Rheinschmidt, & Keltner, 2012). Likewise,
some psychological phenomena related to essentialism, such as a tendency to make
dispositional attributions (Choi, Nisbett, & Norenzayan, 1999) and to have more entity
theories of self (Heine et al., 2001), are more prevalent among Western populations than
among East Asians. This suggests that psychological essentialism could qualify as a
functional universal, serving a similar function everywhere, although the degree of
commitment varies across populations (Norenzayan & Heine, 2005). Some have argued
that it was adaptive for an omnivorous foraging species like humans to categorize the
natural world around them into different species on the basis of imagined essences, to
facilitate their success at foraging (e.g., Atran, 1998).
Research has identified a number of characteristics associated with psychological
essentialism, and as we will explain later, these influence how people think about genetic
causes. First, essences are perceived to be immutable. The properties that they carry are
seen to persist and remain somewhat inviolate to one’s experiences (for a review, see
Gelman, 2003). They are perceived to lie deep within an individual, beyond the
penetration of outside influences. For an example of this quality of essences, consider a
study by Gil-White (2001) who interviewed Mongolian herdsman from two tribes: the
Uryankhais, who are believed to be able to cast curses, and the Torguuds, who are not
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thought to have any such curse-casting abilities. Gil-White posed a question to the
herders: if a boy born to Uryankhai parents was raised by Torguuds, would he be able to
cast curses? The interviewees responded that the boy would indeed have such capability,
given his Uryankhai birth-parents, although he wouldn’t know it, given his Torguud
upbringing. The boy’s Uryankhai essence is perceived to remain intact, and is not
compromised despite his exclusively Torguud experiences. This sense that one’s
upbringing does not impact one’s underlying essence is not likely the result of education,
as it has been documented with young children across a variety of contexts (Giles, 2003;
Hirschfeld & Gelman, 1997). For example, by the age of 5, children show evidence of a
belief in the immutability of essences even in the face of large-scale transformations,
such as a caterpillar developing in to a butterfly (Rosenbren, Gelman, Kalish, &
McCormick, 1991). Entities may encounter a variety of experiences and transformations
in their lives, but these are perceived to be inconsequential to the underlying essence
(Gelman, 2004).
Second, people think of essences as being deep down and internal, beyond the
reach of external influences. We don’t actually see essences; they lie beneath the surface
far beyond our visual field. Yet people believe that essences give rise to all that they see
around them. Experiments where people are presented with natural kinds that have
encountered some kinds of modifications to their surface reveal that people still believe
that the underlying essence remains intact (e.g., Rips, 1989). By the age of 3, children
view transformations of an object’s insides as impacting the object’s identity more than
transformations to the object’s outsides, as the basis of identity lies with its deeply buried
essence (Gelman & Wellman, 1991). However, despite lying outside of our ability to see
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Genetic Essentialism
them, people believe that the essences are potentially accessible to experts (Gelman &
Markman, 1987).
Third, people think of essences as underlying the natural world; they play a much
weaker role for our understanding of artifacts. So while people may perceive essences to
differentiate between gold and fool’s gold, they are less likely to employ essences to
define artifacts. The distinction between gold and fool’s gold is believed to be due to an
underlying essence that is supposedly identifiable by experts; in contrast, the distinction
between a station wagon and a sports utility vehicle is understood more to be a matter of
convention (see also Gil-White, 2001; Malt, 1989). This distinction in the role of
underlying essences between natural kinds (i.e., categories that exist in the natural world)
and artifacts is also evident among children. For example, Keil (1989) presented
kindergarten students with a thought experiment where a raccoon had been altered to look
like a skunk, yet the children insisted that it remained a raccoon under its skunk dressing.
On the other hand, the same children were quite willing to accept that a coffeepot had
been transformed into a birdfeeder. Essences are defining elements for making sense of
the perceived natural world, and are less consequential for understanding artifacts.
A fourth feature of essences is that they are perceived to draw the boundaries of
categories. They represent what members of a category share in common, and what
differentiate them from members of different categories (Medin & Ortony, 1989). This is
especially so in the way people turn to essences to understand different species (Atran,
1998); for example, the basis of modern scientific taxonomy developed by Carl Linnaeus
hinged on an assumption that different species derive from distinct essences (Ereshefsky,
2004). Likewise, this assumption also generalizes to people’s perceptions of ethnic
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Genetic Essentialism
groups (Gil-White, 2001; Rothbart & Taylor, 1992), and serves as one key foundation of
prejudice (Alport, 1954). Essences seem to carve nature at its joints and as a result,
people feel they can make inductive inferences about what a newly encountered
individual may or may not be able to do based on the imagined essence of its group
(Gelman, 2004).
Finally, essences can be transferred from individual to individual while
preserving their original identity. One way we can see this is that objects are perceived to
be able to acquire the essences of their owners; a notion that is apparent from a young age
(Gelman, Frazier, Noles, Manczak, & Stilwell, 2015). For example, Nemeroff and Rozin
(1994) found that some American undergraduate students balked at the idea of wearing
Hitler’s sweater, regardless of how much it has been dry-cleaned, for fear of coming in
touch with his contaminating essence. In another example, approximately one-third of
recipients of heart-transplants feel that they have acquired traits from their donors
(Inspector, Kutz, & David, 2004). Likewise, prior to any education about heritability,
young children understand that a child comes to acquire some aspects of essences from
their biological parents even if they were adopted (Heyman & Gelman, 2000). Essences
thus are understood to be able to move from object to object, and from parent to
offspring. In sum, people’s intuitive understanding of essences comes wrapped up with
some particular ideas about the ways that essences undergird the natural world.
1.1 Genetic Essentialism
Despite having rather specific ideas about what essences are like, people have a
harder time forming concrete mental representations of essences. Hence, they turn to an
essence placeholder that serves as a scaffolding that affords explanations for how any
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observed characteristics have come to be (Medin & Ortony, 1989). People have turned to
various essence placeholders throughout history for making sense of their worlds, such as
the four humors of Hippocrates that were assumed to be critical for understanding health
and personality, Chinese conceptions of chi, or the yogic belief in prana. But genes make
a particularly apt placeholder for essences, and this leads people to imagine that genes
share many of the features that they associate with essences (for more description, see
Heine, 2017).
Just as with essences, genes are perceived to be deep down and internal and thus
share the same features as a non-materialistic placeholder, namely, not being constrained
by any visible limitations in a manner that would bound future causal inferences (Medin
& Ortony, 1989). Likewise, just as people believe that essences are potentially knowable
to experts, people will often readily accept scientific claims of a novel genetic causal
explanation for various phenomena (Dar-Nimrod & Godwin, 2016). Moreover, similar to
how they perceive essences, people view genes as far-reaching causal factors – they offer
reasons to explain a diverse array of phenomena, and provide a succinct account for why
people behave in the ways they do (Jayaratne, Gelman, Feldbaum, Sheldon, Petty, &
Kardia, 2009). In addition, as with essences, genes are understood to be transferred from
one generation to another (Gil-White, 2001). And, just as with essences, genes are
perceived to be stable and unchanging throughout a person’s lifetime, facilitating a sense
of self-unity despite the overwhelming physical and psychological transformations that
occur across their development (Chandler & Proulx, 2008). Genes are therefore
remarkably well-suited to serve as essence placeholders, given that people’s
understanding of genes aligns well with how people conceive of essences. Because of this
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overlap with people’s essentialist intuitions, we submit that when most people are
thinking about genes they are not really thinking about genes – they are thinking about
metaphysical essences.
Conceiving of genes as essence placeholders suggests that people’s understanding
of genetics may be somewhat distorted. In line with this, a body of research documents
an enduring, limited public understanding of basic genetic science (Condit, 2010;
Henderson & Maguire, 2000). For example, a survey of American adults (Lanie et al.,
2004) found that fewer than half could correctly answer the question, “Where in your
body are your genes located?” (the correct answer is in your cells). Likewise, based on a
U.S. nationally representative survey of American adults, Christensen, Jayaratne,
Roberts, Kardia, and Petty (2010) found that 76% incorrectly believed that “single genes
directly control specific human behaviors.” Moreover, with regard to evaluating U.S.
high school students’ knowledge of genetics, the National Assessment of Education
Progress (NAEP) revealed substantial deficiencies in genetic proficiency (O'Sullivan et
al., 2003), most commonly observed in students’ interpretation of genetic materials and
understanding of genetic diseases. The NAEP included 8 questions probing students’
understanding of genetics and genetic engineering (e.g., what is a gene? what is it made
out of?). It also provided an article discussing the use of viruses in genetic engineering
and asked the examinees to utilize their own knowledge along with the materials in the
article, in answering relevant questions. Only 1% of twelfth graders provided accurate
responses that reflected appropriate integration of their knowledge and the genetic essays
they read, demonstrating broad misconceptions among soon-to-be high school graduates.
Even among arguably the most informed students, those who voluntarily submitted an
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essay to the American Society of Human Genetics' National DNA Day Essay Contest,
more than half demonstrated a common misunderstanding of basic genetic concepts and
essentialist biases (Shaw, Van Horne, Zhang, & Boughman, 2008).
These various misconceptions about genes may be facilitated by the pervasive
representations of characteristics and conditions as genetically derived which appear
across various socialization agents (families, media, the arts, or schools). Frequently,
simple OGOD (one gene, one disease; Conrad, 2002) accounts are offered in making
sense of complex phenomena, facilitating the assumption that there is a single
corresponding genetic cause underlying every human trait. Whether one reads a
newspaper article entitled “’Fat’ gene found by scientists” (Henderson, 2007), watches a
Hollywood blockbuster in which genes are presented deterministically (e.g., Gattaca, The
Hulk, X-Men), or is told that the “gene for alcoholism runs in my family,” these
commonplace exposures contribute to the implicit endorsement of genes as the essence of
personhood. These simplified representations are straightforward, simple to digest, and
are commonly tainted by an erroneous fatalistic flair (Conrad, 1999; Dar-Nimrod &
Heine, 2011). A genetics curriculum focusing on Mendelian models that highlight
deterministic inheritance only exacerbates such reductionist notions (Dar-Nimrod, 2012;
Dougherty, 2009; Radick, 2016).
Regardless of how people come to acquire their understanding of genetics, it is
common for them to perceive genes in a simplified and almost mystical, agentic fashion
(e.g., Nelkin & Lindee, 1995; Sheldon et al., 2007), ignorant of the complex, interactive
processes that invariably occur between genes and environmental factors (for thoughtful
discussions see Pinker, 2003; Ridley, 2003; Turkheimer, 2000). Despite harboring
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misconceptions about genes and their operations (e.g., Christensen et al., 2010; Lanie et
al., 2004), people readily invoke genes to explicate a broad range of human afflictions,
capabilities, and behaviors (e.g., Condit et al., 2004; Gelman & Wellman, 1991; Jayaratne
et al. 2006; Sheldon, Pfeffer, Jayaratne, Feldbaum, & Petty, 2007). As people’s
understanding of genetics is extremely limited, it seems that genes are often invoked as
the embodiment of a metaphysical essence rather than as components of a biological
process for building proteins (Dar-Nimrod & Heine, 2011).
