In the early 1990s, a psychologist named Robert Plomin began a wide-ranging study whose results are upending everything we thought we knew about the roots of human behaviour. He began to study twins. He wasn’t the first in the field, but today he is the most influential.
Twins come in two types: identical, which means they share all their genes; and fraternal, which means they share no more genes than any other siblings. They present a natural experiment in why people differ, and the influences of nurture versus nature. Bottom line: Genetics is important everywhere we look – not just in height and hair colour but also in behaviour. “A good general guess is that genetics explains 50 per cent of the differences in people in terms of personality, vocational interest, depression,” Dr. Plomin says. “That’s a huge amount of explanatory power.”
Today, spectacular advances in molecular genetics are producing an explosion of new …show more content…
They remain heavily invested in cultural determinism – the idea that your environment, not your origins, makes you who you are, and also that the right social policies can significantly change the outcomes.
But genetic denialism has its own risks. One risk is that by not acknowledging the importance of heritability, a lot of social science research is misleading and useless. And many of the policies it has inspired won’t work.
Today the social sciences face a deepening crisis of legitimacy – largely because social scientists, who are overwhelmingly liberal, can’t bring themselves to acknowledge what’s staring them in the face. Yet good social policy depends on it. Dr. Plomin believes this is especially true in education, which should be both more effective and more humane. “It does poor service to social change to subordinate truth to politics,” he
Twins come in two types: identical, which means they share all their genes; and fraternal, which means they share no more genes than any other siblings. They present a natural experiment in why people differ, and the influences of nurture versus nature. Bottom line: Genetics is important everywhere we look – not just in height and hair colour but also in behaviour. “A good general guess is that genetics explains 50 per cent of the differences in people in terms of personality, vocational interest, depression,” Dr. Plomin says. “That’s a huge amount of explanatory power.”
Today, spectacular advances in molecular genetics are producing an explosion of new …show more content…
They remain heavily invested in cultural determinism – the idea that your environment, not your origins, makes you who you are, and also that the right social policies can significantly change the outcomes.
But genetic denialism has its own risks. One risk is that by not acknowledging the importance of heritability, a lot of social science research is misleading and useless. And many of the policies it has inspired won’t work.
Today the social sciences face a deepening crisis of legitimacy – largely because social scientists, who are overwhelmingly liberal, can’t bring themselves to acknowledge what’s staring them in the face. Yet good social policy depends on it. Dr. Plomin believes this is especially true in education, which should be both more effective and more humane. “It does poor service to social change to subordinate truth to politics,” he