#211 The Nature of Human Nature (Robert Ploman King’s College London)

Birth of Behavioral Genetics (BG)

 After the human genome, people aren’t sure what we have, but BG is about telling us about the
nature part of human nature
 Ploman got into BG at UT Austin psychology (had only program in BG in the 70s)
o This was at a time that genetic and psychology was almost 100% under nurture ideals
o BG talks about personality characteristics (big 5 and intelligence, aggression, disorders,
etc.) and how DNA matters more than everything else put together in determining what
we are
o Schitzophrenia used to be thought of as all nurture, but after twin, adoption and genetic
studies we see genetic influence (explains about half the differences btw people)

Taboos around studying Genes and Problems of talking of Group Differences

 One of the biggest issues is group differences (IQ differences across racial groups which Murray
talks about)
 The “third rail” is group differences; Ploman doesn’t discuss them b/c just b/c individual
differences are heritable, this doesn’t mean average differences btw groups are heritable (?)
 He also stays away b/c:
o Variance within groups is larger than btw groups (so differences btw groups are far
more important)
 The fact that boys are better at math accounts for about 1% of the variance
o We also don’t have any methods to answer genetic and environmental causes about
environmental causes btw group, but can answer individual differences within groups
o Ploman says you don’t have to study everything, so why focus on the politically
explosive issue btw groups b/c we don’t have techniques to answers these with
certainty
 SH says he is still being beat up b/c his discussion with Charles Murray (who spent the last 25
years of his life not getting over writing the Bell Curve)
o SH talked to Murray b/c he is interested in the idea that we can’t honestly speak about
facts
o Ploman says that everything is going towards genetics if you look at where all the
funding is going in academia

Understanding Heritability

 The first law of BG is that EVERYTHING is heritable (individual differences in cognitive abilities,
personalities, mental health and illness
o Confusion – the concept of “heritability” is often confused
o Heritability – describes the extent to which differences that we observe in a trait (ex.
Body weight or BMI) are due to inherited DNA differences btw people in THIS
population at THIS time
  A descriptive statistic (like mean and variance) can change in populations over
time (like all descriptive statistics)
 Most common misunderstanding is confusing what IS with what COULD BE;
heritability describes what IS, NOT what could be
 BG finds that about 70% of the variance of Europeans studied for BMI was due
to inherited DNA differences (this doesn’t imply what could be, but what is)
 People think if you find this that you will accept it and give up; but this isn’t
necessarily the case
o Two further points about heritability
 Even if something is highly heritable in general, in any specific case it may not be
expressed (like in alcoholism which is about 40% heritable); but in a world
without alcohol, there is no expression of this gene, so 0% alcoholism
 Even not going to this extreme, if we say that alcoholism is 40% heritable, we
are saying that in the current population studied in the current time, that the
variability is due to DNA inherited differences; people could take this info and
not drink if they are at risk, so what could be in the future is preparing people
 Also, differences btw people when we are talking about heritability we are not
talking about EVERYONE has like arms, legs, heart; our DNA btw people is about
99% the same (about 6 billion base pairs with 99% same makes us human); we
are only taking about where the 1% difference btw us makes a difference
 When we say height is 80-90% heritable it doesn’t mean that if I am 6’4
that I grew 6ft due to my genes and the other 4in were added by the
environment
 We are only talking about differences BTW PEOPLE;
 About 30million base pairs account for the differences btw us