This is not to say that essentialist explanations are the sole kind of causal
explanations that people consider (e.g., people readily accept that smoking is causally
related to lung cancer), nor that all essentialist explanations rest on a foundation of genes
(for other exemplars, see Gil-White, 2001; Haslam, 2011; Rangel & Keller, 2011).
Rather, given the substantial conceptual overlap between people’s lay understanding of
both genes and natural kinds’ metaphysical essences, genetic attributions often activate or
strengthen certain essentialism-derived cognitive biases.
The Genetic Essentialism Framework (GEF: Dar-Nimrod & Heine, 2011) offers a
theoretical foundation for describing cognitive processes set in motion once a person
perceives genes to be a relevant causal factor. The GEF suggests that genetic attributions
for various traits, conditions, or diseases activate four specific psychological processes
termed genetic essentialist biases.
The first bias, immutability/determinism, specifies that thinking about genetic
attributions leads people to view relevant outcomes as less changeable and more
predetermined (see Gould & Heine, 2012). To the extent that a phenomenon is perceived
to be immutable, it will be perceived to be beyond someone’s control; and indeed, genetic
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attributions decrease perceptions of control over relevant outcomes (e.g., Parrott &
Smith, 2014) and limit the perceived capability of other means, such as environmental
manipulations or individuals’ volition, to modify the outcome (e.g., Jayaratne et al.,
2009). For example, research indicates that endorsement of genetic etiological
explanations for disease is negatively associated with perception of control over a disease
(e.g., Dar-Nimrod, Zuckerman, & Duberstein, 2013; Jayaratne, Giordimaina, Gaviglio,
2012; Shiloh, Rashuk-Rosenthal, & Benyamini, 2002). Discounting one’s personal
control also leads to a reduction in perceived capability to execute a desirable behavior,
which may lead to decreased domain-specific self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977). In line with
that assertion, a study of inactive university students found that exercise-related self-
efficacy is lower after exposure to a genetic attribution for inactivity compared with an
experiential attribution (Beauchamp et al., 2011).
Perception of immutability is not the only relevant cognition that affects perceived
behavioral control when genetic etiology is implicated. The second genetic essentialist
bias, the tendency to discount additional causal explanations once genetic attributions are
made (termed single or specific etiology), also increases the likelihood that people will
disregard alternative casual attributions for complex phenomenon (Dar-Nimrod & Heine,
2011). In accordance with this bias, identifying a particular gene can become conflated
with a diagnosis of the related condition. Genes seem to be especially suited for
narrowing the search for causes, because when genes are implicated as potential
etiological explanations, they are viewed as more specific than experiential explanations
to the outcome (Dar-Nimrod, Cheung, et al., 2014, Study 2). For example, someone who
learns that she does not have “the gene for breast cancer,” might then view herself as not
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needing to engage in any future screening efforts, which would be a grossly incorrect
conclusion from the genetic testing results. In line with this bias, research indicates that
whereas environmental causal attributions are positively correlated with a sense of
personal choice, greater endorsement of genetic attributions are negatively associated
with both environmental attributions and a sense of choice (Jayaratne et al., 2009).
Whereas the first two genetic essentialist biases focus on individuals, the third one
extends the attention to groups. The metaphysical essence is at its core a category-
enabling construct; that is, it is the identifying facet that determines membership in a
specific natural group (e.g., being a cat). It follows that essentialist thinking leads a
person to focus on the central identifying features that are common to all the members,
drawing attention away from in-group differentiating features. A focus on the
commonalities should lead to viewing individual members of a category as more
homogeneous because they share the identifying features (e.g., “catness”); as such,
essentialist thinking also brings to the fore the distinctiveness of members of a category
from those who are not in it and do not share these defining features (e.g., a whale).
Hence, genes, like essences, can be seen to carve nature at its joints. The same principle
seems to operate with social categories, such as race or gender (Haslam, Rothschild, &
Ernst, 2000; Rothbart & Taylor, 1992). And indeed, this third genetic essentialist bias,
homogeneity /discreteness, asserts that genetic explanations for (social/natural) group
differences increase the likelihood that each group will be viewed as homogeneous and
more discrete from each other. Consistent with this bias, a large public opinion survey
indicated that conservatives, who are more likely to see racial groups as homogenous and
distinct from each other than liberals (e.g., Gillborn, 1997), are also more likely to view
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racial differences as caused by genetic dissimilarities (Suhay & Jayaratne, 2012).
Utilizing an experimental approach, Brescoll and LaFrance (2004) found that
highlighting biological/genetic differences between men and women increased adoption
of stereotypical descriptors.
The final genetic essentialist bias is naturalness, that is, genetic attributions
increase the likelihood that a relevant outcome is perceived as a natural outcome. There is
long-standing evidence in psychology that viewing an outcome as natural has an
important evaluative component attached to it. Research on the naturalistic fallacy (e.g.,
Frankena, 1939; Moore, 1903; see also the related longevity bias: Eidelman & Crandall,
2014) has consistently demonstrated that elements which are perceived as natural are also
perceived as inherently good and desirable. Whether it is the romantic notion behind
Rousseau’s uncorrupted noble savage, the large “all natural ingredients” labels on goods
at the supermarket, or political ideologies harnessing the term “natural order” to
perpetuate their control, the evidence for such a tendency is all around us. By offering
genes as causal explanation, the outcome is implicitly viewed to be natural and, by
extension, appropriate. And indeed, men show increased moral acceptance of undesirable
behaviors such as date-rape when genes are even remotely implicated as opposed to
societal forces (Dar-Nimrod, Heine, Cheung, & Schaller, 2011, Study 2). Furthermore,
consistent with the naturalness bias, despite the consensual scientific position that
genetically-modified organisms are safe to eat, a majority of consumers wish to avoid
them, often justifying their opposition by concluding that these products are “against
nature” (Blancke, Van Breusegem, De Jaeger, Braeckman, & Van Montagu, 2015, p.
415). In that sense, genetic attributions may be used to increase acceptance of specific
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outcomes by appealing to our tendency to conflate what naturally “is” with what “ought
to be,” although, as we shall see in later sections, attempts to strategically use this bias do
not produce straightforward outcomes.
Recently, a new measure, the Genetic Essentialist Tendencies Scale (GETS; Dar-
Nimrod, 2014), was constructed to assess these four biases. With six items addressing
each of the biases, the 24-item measure targets the different facets of genetic essentialism
(e.g., Immutability: “People with a genetic predisposition to a certain personality are
destined to behave in a certain way”; Specific Etiology: “The environment does not affect
the chances of getting cancer for someone with a genetic susceptibility to cancer”;
Homogeneity: “People with a gene associated with risk taking are probably quite
similar”; Naturalness: “It is natural to behave aggressively if one has genetic
predisposition to aggression”). Data collected from community samples in several studies
confirm the fit of a 4-factor underlying structure of the measure. They also uncover
moderate to strong positive correlations (.30 < r < .60) between the different biases and a
factorial structure that supports the notion that genetic essentialism can be conceptualized
as a unitary, second-order construct comprised from these separate biases (Dar-Nimrod,
Ruby, Godwin, Cheung, Murray, & Tam, 2016). These studies revealed that the biases, as
measured by the GETS, predicted varied outcomes such as fatalism, negative views of
human nature (i.e., social cynicism), various forms of prejudice, health pessimism (both
in general and when genes are implicated for a specific disease), and reduced intentions
to engage in healthy behaviors, among others (Dar-Nimrod et al., 2016).
1.2 Are These Biases Irrational?
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We describe the aforementioned intuitions about genetic essentialism as biases.
But what if instead these intuitions are a good enough approximation of the ways that
genes actually influence our phenotypes? On what grounds can we call them biases as
opposed to accurate descriptions of the nature of genetic causes?
Indeed, it is not difficult to come up with examples of genetic causes which map
nicely on to the intuitions that we describe above. For example, going right back to the
origins of genetics research, we can consider the observations of Gregor Mendel’s
original studies with pea plants that were conducted in the gardens of St. Thomas’s Abbey
in the present day Czech Republic. Mendel found 7 characters of peas that were passed
faithfully from parent to offspring, and ultimately provided the scientific world with the
key notions of genetic segregation and dominance (Henig, 2000). For example, a pea that
inherited two copies of a particular allele from its parents would produce a pea with
yellow pods – one hundred percent of the time. The causal forces that produce a yellow
pod do indeed to appear to be immutable (there’s no indication that this causal series
could be interrupted to produce a green pod instead); it has a specific etiology (the
distinction between whether the pod is yellow or green is determined solely by the
particular alleles that the plant inherits from its parents); all yellow podded pea plants of
this species are homogenous to the extent that they all share the same alleles, and are
discrete in that they are genetically different from their green-podded neighbors; finally,
the yellowness of the pod would appear to be natural – emerging as it does from its
default state, and is not the product of any kind of artificial engineering. So aren’t the
intuitions identified in the GEF just another means for describing the way that genes
produce traits in pea plants?
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We agree that these intuitions are a good-enough description of the causal forces
at work in Mendel’s pea plants. However, these pea plants are not at all representative of
the ways that genes influence phenotypes more generally. Turkheimer (1998) highlights a
continuum that lies between two broad classes of genotype-phenotype relations. On the
one extreme of the continuum is what he calls strong genetic explanation. Strong genetic
explanation means that a particular biological process has been identified and localized
which can explain a large part of the phenotype under question. The link between the
dominant allele and yellow pod color is a clear case of strong genetic explanation, as are
the variations of the CFTR gene which have been found to deterministically cause cystic
fibrosis (Pearson, 2009). For traits that can be characterized as having a strong genetic
explanation, the aforementioned genetic-essentialist intuitions are reasonably accurate
descriptions.
However, this direct one-to-one relation between a particular genetic variant and a
particular phenotypic character are not at all common. For example, the direct-to-
consumer (DTC) genomics company, 23andMe, provides information on 60 human traits,
ranging from eye color to likelihood of going bald. Only one of these traits – whether or
not you have wet or dry earwax – is a Mendelian trait that emerges in this direct one-to-
one way (Heine, 2017). Indeed, when students learn about genetics in high school, they
may well encounter examples that are described as Mendelian characteristics, such as eye
color, or whether or not you can roll your tongue into a tube. Neither of these are
Mendelian traits, and the fact that high school curricula rely so much on these inaccurate
examples reflects just how rare easily observed monogenic traits actually are.
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Genetic Essentialism
Rather, human traits are more typically characterized by what Chabris et al.
(2015) refer to as “the fourth law of behavioral genetics”, which states that “a typical
human behavioral trait is associated with very many genetic variants, each of which
accounts for a very small percentage of the behavioral variability” (p. 305). For example,
researchers have identified more than 100 common genetic variants that predict
schizophrenia, which account for only a fraction of the genetic variability in the condition
(Schizophrenic Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, 2014).
Likewise, although height is highly heritable, researchers estimate that you would need to
consider approximately 294,000 common genetic variants to account for half of the
variability in human height (Yang et al., 2010). Similarly, despite the relatively strong
heritability of IQ, there are no single genes that predict IQ to any appreciable degree (the
strongest single predictor is associated with about 0.3 IQ points; Reitveld et al., 2014);
instead, approximately 500,000 variants are estimated to be implicated in predicting one
half of IQ variability (Davies et al., 2011). These examples all represent what Turkheimer
(1998) calls weak genetic explanation. In these cases the phenotype (e.g., whether or not
one develops schizophrenia) is associated with a genotype (e.g., risk of schizophrenia is
heritable), but not in a direct or deterministic way. Many genes interact, perhaps
thousands of them, and each contributes to the likelihood of the phenotype. Phenotypes
are influenced by genes only when the genes express proteins, and this expression is
dependent on experiences in the environment. Moreover, this expression varies across the
organism’s developmental trajectory. Further complicating matters, various epigenetic
markers can influence when and how often particular proteins are expressed (for a
review, see Cole, 2009). Although genotypes correlate with phenotypes, in cases of weak
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Genetic Essentialism
genetic explanation the correlation remains largely unexplained, and the vast complexity
of the interaction of the multiple forces at work may even be in principle unknowable, at
least with the current limits of our technologies. Thus, explaining these complex
phenomena by referring to the unspecified involvement of genes remains the wrong level
of analysis to understand them (see Turkheimer, 1998, for discussion).
The error that people commonly make, and what leads us to call people’s genetic
essentialist intuitions “biases”, is that people overgeneralize from the straightforward,
easy to understand, yet rare examples of strong genetic explanation to explaining the vast
majority of other phenotypes which emerge from weak genetic explanation. It is incorrect
to assume that traits that are a product of weak genetic influence can be understood better
by thinking of them as immutable, natural, of a specific etiology, and forming
homogenous and discrete groups.
1.3 Genetic Essentialism is Widespread and Distorts People’s Understanding
Our central thesis is as follows: when people consider that genes are involved in a
trait, they come to think differently about that trait. They come to conceive of it as though
it was caused by an essence, and they consider the trait in ways that are consistent with
their essentialist biases. For example, consider how people’s genetic essentialist biases
can manifest in the way they think of learning styles. Many people endorse the idea of
learning styles, or the belief that different people rely on distinct styles for most
efficiently learning new material (e.g., visual learners vs. auditory learners; Dunn, Griggs,
Olson, Beasley, & Gorman, 1995; Joy & Kolb, 2009). An extension of this idea is the
meshing hypothesis, which suggests that optimal learning occurs when an educator’s
teaching style matches with a student’s learning style. Despite the lack of robust
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Genetic Essentialism
empirical evidence for such concepts[ CITATION Pas08 \l 4105 \f "see " ], many people
still endorse them, which can be predicted based on the extent to which people
essentialize genes.
For example, American MTurk participants were asked to report the extent to
which they thought learning styles were genetic versus environmental in origin, along
with various perceptions of learning styles. The more the participants perceived learning
styles to be genetically caused, the less control they expected one to have over what
learning styles one has, the less malleable they thought learning styles were, and the more
they thought that learning outcomes are best when learning styles and teaching styles
match (i.e., endorsement of the meshing hypothesis). Crucially, mediation analyses
revealed that both perceived control and perceived malleability of learning styles
significantly mediated the relation between perceived etiology of learning styles and
people’s endorsement of the meshing hypothesis[CITATION Ben \l 4105 ]. Overall, this
study provides a simple illustration of the role that genetic essentialist biases may play in
our lives.
The notion that our essentialist biases influence our thinking when people
encounter genetic explanations is not something that we should expect to be limited to a
small set of rare or inconsequential traits, because evidence for heritability is extremely
broad (e.g., Olson, Vernon, Harris, & Jang, 2001). Heritability refers to the proportion of
a trait’s variability within a specific sample that is due to genetics, and it is typically
summarized by a heritability coefficient which varies from zero to one. Notably,
heritability does not indicate the extent to which a trait is caused by genes in some direct
way. Evidence for heritability (i.e., a heritability coefficient that is significantly greater
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Genetic Essentialism
than zero) has been demonstrated for such diverse traits and behaviors as whether one
disapproves of student pranks (Martin, Eaves, Heath, Jardine, Feingold, & Eysenck,
1986), watches a lot of television (Plomin, Corley, DeFries, & Fulker, 1990), donates
blood (Pedersen et al., 2015), gets divorced (McGue & Lykken, 1992), or even gets
mugged (Kendler & Karkowski-Shuman, 1997). In fact, evidence for heritability is so
broad that Turkheimer (2000) proposed the “first law of behavioral genetics” which states
that “all human behavioral traits are heritable” (p. 160). This law is meant to be the null
hypothesis, rather than a fixed law, in the sense that heritability evidence is so extensive
that we should assume human characteristics are heritable until proven otherwise. An
example of an exception to this is that although one’s degree of religiosity is heritable
(Bouchard, 2004), the particular religion that one belongs to (e.g., Buddhism, Islam,
Catholicism) is not (D’Onofrio, Eaves, Murrelle, Maes, & Spilka, 1999). Of course, if
almost everything is heritable, and to a fairly similar degree, then the utility of the very
concept of heritability comes into question (Turkheimer, 2000). Nonetheless, given that
so much of human behavior is heritable, and that – according to the fourth law of
behavioral genetics – this heritability is usually the product of weak genetic influence
(Chabris et al., 2015), our genetic essentialist biases can potentially distort how we
understand much of the human condition.
Our essentialist biases are also at risk for interacting with a new kind of genetic
information that is becoming more common. In recent years, dozens of DTC companies
have emerged that provide risk information for more than 100 common diseases that are
products of weak genetic explanation, such as most cancers, coronary heart disease, or
Type II diabetes (Kaufman, Bollinger, Dvoskin, & Scott, 2012). The essentialist bias that
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Genetic Essentialism
people tend to understand genetic causes as emerging from a single etiology is
particularly worrisome in the face of this DTC disease-risk information. After reviewing
their genotyping results, a customer might conclude, for example, that they have “the
Type II Diabetes gene,” or “the Parkinson’s gene.” With a tendency to see genetic causes
as ultimate causes, people may well find this kind of genetic information to be far more
worrisome than the risk estimates actually communicate. Indeed, such faulty
interpretations of genotyping results are not rare (e.g., Gordon, Griffin, Wawak, Pang,
Gollust, & Bernhardt, 2012; Wang, Gonzalez, & Merajver, 2004), and genetic counselors
struggle to communicate genetic risk in a way that people can understand it (Austin,
2010; Evans, Blair, Greenhalgh, Hopwood, & Howell, 1994; Smerecnik, Mesters,
Verweij, de Vries, & de Vries, 2009). An individual’s genotyping results may be viewed
through the same set of essentialist biases that distorts the way people understand genetic
causes more generally.
2. The Impact of Genetic Attributions on People’s Perceptions
The notion that people have genetic essentialist biases presupposes that genetic
arguments have undue influence on people’s perceptions. As we discussed earlier,
participants responded quite differently to an article arguing for a genetic cause of obesity
compared with an article arguing for an experiential cause – it was only the genetic article
that impacted people’s eating behavior relative to a control group. This biased reaction to
genetic information is not limited to perceptions of obesity – as we’ll show, genetic
attributions affect people’s perceptions across a broad array of different domains.
Curiously, the domains which have shown biased responses to genetic information cut
across topics that tend to be quite politically contentious. Frequently, essentialist thinking
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Genetic Essentialism
is bound up with intolerance, such as racism and sexism. Yet on other topics, essentialist
thinking is seemingly paired with increased tolerance, as in the case of gay rights and
criminal responsibility. In the following section, we’ll consider the evidence for how
genetic attributions affect people’s perspectives on a variety of topics.
2.1 Sex and Gender
“It’s a girl!” These three words often signal a delightful end of the strenuous
efforts to bring a new person into the world. The beaming, exhausted parents are now
armed with an answer to the first question they are likely to encounter upon delivering
the great news about the expanding family. Although the appropriate call should have
been “it’s a female” denoting the sex of the newborn, given that sex, rather than gender,
denotes the biological differences captured by the visible indicators and their underlying
chromosomes, research may reveal that the reason for this ongoing error may be our
tendency to see gender as the most essentialized social category (e.g., Haslam et al.,
2000); that is, gender is viewed as denoting group differences that are the most natural,
discrete, and immutable of all social categories (in contrast to categories such as race,
ethnicity, sexual orientation, SES) and therefore may be easily swapped with the term
sex.
However, gender, the term that captures normative perspectives of femininity and
masculinity, is highly culture-specific. The host of roles, responsibilities, and behavior
that capture appropriate ways to be a man or woman substantially differs from one place
to another. For example, whereas the majority of people in gender-egalitarian countries
view career importance and sexual freedom of men and women as equal, the majority of
men and women in gender-stratified cultures do not (e.g., Williams & Best, 1990). Such
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Genetic Essentialism
malleability of gender perceptions has led some to completely reject biological
explanations for gender differences beyond genitalia (e.g., Fausto-Sterling, 1985);
however, a complete rejection of the role of nature in forming gender-typical preferences
and behavior has proven to be inadequate when empirically applied to the real world. For
example, instances of involuntary sex-reassignment procedures that have been conducted
on infants in error (e.g., circumcision complications) have consistently demonstrated that
while genitalia can be easily altered, gender-development is most likely to follow natal-
sex rather than the reassigned one (e.g., Diamond & Sigmundson, 1997; Reiner &
Gearhart, 2004).
Natal sex, however, is not a deterministic predictor of a person’s gender either.
Discarding both the chromosomal indicator and socialization pressures, transgender
individuals, some not much older than toddlers, adopt alternative gender identities. The
willingness of such individuals to incur substantial social costs (e.g., Norton & Herek,
2013; Stotzer, 2009) in the process indicates just how psychologically painful it can be to
be assigned a gender identity at odds with how one identifies oneself. As Stotzer (2009)
asserted, transgender people’s very existence is repelled by “a society that is unforgiving
of any system of gender that is not binary” (p. 170). Such a reaction is not surprising
when one considers that their presence pulls the rug from underneath this most
essentialized category.
Perceiving clear boundaries between men and women – boundaries that
transgender people’s existence violates – allows for clearer assignments of gender-roles,
a priori suppositions about skills and limitations, and other forms of stereotypical
thinking. As such, the GEF predicts that the tendency to view ingroup members as more
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Genetic Essentialism
homogeneous, on the one hand, and increasingly distinct from outgroup members, on the
other, should be exacerbated when genetic attributions are involved; thus, one would
expect that endorsing genetic attributions for gender differences is associated with
indicators of stereotyping and prejudice. And indeed, the more a person believes that
genes determine a host of behavioral and psychological phenomena, the higher they score
on an inventory of sexism (Keller, 2005). Moreover, increased endorsement of biological
over socialization explanations for gender is associated with greater self-identification
with stereotypically-gendered traits (Coleman & Hong, 2008), in line with increased
perceptions of the homogeneity of one’s own group.
The correlational nature of the above research limits causal inferences, because
such findings may be interpreted as indicative of dispositional elements that give rise to
both preferences for genetic explanations and endorsement of stereotypes (e.g.,
conservatism). Thus, experimental designs are needed to explore whether exposure to
genetic attributions affects gender-related attitudes and behaviors. Utilizing this kind of
experimental approach, Dar-Nimrod and Heine (2006) examined the effects of offering
genetic causal explanations for alleged sex differences in math aptitude on women’s math
performance. In two studies, women were provided with either genetic or experiential
explanations for a purported superiority in math performance among men; other women
were led to believe that there are no such gender differences. Results indicated that
women who were exposed to a genetic explanation for the purported gender disparity
performed worse compared to those in the experimental or no difference conditions.
Women who were given an experiential explanation for the alleged sex difference, on the
other hand, did not show diminished performance, performing on par with the women
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Genetic Essentialism
who learned that men and women do not differ in math performance (for similar findings
on a different trait, see Moè & Pazzaglia, 2010).
2.2 Sexual orientation
Gender may be the most essentialized social category, but it is far from being the
only one. With a prominent (Western) societal shift from pathologizing and criminalizing
same-sex attraction towards its reception as an acceptable form of sexual desire, recent
decades have seen monumental changes in judgment of non-heterosexual preferences and
behavior. That said, painful reminders of rejection of non-heterosexual preferences are
still around us. Whether such rejection comes in a form of ongoing criminalization of
homosexual behavior as is the case in dozens of countries around the world, or through
hateful rhetoric as in the case of the Westboro Baptist Church, or outright violence and
carnage as in the murderous rampage at an Orlando gay nightclub in 2016, the
prominence of sexual orientation as an essence-bearing marker remains. As part of this
prominence, much of the discussion (and some suggest the increased acceptance of same-
sex attraction) revolves around the perceived origin of one’s sexual orientation; whereas
some endorse the idea that sexual orientation is the product of personal choice or
upbringing, others favor genetic explanations (e.g., Jayaratne et al., 2006).
Passionate scientific and popular debates rage around the causal question of
sexual orientation. Whereas sex is chromosomally-indicated, research has not discovered
any genes that predict sexual orientation to a meaningful degree. The closest scientists
have come to discovering such evidence came about in the early 1990’s. Variations in a
specific genetic marker (encompassing multiple genes) on the subtelomeric region of the
long arm of the sex chromosome, Xq28, were implicated in influencing at least one
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Genetic Essentialism
subtype of male homosexuality (Hamer, Hu, Magnuson, Hu, & Pattatucci, 1993);
however, independent replication efforts have provided conflicting results (Ramagopalan,
Dyment, Handunnetthi, Rice, & Ebers, 2010; Rice, Anderson, Risch, & Ebers, 1999;
Sanders et al., 2014). Moreover, when it comes to identifying specific genetic
underpinning for female homosexuality, there is, as of yet, no reputable relevant
evidence. Despite the inability of molecular biology to identify a specific gene as a
conclusive indicator of sexual orientation, the term “gay gene” has been featured
prominently in media coverage, as indicated, for example, by the hundreds of thousands
of search results following a simple Google search. Molecular biology aside, a key
controversy underlies debates on the causal determinants of sexual orientation: is sexual
attraction inborn or does it arise from socialization experiences and/or personal choice?
Although a full account of the scientific research and discourse about this question is
beyond the scope of this chapter, there is much evidence for a significant heritable
component for sexual orientation (e.g., Bailey & Bell, 1993; Bailey, Dunne, & Martin,
2000).
Regardless of the evidence for the role of genes in sexual orientation, this chapter
is concerned with people’s etiological perceptions and their outcomes. One desirable
feature of believing that genes underlie sexual orientation is that this belief is associated
with more accepting attitudes toward LGB individuals than is the belief that it is socially
determined or chosen (e.g., Haslam & Levy, 2007; Jayaratne et al., 2006). This seems to
suggest that adopting genetic explanations for sexual orientation decreases negative
attitudes toward LGB individuals. Indeed, some experimental research also supports a
causal interpretation of these correlations, indicating that manipulating perceived etiology
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by emphasizing genetic explanations results in increased support for LGB causes (e.g.,
Falomir Pichastor & Mugny, 2009, Study 5; Frias-Navarro, Monterde-i-Bort, Pascual-
Soler, & Badenes-Ribera, 2015). However, some key moderators for the effect of genetic
attributions on LGB support have also been identified, such as college major (Oldham &
Kasser, 1999), pre-manipulation attitudes (Boysen & Vogel, 2007), or the nature of one’s
opposition to equal rights (Frias-Navarro et al., 2015), suggesting that manipulation of
etiological attributions does not necessarily lead to increased tolerance. Taken together,
growing data indicate that the association between positive attitudes towards LGB
individuals/causes and endorsement of genetic attributions for sexual orientation may, at
least for some, be an outcome of motivated cognition; that is, ideology may play a
substantial role in explaining these data. This suggestion is supported by research which
demonstrated that whereas ideological conservatives tend to endorse genetic rather than
social explanations for racial and class-related differences (e.g., intelligence, drive,
violence) more than liberals, the opposite is true for sexual orientation (Suhay &
Jayaratne, 2012). Thus, people may also use etiological explanations for group
differences strategically rather than blindly apply broad theories about the role of genes in
explaining human behavior.
The somewhat mixed pattern of causal effects of genetic attributions on attitudes
towards LGB individuals and/or causes may also arise from the tension between different
genetic essentialist biases. On the one hand, in line with attribution theory (Weiner, Perry,
& Magnusson, 1988) and empirical evidence (e.g., Cheung & Heine, 2016; Dar-Nimrod
et al., 2011), the immutability bias reduces perception of culpability; thus among those
who view homosexuality as negative, endorsing relevant genetic explanations should lead
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Genetic Essentialism
them to assign less blame and harbor less negative attitudes. Similarly, a natural bias can
further lead people to assume that homosexuality is more natural if it has a genetic basis,
which would lead to more tolerant attitudes. On the other hand, the discreteness bias
increases perceptions of distinctness between a heterosexual individual and a homosexual
outgroup member, which is likely to lead to more negative attitudes. Such opposing pulls
from the different biases are supported by research that indicated that whereas
perceptions of increased immutability were predictive of reduced anti-gay attitudes,
perceptions of discreteness of male homosexuality were a positive predictor of anti-gay
attitudes (Haslam & Levy, 2007).
Whereas much research was conducted on the relations between essentialist
beliefs and attitudes towards LGB individuals among heterosexual individuals, only
recently has research began to examine the nature of such relationships among LGB
individuals themselves. Some scholars (e.g., LeVay, 1996) predicted that LGB
individuals’ endorsement of genetic explanations for homosexuality will result in positive
consequences; however, empirical research delivers a more nuanced picture. Recent
studies do suggest that essentialist beliefs about sexual orientation have implications
among LGB individuals as well. Just as heterosexual individuals show clashing effects
among their essentialist biases and attitudes towards homosexuality, the different aspects
of essentialism also conflict among LGB individuals (Morandini, Blaszczynski, Costa, &
Dar-Nimrod, 2016; Morandini, Blaszczynski, Ross, Costa, & Dar-Nimrod, 2015). For
example, those LGB individuals who view sexual orientation as biologically-based or
immutable tend to experience less sexual orientation uncertainty (which positively
predicts wellbeing). On the other hand, gay men and bisexual women who perceive
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Genetic Essentialism
sexual orientation as existing in discrete typologies report more internalized anti-
gay/bisexual attitudes (Morandini et al., 2016; Morandini et al., 2015). Among gay men,
this may be because discreteness beliefs sharpen the distinction between straight vs. gay
identified individuals, leading to increased self-stereotyping and increased feelings of
marginalization or otherness. In contrast, bisexual women, who have flexible patterns of
sexual attraction and therefore more amorphous sexual attraction boundaries, do not show
this effect. There is also evidence that sexual orientation beliefs are connected to an
individual’s experience of sexual orientation. Lesbian women who report being
exclusively same-sex attracted are more likely to view sexual orientation as biologically
determined, immutable, and discrete, than lesbian women who are non-exclusively
attracted to women (Morandini et al., 2016). As empirical research on this topic is just
emerging, it is still unclear whether sexual orientation beliefs are formed by reflecting on
the nature of one’s own sexuality or adopting perceived LGB community or broader
societal zeitgeists. Regardless, these findings suggest that essentialist beliefs may be
utilized to satisfy personalized epistemic needs, as suggested by Cheung, Dar-Nimrod,
and Gonsalkorale (2014).
2.3 Health
A key impetus underlying the scientific quest to identify genes has been to
improve people’s health. An example of this quest can be seen in the sequence of three
DNA bases, cytosine-adenine-guanine (CAG), which gets translated into the amino
acid glutamine. Located along chromosome 4’s short arm, the wild-type (normal) form of
the HTT gene contains between 6 and 35 such CAG repeats. However, among about 50
to 100 individuals of every million people, the number of these CAG repeats is greater
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Genetic Essentialism
than 40. For those individuals, the protein that the HTT gene produces leads to
devastating outcomes; unless these individuals die at an early age, they will develop a
ruinous disease, Huntington’s disease, that will ravage their cognitive capabilities,
personality, and physicality, ultimately leading to their untimely death (e.g., Andrew et
al., 1993). The number of CAG repeats does not only foretell whether one will or will not
develop Huntington’s, it also predicts, with remarkable precision, the age of onset of
visible symptoms and, by extension, longevity (Walker, 2007).
The deterministic nature of the effects of the HTT gene shares many features with
lay conceptualizations of destiny, but these kinds of fully penetrant monogenic disease
risk variants represent a small minority of humanity’s disease burden. That said, many of
the more common causes of death such as heart disease, diabetes, or various forms of
cancer are directly influenced by genetics and/or are indirectly affected by genetic
influences on relevant health behaviors (such as smoking or caloric intake). The influence
of one’s genes on health has been widely acknowledged for decades (e.g., Herzlich,
1973), and evidence of such common attributions also emerges in response to questions
about specific conditions/illnesses such as alcoholism (e.g., Keller, 2005), obesity (e.g.,
Dar-Nimrod, Cheung et al., 2014), cancer (e.g., de Vries, Mesters, Van de Steeg, &
Honing, 2005), or mental illness (e.g., Schomerus et al., 2012), to name a few. Although
such genetic associations for common diseases do indeed exist, they can best be
understood as exemplars of weak genetic explanation, in that they are the product of
many, many genes interacting with each other and with numerous environmental and
psychosocial influences. Notwithstanding such complex networks of interacting
etiologies, our essentialist biases make us prone to understanding disease risk in more
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deterministic ways. This raises the question of how people understand health outcomes if
they are made aware of relevant genetic underpinnings. Specifically, how do genetic
attributions affect the ways that people: a) form attitudes towards those afflicted with
particular conditions; b) assess risk and personal control; and c) ultimately behave?
Consider the role of genetic attributions in how people make sense of mental
illnesses and those afflicted by them. Much evidence supports a substantial heritable
component for all common psychopathologies, but actual determinist links between
specific genetic variants and mental health conditions are limited to rare syndromes
(WHO, 2001). Despite the general lack of substantial genetic risk predictors for mental
health outcomes, much evidence suggests that people are affected by considering the role
of genes in mental illness. One source of evidence for the ways that people understand
genetic causes of mental illnesses can be seen in efforts by various advocacy groups to
reduce mental health stigma. Such advocacy groups often emphasize genetic and
biological causes of common psychopathologies to reinforce their agenda, hoping that
offering biological explanations will reduce stigma (e.g., Phelan, Cruz-Rojas, & Reiff,
2002). And indeed, research shows that people are less likely to blame individuals for
their unwarranted symptomatic behaviors in the face of biological/genetic explanations
(e.g., Phelan, 2005; Phelan et al., 2002). For schizophrenia, the most studied illness in
this context, a meta-analysis indicates that biological/genetic explanations reliably predict
less stigma and blame (Kvaale, Gottdiener, & Haslam, 2013). However, a closer look at
the meta-analysis on the relations between these constructs suggests evidence for the
double-edged sword of genetic essentialism. That is, although biological/genetic
explanations may reduce blame, they are also associated with a modest increase in the
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perceived dangerousness of patients and a desire for greater social distance from the
sufferers (Kvaale et al., 2013). On the one hand, the immutability bias implies reduced
control by the actor and thus reduced blame, and the natural bias suggests that the illness
is more acceptable and less stigmatizing. On the other hand, the discreteness bias
highlights how the afflicted individuals are fundamentally different from others, making
them a target for discrimination. Moreover, the sense of reduced control that comes with
the immutability bias suggests that the individual may be unable to prevent themselves
from engaging in behaviors that are dangerous to others. In addition, the specific etiology
bias also raises the specter that the individual will never be free of their condition, thus
leading to more pessimistic prognoses (Kvaale et al., 2013; Lebowitz, Ahn, & Nolen-
Hoeksema, 2013). Thus, endorsing genetic explanations for mental illnesses yields
decidedly mixed effects for how people view those with psychopathologies (Kvaale et al.,
2013; Lebowitz & Ahn, 2014; Phelan et al., 2002). Although psychopathology is the most
prominent topic in which perceptions of undesirable health-related symptoms as an
outcome of biological/genetic explanations have been studied, similar essentialist
tensions have been found in research on prenatal genetic testing (e.g., Blumberg, 1994;
Kelly, 2009), smoking (e.g., Dar-Nimrod, Zuckerman, & Duberstein, 2014; Tercyak,
Peshkin, Wine, & Walker, 2006), alcoholism (Dar-Nimrod, Zuckerman, & Duberstein,
2013), memory loss (Lineweaver, Bondi, Galasko, & Salmon, 2014), and overeating
(Monterosso et al., 2005).
Genetic essentialist biases are implicated in a wide array of health behaviors, but
they are not limited to questions of whether a relevant behavior occurs (e.g., abstaining
from unhealthy eating, performing well on a memory test); they may also affect which of
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several competing behavioral options is chosen as a goal. If an unhealthy behavior is seen
as “genetic,” it is often presumed that biomedical interventions targeting genes would be
appropriate to modify the behavior, while lifestyle interventions would not, in line with
the specific etiology essentialist bias. Empirical evidence demonstrates that exposure to
genetic attributions indeed increases preferences for physiological interventions to
mitigate unhealthy behaviors or improve disease outcomes (e.g., Lebowitz & Ahn, 2014;
Phelan, Yang, & Cruz-Rojas, 2006). For example, Wright, Weinman, and Marteau (2003)
asked smokers to imagine being tested for genetic susceptibility to nicotine dependence.
Half of the participants were told to imagine receiving a positive indication for genetic
susceptibility and half were told to imagine receiving a negative indication. Respondents
in the positive group were more likely to endorse medication as an effective means of
smoking cessation than those in the negative group. In addition, smokers in the positive
group were more likely to say they believed willpower to be less effective as a method of
smoking cessation, demonstrating a potentially damaging effect of the specific etiology
bias.
2.4 Race and Ancestry.
Research on population genetics has provided evidence for the intersection of two
rather obvious and widely shared intuitions: 1) people inherit traits (and genes) from their
biological parents, and 2) people’s mating preferences are not determined randomly.
Although there are several factors that guide the way that people choose their mates, one
particularly powerful factor rarely gets discussed, perhaps because it seems to go without
saying. The propinquity effect refers to the fact that people are far more likely to form
relationships with people who are geographically near than with those who are
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Genetic Essentialism
geographically distant (Festinger, Schacter, & Back, 1950), and this also holds true for
mating. A key genetic consequence of this effect is that genetic variants tend to cluster
geographically. This clustering occurs for two reasons. First, selection pressures can leave
adaptive alleles more common in certain regions, such as how an allele of gene
SLC24A5, which is associated with lighter skin color, became more common in areas of
higher latitude, as it was adaptive for people in those regions to absorb more ultraviolet
radiation to catalyze the production of vitamin D (Lamason et al., 2005). Second, random
genetic drift will lead some neutral alleles to proliferate in certain areas because those
who had more offspring in a particular region will have their own genetic variants
become relatively more common in subsequent generations. For example, the population
of Norfolk Island has a number of genetic risk factors for cardiovascular disease that are
more common than average because they descend from a small group of individuals who
must have carried the same mutations (Bellis et al., 2005). Natural selection and genetic
drift result in the frequencies of different alleles varying significantly around the world.
The uneven distribution of alleles across the globe makes it possible to identify
the geographic origins of one’s ancestors to a fair degree of precision by examining their
genomes. For example, one study investigated a few thousand Europeans and was able to
predict the location, within 310 kilometers of precision, of the birthplace of
approximately 50% of the participants by only examining the single-nucleotide
polymorphisms of their autosomal DNA (Novembre et al., 2008). More pertinent to the
theme of this chapter is the question of whether learning about the geographic
distribution of genes affects the way that people understand themselves and others. There
are numerous anecdotal accounts of the ways that people have experienced changes in
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Genetic Essentialism
their identity as a result of encountering unexpected genomic ancestry information, which
has now been provided to over 3 million people through DTC genomics companies
(Petrone, 2015). As an example of the effects of genes on identity, consider the case of
Csanád Szegedi; he was elected to the European Parliament as a leading member of the
anti-Semitic Jobbik party in 2009. However, upon unexpectedly learning that his
maternal grandmother was Jewish, he became an Orthodox Jew in 2013 (Applebaum,
2013).
Although the kind of abrupt transformation exhibited by Szegedi is certainly
unusual, many people do seem to experience a change in identity upon receiving
unexpected information from their genomes. Roth and Lyon (in press) contacted more
than 600 individuals who received genomic ancestry information from DTC companies.
Among those who responded, only 26.1% reported that the test results had no impact on
how they identify with their race or ethnicity, their identity more generally, or their
activities or friendships. The vast majority claimed that the tests had an impact on some
aspect of their lives. For example, upon receiving their genetic feedback some people
began learning an ancestral language, chose new ethnic categories on the census, cheered
for new teams in the World Cup, made new groups of friends, joined native tribes, and
began to think of their identities differently. It should be noted that the ancestry
information provided by DTC companies suffers from overpromising, is often full of
errors, and is currently not subject to any oversight or regulation (Bolnick et al., 2007;
Heine, 2017; Royal et al., 2009).
Setting aside the question of how learning about the geographic ancestry of one’s
own genes affects an individual, one may also examine how learning about the
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geographic distribution of genes in general affects people. Reflecting on how genetic
variants are distributed unequally across the globe would seem to resonate with the
essentialist bias of conceiving of essences as carving nature at its joints. It highlights that
humanity does not share a uniform genome, but that people from different regions of the
globe have some identifiable genetic differences. Considering the genetic boundaries that
partition the world may therefore lead people to conclude that people of different
ethnicities have distinctive essences. And because a key component of ethnic prejudice is
that it’s founded on the sense that outgroups are of a different essence than ingroups
(Allport, 1954; Yzerbyt, Judd, & Corneille, 2004), this raises the possibility that
reflecting on the geographic distribution of genes may exacerbate feelings of prejudice.
There is considerable evidence for this effect. In a study by Keller (2005),
German students were asked to read an essay that described how geographic ancestry can
be revealed by one’s genome or a control essay on an unrelated topic. Later, participants
were asked questions about expanding the European Union and were asked to indicate
their feelings towards people from various Western European countries and Eastern
European countries. The results indicated that those who read about the geographic
distribution of genes showed a larger ingroup bias in preferring Western Europeans over
Eastern Europeans compared with those who read the control essay. Likewise, people
who were exposed to arguments that the human population’s genome varied significantly
evaluated ingroup and outgroup faces in a more dichotomous way compared with those
who read that human genetic variation is minimal (Plaks, Malahy, Sedlins, & Shoda,
2012; see also Kang, Plaks, & Remedios, 2015). Moreover, Kimel, Huesmann, Kunst,
and Halperin (2016) compared how American Jewish participants responded to an essay
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outlining how Jews and Arabs were highly genetically similar in contrast to those who
read either an essay arguing that Jews and Arabs were genetically distinct or a control
essay. Those who read about the genetic similarities between Jews and Arabs were more
in support of peacemaking efforts in the Middle East than those who read either of the
other two essays. Given that the human genome is remarkably homogenous in contrast to
many other species (Templeton, 2013) – for example, whereas genetic variation
associated with the continental races accounts for only about 4.3% of human genetic
variability (Rosenberg et al., 2002), the different “races” of chimpanzees account for
30.1% of chimpanzee genetic variability (Gonder et al., 2011) – perhaps getting this
message out will lead to less ethnic prejudice more generally.
The genetic essentialist bias of seeing populations with different genes as being
more discrete from each other can also interact with our other essentialist bias of seeing
genetic causes as being of a specific etiology. That is, upon seeing phenotypic variation
between human populations, people may conclude, erroneously, that genotypic
differences between the populations must account for this. For example, this was a key
argument of the controversial book, The Bell Curve, in noting that because African-
Americans and European-Americans performed differently on some kinds of intellectual
tasks, the difference in performance could be explained by imagined genes that
distinguished these two populations (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994). Given how this notion
resonates so well with our essentialist biases, it’s worth noting that just because genes
may account for individual variability in a trait, this says nothing about whether genes
underlie between-group variability in the same trait (for thoughtful discussion of this
issue, see Nisbett, 2009).
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Genetic Essentialism
The degree to which people see population differences, such as those described in
The Bell Curve, as having a genetic basis is something that we recently investigated
(Schmalor, Cheung, & Heine, 2016). American MTurk participants were randomly
assigned to read an essay either about a geographic distribution of genes, a description of
human genetic homogeneity, or a control topic. They were presented with a list of ethnic
stereotypes that covered a wide range of desirability (e.g., French have a more
sophisticated palate; Africans have a better sense of rhythm; Asians are worse drivers).
Participants were asked how accurate and how offensive they found the stereotypes, and
then they were asked to indicate what percent of the population variability could be
attributed to genes or experiences. On average, people viewed approximately 35% of the
variability underlying these stereotypes as genetic. However, those who read about the
geographic distribution of genes estimated that genes accounted for approximately 5%
more of the population variability in comparison with the other two groups. That is, when
people considered the argument that people vary in their genes around the world, they
viewed genes to be a more significant component underlying ethnic stereotypes
compared with those who did not encounter this argument.
This tendency towards seeing population differences on complex traits as an
outcome of underlying genetic variability speaks to the controversy over what entails
race. Is race something that is largely socially constructed, or is it grounded in biology?
Although it is tempting to see race as biologically grounded, given the visible differences
across the continental races, there is a strong consensus among both biologists and social
scientists that race is something that is socially constructed rather than biologically based
(Bliss, 2012; Boas, 1940; Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman, 2003; Hunley, Healy, & Long,
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2009; Lewontin, 1972; Yudell, Roberts, DeSalle, & Tishkoff, 2016). Biologists maintain a
set of criteria for identifying whether a population can be considered a sub-species (the
non-human equivalent of race), and human races do not come close to meeting any of
these criteria (Templeton, 2013). Moreover, we can see evidence of the social basis of
race when we consider the various ways that race is defined. For example, people of
disadvantaged races are often subject to the notion of hypodescent, where those of the
lower-ranked ethnic groups are seen to have a contaminating influence. An extreme
example of this was the “one drop rule,” which made the case that people would be
deemed to be Black if they had any African blood. Evidence for hypodescent can still be
found today; if one morphs photos of White and Black faces, people tend to identify the
faces as Black even if the percentage of the contribution from the morphed Black photo is
considerably less than 50% (Ho, Sidanius, Levin, & Banaji, 2011). Hypodescent reflects
that our judgments as to what counts as being a member of the Black race is not
proportionately based on genes. Regardless of whether human races really are socially
constructed, however, more relevant to this chapter is the question of how people respond
when they encounter an argument that race is grounded in one’s biology vs. social
conventions.
Williams and Eberhardt (2008) investigated this question by examining how
White American participants would respond to a video of a Black target who was
discussing how he had been laid off from his work. Prior to seeing the video, some
participants had read an essay highlighting how race was a biological construct, whereas
others read that race is a social construct. Those who read about the biological argument
for race had more prejudiced attitudes towards a Black target than those who had read the
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social constructionist argument. Likewise, in another investigation, Asian-Americans who
read an essay arguing for a biological account of race were found to identify less with
American culture than those who read an essay arguing for a social basis of race (No,
Hong, Liao, Lee, Wood, & Chao, 2008; also see Chao, Chen, Roisman, & Hong, 2007). A
perceived biological basis of race makes one’s ethnic identity appear fixed and
responsible for characteristics of one’s ethnicity.
2.5 Criminality
Academic inquiries into the biological bases of criminal behavior have long
existed, most notably involving Cesare Lombroso’s [CITATION Lom07 \n \t \l 4105 ]
ideas about the physiognomy of criminality and his thesis of the “born criminal.”
Although most of Lombroso’s ideas have not survived to the present, the underlying
motivation of seeking a biological explanation for criminality persists. This is apparent in
the appeal of the XYY chromosome defense that appeared in the 1960’s, whereby people
believed that having an extra Y-chromosome predisposed men to have lower intelligence
and greater proneness towards violence, despite a striking lack of evidence [ CITATION
Sla06 \l 4105 ]. More recently, and more germane to the central theme of this chapter,
results from the Human Genome Project and advances in behavioral genetics have
tantalized the public and researchers with the possibility that criminal behavior may be
distilled down to one’s genetic makeup[ CITATION Fri98 \l 4105 ]. Whereas criminality
is most certainly a product of a complex interplay of both genetic and non-genetic factors
[ CITATION Alp98 \l 4105 ], the scientific community has made great strides towards
identifying various genetic markers that correlate with criminal or aggressive behavior
[ CITATION Bea15 \l 4105 \f "for a summary, see " ].
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The fact that researchers are discovering genetic components of criminal behavior
is helpful for our understanding of human behavior and for the accumulation of scientific
knowledge. However, an important issue that these findings pose for the legal community
is how members of the criminal justice system, both laypeople and experts, interpret and
make use of such findings. One important tenet of the criminal justice system is that it
assumes that people act out of free will, and that criminal deeds are the product of one’s
willful intent to act in contravention to the law. This is encapsulated in the core concept
of mens rea, or “guilty mind,” referring to one’s mental state and volitional control during
the commission of the crime (Aharoni, Funk, Sinnott-Armstrong, & Gazzaniga, 2008).
The immutability bias, however, undermines this inference, which may engender the
perception that “criminal genes” inevitably lead to criminal behavior, ultimately
prompting mitigated judicial outcomes. The recognition of such biases has led to an
ongoing debate amongst legal scholars regarding the place that genetic evidence has
within the courtroom, particularly given that individual genes can generally only account
for a very small proportion of the variability for a given phenotype (Baum, 2013;
Berryessa & Cho, 2013; Chabris et al., 2015).
Emerging evidence over the last decade has shown that genetic explanations of
criminality lead members of the criminal justice system to think in ways consistent with
genetic essentialist biases, in contrast to non-genetic, particularly environmental,
explanations of criminality. In terms of impacting perceptions of a criminal, genetic
explanations lead people to attribute less behavioral control to the perpetrator and less
willful intention in terms of committing various crimes, relative to environmental
explanations, reflecting the genetic essentialist bias of immutability (Cheung & Heine,
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2015; Dar-Nimrod et al., 2011). Furthermore, people feel that such explanations of
criminality are more persuasive and acceptable as excuses in criminal cases, compared to
more experiential explanations such as exposure to violence or parental abuse[CITATION
Hea03 \l 4105 ], leading them to perceive lower levels of overall criminal culpability (see
also Monterosso et al., 2005). As a result, genetic explanations of criminal behavior lead
people to be more accepting of insanity and diminished capacity defenses and to
prescribe shorter prison sentences (Cheung & Heine, 2015), in accordance with the fact
that such explanations appear to mitigate many concepts that are relevant for mens rea,
including perceived control and intention (Dar-Nimrod et al., 2011) – a finding that
generalizes even to state trial judges and Superior Court Judges [CITATION Asp12 \m
Ber16 \t \l 4105 ].
As noted in previous sections, the same genetic essentialist biases that underlie
the mitigating perceptions resulting from genetic explanations for criminal behavior may
also lead to aggravating perceptions. For instance, expecting a deterministic relation
between genetic causes and criminal behavior leads people to engage in more stable
causal attributions and expect a greater likelihood of recidivism [ CITATION Che15 \l
4105 ]. This creates an enhanced perception that the criminal is dangerous, engendering
greater levels of fear towards the criminal [ CITATION App13 \l 4105 ]. Importantly,
both the mitigating and aggravating perceptions of the criminal factor into people’s
prescribed prison sentences – in opposite directions. In other words, mitigating
perceptions (e.g., less ascriptions of behavioral control) predict shorter prison sentences,
whereas aggravating perceptions (e.g., greater expectations of recidivism) predict
lengthier prison sentences (Cheung & Heine, 2015). These responses suggest that
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people’s objectives for punishment may be influenced by the kinds of explanations that
they encounter. Genetic explanations trigger people’s concerns about incapacitation and
protection of the public as an objective for punishment, rather than deterrence,
rehabilitation, or just deserts [ CITATION Car02 \l 4105 \m Pin11]. Overall, the extant
data suggest that people have a double-edged perception of genetic causes for criminality,
similar to their effects on evaluations of individuals with a psychopathology, leading to
both mitigating and aggravating perceptions.
2.6 Political Orientation
From its inception, political psychology has focused on individual differences
associated with variations in political affiliation. In the wake of WWII, these efforts took
on greater urgency as psychologists turned to the emerging field of personality research
to determine what, if any, core psychological mechanisms underlie adherence to fascist
ideology, and extreme right-wing beliefs more generally. The first of these “political
personality” constructs was outlined in The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno, Frenkel-
Brunswik, Levinson, Sanford, & Nevitt, 1950), which featured proposed dimensions of
right-wing ideology that would be reified over the course of the century: conventionalism
and anti-intellectualism, which represent resistance to social change, and submission to
authority, with a corresponding preference for social hierarchy (also see Right-wing
Authoritarianism, Altemeyer 1981; and Social Dominance Orientation, Pratto, Sidanius,
Stallworth, & Malle, 1994).
Many psychologists have intuited that fundamental biological differences
undergird these personality constructs, which in turn are influenced by genetic factors
(e.g., “Politics might not be in our souls, but it probably is in our DNA”; Hibbing, Smith,
& Alford, 2014, p. 298). Initial evidence for this genetic influence came from twin studies
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Genetic Essentialism
suggesting a moderate degree of heritability (Martin, Eaves, Heath, Jardine, Feingold, &
Eysenck, 1986; Olson et al., 2001). Using more powerful statistical techniques,
subsequent research has supported the contention that social value adherence is partly
heritable, along with the degree to which these values are maintained, even if the same
cannot be said for specific political party affiliation (Alford, Funk & Hibbing, 2005;
Hatemi, Alford, Hibbing, Martin, & Eaves, 2008).
In recent years, these apparent links have spurred efforts to specify shared genetic
markers underlying a possible conservative phenotype (Deppe, Stoltenberg, Smith, &
Hibbing 2013; Fowler & Dawes, 2008). In particular, these efforts have focused on the
potential genetic underpinnings of a purported “negativity bias” demonstrated by
ideological conservatives (e.g., Hibbing et al., 2014, p. 22; but note a critical review of
this argument, Charney & English, 2012). From this general perspective, political
conservatism is itself seen as a genetically evolved response to threatening or uncertainty
arousing stimuli (e.g., Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003), which plays a role in
both dimensions of conservatism as it is classically defined. First, a resistance to social
change - and change, more generally – has been claimed to be the product of a relatively
diminished neural response to error feedback that would motivate behavioral change (Jost
& Amodio, 2013) caused by relatively decreased brain mass in areas associated with
cognitive conflict detection (e.g., anterior cingulate cortex, KanaI, Feilden, Firth, & Rees,
2011). Second, a preference for social hierarchy has been argued to follow from the
relative proclivity of conservatives to attend more (e.g., Dodd, Balzer, Jacobs,
Gruszdzynski, Smith, & Hibbing, 2012) and respond more strongly (Oxley et al., 2008)
to aversive stimuli, and this bias has been implicated in the heightened derogation of
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perceived social outgroups (e.g., heightened disgust and attitudes towards gay men; Inbar,
Pizarro, & Bloom, 2009).
The reporting of this research has been widespread, with a particular emphasis on
public dissemination of findings that suggest a genetically determined biological origin to
political affiliation (e.g., Hibbing, Smith, & Alford 2013). As we have discussed,
attributing genetic origins to criminality (e.g., Cheung & Heine, 2015) and sexual
orientation (e.g., Haider-Markel & Joslyn, 2008) may indeed increase tolerance for
behaviors that are otherwise stigmatized, as these behaviors are seen as immutable and
natural. Similarly, Hibbing et al. (2014) emphasize that the genetic basis of political
differences should lead to increased understanding and acceptance. However, recall the
tension we have identified in previous sections between the immutability and naturalness
biases on the one hand, and the discreteness bias on the other hand. This latter bias
suggests that the manner in which genetic attributions are portrayed in the “political
genetics” literature could facilitate intolerance of political outgroups by highlighting how
those with conflicting political views are ultimately made up of different underlying
essences.
Political affiliations are often portrayed in a manner that emphasizes and
exaggerates the extent to which they are bounded, immutable, genetically determined
categories. “Conservatives” and “liberals” are described with discrete nouns, and as
manifestations of homogenous natural kinds that ultimately originate “in our DNA”
(Hibbing et al., 2014, p. 298). In reality, however, ideological commitments vary
continuously across whatever dimensions they happen to be operationalized by, and are,
at best, marginally related to contemporary measures of genetic influence (Charney &
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English, 2012; Hibbing et al., 2013). Regardless, the commonly misapplied genetic
attributions may motivate individuals to perceive those who predominantly identify with
an opposing ideology in a manner that would discourage efforts to seek common ground,
as they are understood to possess a fundamentally divergent essence. Similarly, efforts
towards meaningful engagement with perceived political outgroups may seem pointless
to the extent that ideologies are understood as immutable natural categories that resist
social influence as they spring from a specific etiology.
Relative to liberals, genetic attributions may especially decrease tolerance towards
conservatives, as the natural origin of conservatism is sometimes depicted as an atavistic
response to disgust and fear (e.g., Jost et al., 2003), shaped by diminished brain structures
associated with higher cognitive function, and exaggerated brain structures associated
with threat detection (e.g., Kanai et al., 2011). In this depiction, the genetic pathways
underlying conservatism were selected for during the Pleistocene epoch (Pinker, 2012),
when primitive man faced constant mortal threat, in contrast to the present day. As such,
conservative genetic markers may be regarded as an evolutionary dead-end, insofar as
“strong negativity biases were once selected for but now are not” (Hibbing et al., 2014, p.
32) – a depiction that resonates with eugenic beliefs, as we discuss in the next section.
Despite the prevalence of this depiction in popular discourse (e.g., Mooney,
2012), there is relatively little research that assesses the extent to which genetic
attributions for political affiliations decrease ideological tolerance or increase political
discourse (Hibbing et al., 2014). In one recent study (Suhay, Brandt, & Proulx, in press),
measures of genetic attributions for ideology (e.g., “A person’s political beliefs are
determined by their genetics”) were inversely correlated to items that assessed tolerance
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of those with divergent political identities (e.g., “I often spend time with people who have
political beliefs different from my own”) among both liberals and conservatives.
Moreover, this heightened ideological discrimination was especially prevalent among
political liberals, which may be due to the explicitly negative portrayal of conservative
genetics. These perceptions may play a role in the generally negative (Duarte et al., 2014)
and discriminatory (Inbar & Lammers, 2014) attitudes towards conservatives among
ideologically liberal social scientists.
2.7 Essences and Eugenics
Considering a genetic foundation for human traits does not just affect how we
think about those specific traits. It is also implicated in broader efforts to change those
traits. Here we consider what is arguably the most pronounced cost of our genetic
essentialist leanings – it can be associated with support for eugenic social policies.
While eugenics may be associated primarily with the horrors of Nazi Germany
and the holocaust, this social philosophy had much broader support prior to WWII.
Indeed, discussions in favor of eugenics were commonplace throughout the industrialized
world in the early 20th century, as the logic that governed the breeding choices made by
livestock breeders began to be applied to humans (for reviews, see Kevles, 1995; Paul,
1995). Some efforts were termed positive eugenics, in the sense that those who were seen
as possessing good genes were encouraged to spread their bounty to the next generation.
For example, “Fitter family” contests were held in state fairs in the US, where medals
were given to those designated as “Grade A Individuals,” alongside the other prize-
winning livestock (Kevles, 1992). But these efforts were soon overtaken by much wider
scale programs of negative eugenics, where the goal was to prevent the unfit from
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breeding. In the US, the popular descriptor for the unfit was “feeble-minded,” a catch-all
term that included any kind of perceived defect in intelligence or moral character.
Negative eugenics was championed by a variety of progressive organizations, such as the
Sierra Club and Planned Parenthood, as both sought the goal of reducing the world’s
population by preventing births among the unfit (Paul, 1995; Stern, 2005). The eugenics
movement cut across the political spectrum, and was championed both by those on the
right, who sought to increase the relative proportion of their own kind, and by the left,
who viewed it as a necessary pillar for the establishment of a social welfare state
(Spektorowski & Ireni-Saban, 2013). Mandatory sterilization was legalized in 1927 in the
US, which led to the forceful sterilization of more than 60,000 Americans,
disproportionately minorities and women (Stern, 2005). Similar mandatory sterilization
programs emerged across the industrialized world, in such diverse places as Canada,
Sweden, Japan, and much of Latin America (Broberg & Roll-Hansen, 1996; Robertson,
2001; Stepan, 1991). These efforts rendered the decision of who would have children to
rest ultimately with the state.
Support for eugenics was embraced by leading Western politicians (e.g., Winston
Churchill, Tommy Douglas, Teddy Roosevelt) and public intellectuals at the time (e.g.,
Alexander Graham Bell, W. E. Dubois, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells; Kevles, 1995;
Paul, 1995). But two disciplines stand out in their support for eugenics: First, psychology
played an outsized role in the movement (which has received relatively little attention
within the field), as the metric of genetic quality that was most widely targeted was IQ,
and many psychologists were active in promoting eugenic policies to improve national
IQ, including Carl Brigham, James McKeen Cattell, Robert Fisher, G. Stanley Hall, Karl
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Genetic Essentialism
Pearson, Charles Spearman, Lewis Terman, Edward Thorndike, and Robert Yerkes
(Heine, 2017). Second, and most pertinent to the logic of genetic essentialism, was that
eugenic support was widespread at the time among geneticists. Prior to the war, there was
scant light that separated the fledgling field of human genetics from eugenics – indeed,
the latter was often thought of as applied genetics (Paul, 1995). Evidence for this link can
be seen from a variety of sources. For example, the founder of behavioral genetics,
Francis Galton, was also the father of modern eugenics (Galton, 1875, 1883). Likewise,
in 1916, every member of the founding editorial board of the journal, Genetics, endorsed
the eugenics movement (Ludmerer, 1972). The link between the two fields is also evident
in that half of academic biologists in Germany joined the Nazi party prior to the war,
which was the largest representation of any professional group (Paul, 1995).
One reason that there was such a link between the study of genetics and eugenics
in the early 20th century was that many early geneticists favored simple Mendelian
accounts of human traits. For example, Charles B. Davenport, the leading American
eugenicist at this time, maintained that many human traits, included feeble-mindedness, a
love for the sea, nomadism, shiftlessness, and innate eroticism were the product of single
genes (Comfort, 2012; Kevles, 1995). To the extent that human traits could be viewed as
simple and direct consequences of single genes, it is far more straightforward to imagine
efforts to change the frequency of desired traits through controlled breeding.
We have investigated whether similarly deterministic perceptions of genetic
causes predict support for eugenic ideas today. We created a scale to measure support for
eugenic policies (Heine, Cheung, & Ream, 2015). It includes items such as “There should
be laws discouraging people with low intelligence from having biological children,” and
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Genetic Essentialism
“Anyone convicted of a violent crime should be sterilized as part of their punishment.”
We correlated this scale with the Belief in Genetic Determinism Scale (Keller, 2005) and
the GETS (Dar-Nimrod et al., 2016). Support for eugenic policies correlated moderately
positively with these measures of genetic determinism/essentialism (Heine, Cheung, &
Ream, 2015). Moreover, the link between eugenics and simple accounts of genetic
understanding was further demonstrated in that we found negative correlations between
eugenics support and knowledge of genetics (operationalized either in terms of the
number of genetics classes taken, or in terms of performance on a genetics knowledge
test; Ream, Cheung, & Heine, 2016). These findings reveal that those who are more
likely to understand the irreducibly complex ways that genotypes get translated into
phenotypes are less in support of efforts by the state to improve the collective genome
through strategic breeding.
2.8 Genetic Engineering
Studying the predictors of support for eugenics may seem like an outdated
question, akin, perhaps, to investigating present day support for slavery. But with the
rapid advent of several new genetic technologies, the idea of improving the genes of
current and future generations has re-emerged as a topic of public discourse (e.g., Hudson
& Scott, 2002; Winkelman, Missmer, Myers, & Ginsburg, 2015). However, in contrast to
the early 20th century when the state was petitioned to lead efforts to enhance a nation’s
collective genome, this time eugenics is emerging through the backdoor (Duster, 2003).
There are presently a variety of genetic technologies that are available for parents to
make their own reproductive decisions which can potentially shape posterity (see Heine,
2017, for a review). Some of these technologies allow for the genes of fetuses to be
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genotyped (e.g., amniocentesis, chorionic callus sampling, cell-free fetal DNA
screening), and thereby providing the parents with information about potential congenital
disorders which may lead them to decide to terminate a pregnancy. Another alternative is
to genotype a series of fertilized embryos using preimplantation genetic diagnosis, and
then select to implant those in the womb that are not carriers of particular alleles
associated with genetic diseases, or even to select the sex of one’s baby. Parents can also
select from sperm and egg donors, while perusing remarkably detailed catalogues
describing the donors’ phenotypes. If this was done on a large scale, it could shape the
collective genome because people seek different traits when selecting gamete donors than
they do when selecting romantic partners – when people select donors, they place
relatively greater weight on their health, attractiveness, height, and various abilities,
whereas when choosing romantic partners, people place relatively greater weight on
character (Scheib, 1994; Scheib, Kristiansen, & Wara, 1997). Moreover, there is much
fear over novel technologies that have not yet been used to create a human, such as
cloning, or creating designer babies using genome editing by way of CRISPR/Cas9. In
contrast to the negative relation between genetic knowledge and support for eugenic
policies, there is a weak positive relation between genetic knowledge and support for new
reproductive technologies to enhance the genomes of future children (Ream et al., 2016).
But overall, these technologies strike many as deeply problematic, with a commonly
expressed concern that these entail people playing God (Calnan, Montaner, & Horne,
2005; Condit, 2010; Winkelman et al., 2015). Moreover, aside from screening fetuses for
congenital disorders, the other reproductive technologies are not yet commonly practiced.
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Another aspect of genetic engineering is far more common in our lives.
Genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) now play a substantial role in our diets.
Approximately 80% of American processed food contains at least some GMOs (Lemaux,
2008). Yet, despite the pervasiveness of this technology, it remains bothersome to many:
approximately three quarters of Americans are concerned with having GMOs in the food
supply (Harmon, 2014), and approximately 70% of GMO opponents view GMOs as
absolute moral violations (Scott, Inbar, & Rozin, in press) – that is, they are opposed to
them regardless of any documented benefits or harms that they might entail. GMOs seem
bothersome because they violate the essentialist bias of genes as natural. A frequent
criticism is that GMOs are abominations, and that they represent people playing God
(Condit, 2010). Likewise, GMOs run afoul of our essentialist biases as genes carving
nature at its joints. For example, people are more bothered by GMOs that involve
transgenic modifications (i.e., introducing genes from unrelated species, such as a tomato
receiving a gene from a fish) than they are of those involving cisgenic modifications (i.e.,
introducing genes from a related species, such as an orange receiving a gene from a
lemon; Gaskell et al., 2010).
In general, people have a rather poor understanding of what GMOs entail; only
57% of Americans and 36% of Europeans correctly recognized that non-GMO food
products also contain genes (Hallman, Hebden, Aquino, Cuite, & Lang, 2003), and only
42% of Americans were aware that the addition of a fish gene would not necessarily
make a tomato taste fishy (Hallman, Hebden, Cuite, Aquino, & Lang, 2004). Opposition
to GMOs is associated with a lack of genetic literacy; there is a weak positive correlation
between performance on a test of genetic knowledge and support for GMOs (Ream et al.,
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2016). Such an association seems to be telling when one considers that, in stark contrast
to the only 36% of Americans who support GMOs, 88% of American scientists are in
favor of the technology (Pew Research Center, 2015). It appears that much of the
opposition towards GMOs is not based on a weighing of costs and benefits, but is
ultimately grounded in people being disturbed about the essences of their food being
tampered with (see also Scott et al., in press).
3. Perniciousness of Genetic Essentialism
The previous sections of this chapter have shown that genetic essentialist biases
are based on an overly simplistic understanding of genetic information, combined with a
human tendency to imagine underlying essences, leading people to arrive at unwarranted
conclusions and to ascribe undue inferential power to these genes. Given that many
consequences of our genetic essentialist biases are decidedly negative, it is important that
efforts go into reducing these biases. These efforts may be short-term or long-term, with
most attempts falling into the latter category. As this section will demonstrate, existing
attempts generally try to address people’s overly simplistic understanding of genes, yet
these largely reveal the imperviousness of these biases.
3.1 Short-Term Efforts to Reduce Genetic Essentialism
Immediate efforts to eliminate genetic essentialist biases generally involve trying
to get people to understand the complex relation between genes and their associated
outcomes, with varying levels of success. Two ways of accomplishing this are to
emphasize the epistatic and polygenic nature of most genetic causes, or to manipulate
people’s perception of the strength of a genetic effect. For example, Cheung (2016)
sought to contrast how people would respond in their punitive judgments of someone
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convicted of murder depending on how the genetic risk information was presented. One
study contrasted a monogenic cause vs. a polygenic cause underlying violence. Another
study varied the magnitude of the predictive strength of the putative violence-causing
gene. Neither of these efforts significantly affected people’s judgments about the
applicability of a defense of diminished responsibility. In all of these cases, people in the
genetic risk conditions assigned less responsibility to the accused compared with those
who instead read of an experiential cause of his crime.
Another method of eliminating people’s specific etiological bias is to highlight the
role of external and non-genetic factors in an effort to complicate the genetic causal story.
The simplest method of accomplishing this is to discuss genetic causes in the context of
interactions with the environment, downplaying the solitary role of genes. Current
evidence is mixed on the effectiveness of this method, made more complicated by the fact
that very little work has examined the impact of such causal interactions on people’s
perceptions. For instance, one study found that those who read an account that
schizophrenia was the product of both biology and environment had significantly reduced
perceptions of danger compared with those who had learned only of a genetic account of
schizophrenia (Walker & Read, 2002). Extending this research to address mental health
professionals, Lebowitz and Ahn (2014) exposed clinicians to nuanced etiological
accounts for depression (i.e., accounts containing both biogenic and psychosocial
explanations) with varied emphases, yielding a condition in which the clinicians read a
predominantly biological/genetic account and a condition in which they read a
predominantly psychosocial account. They found that compared with clinicians in the
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predominantly psychosocial condition, clinicians in the predominantly biological/genetic
condition assessed medication as more effective and psychotherapy as less effective.
However, other research has found that people’s stigma towards mental illness did
not differ significantly between thinking about mental illness as being due to biological
causes versus a gene-by-environment interaction (Boysen & Gabreski, 2012; also see
Deacon & Baird, 2009). Similarly, a study on perceptions of violence found that a genetic
account of violence elicited an equivalent response from participants as a gene-by-
environment account of violence; both conditions resulted in people judging a perpetrator
to be less responsible for his crimes, compared with those who learned of an
environmental account of violence (Cheung, 2016; also see Lippa & Sanderson, 2012 for
similar findings). In sum, causal accounts that point to gene-by-environment interactions
are not necessarily perceived much differently than purely genetic accounts. Although it
remains possible that there may be ways of making the environmental component of the
gene-by-environment interactions more salient to participants (as did Leibowitz & Ahn,
2014), and that this might then weaken people’s essentialist biases, the evidence in
support of that approach is limited at this time.
Optimistically, there is some evidence that certain interventions can encourage
behaviors that are reflective of weaker genetic essentialist biases. One such relatively
successful attempt strongly emphasizes the important role that external procedures (e.g.,
applying sunscreen) can play in dampening or controlling the likelihood that underlying
genetic risks will be expressed (e.g., genes for melanoma), which can empower people to
engage in more preventative measures in reducing their risks of developing melanoma
[ CITATION Tab15 \l 1033 ]. This success, though, still capitalizes on one’s genetic
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Genetic Essentialism
essentialist biases rather than eliminating those biases, because the external procedures
mechanically prevent the genes from expressing themselves while likely leaving much of
the underlying biases intact. Another effective method has utilized weight gain prevention
intervention programs that focus solely on obesogenic behaviors rather than addressing
the potential ways that genetic causes underlie obesity[ CITATION McV15 \l 4105 ]. One
particularly impressive part of the success of this intervention is in its ability to decrease
the extent to which people make genetic attributions for weight loss. Despite these
successes, a perusal of the nature of these programs underscores the difficult prospects of
eliminating genetic essentialist biases: both programs rely on a disproportionately strong
emphasis on the importance of non-genetic factors in order to overcome people’s genetic
essentialist biases, speaking to the strength and pervasiveness of these biases.
3.2 Long-Term Efforts
There are no experimental data to speak to the efficacy of long-term efforts on
reducing genetic essentialist biases. The most promising evidence comes from work
demonstrating that higher educational levels predict less prejudice, which is associated
with having a less essentialized perception of racial categories (Jayaratne et al., 2006).
These results are echoed by the finding that people who have taken more genetic courses
(or who perform better on a test of genetic knowledge) tend to have weaker genetic
essentialist biases (Dar-Nimrod & Godwin, 2016; Ream, Cheung, & Heine, 2016).
Indeed, a large-scale international comparison of primary and secondary school teachers
found that greater levels of biological training are associated with a weaker tendency to
appeal to genetic essentialism and innatism in understanding group differences
[ CITATION Cas141 \l 4105 ]. In particular, genetics training that emphasizes the
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interactive role of genes and experiences is associated with a less deterministic
understanding of genetics, compared with a standard Mendelian curriculum (Radick,
2016). Collectively, these results suggest that an effective long-term strategy for
stemming genetic essentialist biases is to improve and increase the public’s education in
terms of factual genetic information, which many researchers have pushed
for[ CITATION \f "e.g. " Bur99 \l 4105 \m Cas141 \m Mar091 ].
In sum, the general pattern of results from existing data suggests that although
there might be short-term avenues for reducing genetic essentialist biases, they generally
require that genetic causes be trivialized as much as possible. The mere inclusion of
genetic causes, even as only a part of a more sophisticated set of mechanisms that lead to
a certain outcome, is often sufficient to trigger people’s genetic essentialist biases. One
direction that is worth exploring is the more long-term option of ensuring that people are
better educated on genetics so they have a more accurate understanding of the relation
between genes and associated outcomes.
4. Conclusion
The genomic revolution has arrived, and people are encountering information
about their own genomes and about scientific research on genetics more than ever before.
Our review suggests that people’s robust tendency for psychological essentialism makes
them prone to conceive of imagined essences underlying the natural world. And because
popular conceptions of genes make them such an effective placeholder for essences
(Medin & Ortony, 1989), we propose that when people encounter these genetic
attributions, they tend to understand them in ways similar to how they understand
essences; that is, genetic causes appear immutable, of a specific etiology, and natural, and
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groups that possess them appear more homogeneous and discrete. These genetic
essentialist biases are irrational responses for understanding complex human traits, and
they have some potent costs, as they are associated with increased racism, sexism, fears
about people with mental illnesses, deterministic and pessimistic thoughts about disease
prognoses, fears of recidivism among criminals, unwarranted worries about GMO food
products, and sympathy for eugenics, among others. On the other hand, these same biases
are associated with more tolerance and sympathy for gay rights, people with mental
illnesses, criminals, and the potential for international peace. Regardless of the valence of
the outcomes, these biases represent incorrect ways of understanding how genes underlie
complex human traits.
There are several key questions about genetic essentialism that remain largely
unexplored. First, the majority of the findings that we discuss come from WEIRD
(Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) samples; do these effects
generalize across different contexts? On the one hand, evidence for psychological
essentialism has been found in every culture in which it has been explored thus far in
published studies (see Gelman, 2003; Henrich et al., 2010), and this leads us to expect
that the effects obtained here would be broadly found across other contexts. On the other
hand, some constructs that would seem to relate to essentialism are more pronounced in
some cultures than in others. For example, Westerners are more likely to make
dispositional attributions over situational attributions (e.g., Choi et al., 1999) and are
more likely to embrace entity theories of abilities (e.g., Heine et al., 2001), in comparison
with East Asians. These differences would suggest that the kinds of effects described in
this chapter would be weaker in East Asian societies. For example, one study found that
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Genetic Essentialism
Chinese were less likely than Canadians to incorporate biological information about a
target in their behavioral predictions for that target (Lee, 2009). Another possibility is that
more collectivistic cultures might be more prone to view essences underlying collectives
(e.g., a Japanese genome), as opposed to essences underlying individual differences.
Clearly, much research is in order to address the cultural boundaries of the effects
reported here.
A second key question that emerges is how broad and enduring are the essentialist
responses that we have documented? In terms of the breadth of these responses, do
people only essentialize specific genetic attributions, such as the notion about genes
underlying criminality, or does encountering the general concept of genes make people
essentialize all possible domains (e.g., personality, disease, intelligence)? Likewise, if
people learn that genes underlie a specific domain, such as criminality, are they more
likely to see genes underlying other specific unrelated domains, such as obesity? These
questions have not yet been addressed in the published literature. Furthermore, it remains
unclear how long people will show essentialist responses to a genetic prime. All of the
experimental studies that we reviewed documented effects that were measured in a time
span of a few minutes. Could encountering genetic arguments have more enduring
consequences?
Third, is it possible to reduce the magnitude of these kinds of genetic essentialist
effects? Although our initial efforts to reduce these effects have not been especially
encouraging (see Cheung, 2016), it seems reasonable to expect that there are likely ways
of presenting genetic information such that it provokes a less essentialist response. For
example, the evidence that genetics education is associated with weaker essentialist
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responses suggests that a richer understanding of how genes actually operate leads to less
of a tendency to equate genes with essences. There may be other ways to reduce
essentialist biases. For example, perhaps becoming aware that one possesses essentialist
biases might itself reduce the impact of these effects.
If recent history can be a guide for how the next few decades will unfold, it
suggests that people will be increasingly encountering genetic attributions. Given that
people’s essentialist biases seem to provide people with a fundamental misunderstanding
of genetic causes, these encounters may well lead people to draw a variety of mistaken
conclusions. In the face of this flow of new genetic discoveries and personalized genetic
information, it is important to help people come to understand genetic causes better, so
they can make more informed decisions about their own lives.
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Genetic Essentialism
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