Nature vs Nurture and non-shared environments

 What is the confusion around nature and nurture (environment); there are two issues
o (1) Separating inherited DNA differences and environment
o (2)The nature of nurture
 What is the difference btw DNA and environment?
o The first law of BG is everything is inheritable; on average on all the traits studied, about
½ of all the differences btw people (variance of traits) are from inherited DNA
o The other 50% is NOT due to genetic differences, but it is also NOT nurture in the sense
of Freud (what happens in family, parents, etc.)
o What is most important is what we learned about nurture, about the other 50%
 Ex. BMI; parents and their kids correlate about 30%; this was always assumed to
be from parent’s teaching, but if the kids are in the same house, but aren’t
related then they correlate 0%
 In the 70s and 80s, we found that this says something about our environment
b/c whatever it is, it is non-shared environment
o What then is non-shared environment?
  What makes two kids in the same family different? Parents don’t treat their kids
the same, but why is this? It is most likely due to their own DNA differences,
abilities, etc. (a child disciplines an anti-social child more often)
 See study on NEAD (non-shared environment study)
 In the end, about half of correlations are due to genetic differences, so this is
called the “nature of nurture”
 Judith Harris’ book in the 90s says that peers might be very important; there are
correlations here, b/c kids who are anti-social have more friends who are anti-
social, but is this cause or effect
 We have found no systematic sources of non-shared environment as all things
end up being genetics in disguise
o Summary:
 ½ of everything we care about differences in human nature is due to inherited
DNA; the other half is “environment” but not one that parents can control
 About ½ of what is ascribed to the environment is DNA in disguise as a person’s
DNA shapes their environment
 There is NO blank slate
 Adoption and Twin Studies
o Identical twins – have 100% DNA
o Fraternal twins – share 50% DNA, but have same environment in womb (?)
o Twin method
 Ex. Musical ability; predict identical twins would be more similar than fraternal
twins; the extent to which they are similar then tells us the amount of genetic
heritability
o Adoption method – identical twins reared apart
 Ex. BMI; even though kids share food and lifestyle with parents, their BMI
doesn’t correlate at all with their adoptive parents, but does to 30% with their
birth parents they never saw

Epigenetics

 Epigenetics is about how environment changes the expression of DNA

o We start with the same DNA in every cell in our body, but the genes are expressed
differently in each cell (gene expression); different parts of the DNA are expressed
differently in different parts of your body
o But, epigenetics isn’t beyond genetics as all we inherit are DNA sequences

Dimensions vs Disorders

 In the above discussion, we are not talking about single genes expressing traits, since almost all
traits are polygenic (probably due to thousands of genes with tiny DNA differences)
 o There are about 7-10k monogenetic disorders (like Huntington’s); this is what Mendel
was studying and these are hardwired and deterministic (but the are very rare and don’t
contribute much to common traits)
o Polygenic traits are the majority of traits
o Pleiotrophy – every DNA differences has MANY effects, it doesn’t merely express one
trait, but expresses many traits
o We then should talk about dimensions of traits and NOT about disorders
 Ex. Let’s say we call everyone over 6’5 is a giant, but height isn’t from one gene,
but thousands
 This means than any DNA difference in the giant will be distributed in the
population
o So, ALL polygenic traits which give rise to disorders should be seen on a bell curve and
distributed through the population
 We then should do away with the arbitrary diagnostic criteria where the control
group shares all the genes throughout their DNA
 Everyone is on every spectrum for “disorders”
o We then should alleviate symptoms instead of curing a disorder as there are no
disorders
 Implications of these ideas
o If there are 1000s of genes to each trait and we are all on the spectrum, then the idea
that drugs could help this kind of complexity isn’t reasonable
o Does this mean we won’t fall into a Gattaca-like dystopia? Partially, but there will be
DNA screening for kids; also, the future governments won’t be totalitarian in
environment, but through DNA
 But we will never be able to divide the population as we all share polygenic
inheritance and share those DNA sequences

Implications for the Future

 It seems that DNA is more and more useful as a fortune telling device and this seems to be
coming more true
o If you equalize the environment as much as possible, then the outcome MUST then be
due to genetic differences (so you increase heritability issues)
 “Parents matter, but they don’t make a difference”
o Parents have much less control on their kids outcome as they think they have, but they
do determine how pleasant their daily environment
o The goal then for parents is to love and prepare the ground for their experience; to
watch them grow up
o This is the same with education; there is not much difference of outcome btw good and
bad schools
 The kids at the good school were already selected, so obviously their results will
be a little better
  Schools make up for about 1% of the variance (up to 4%, but this is due to
money, resources, etc.)
 With DNA we can now predict 15% of GCSE scores with polygenic studies

Policy issues

 If genetics causes differential success, what do we do with social policy about the differences in
outcome in society?
 Scientific knowledge has no necessary policy implications
o Ex. Do we do R wing where we promote the best or l wing spend resources rising up the
worst?
 In the end, Gattaca is closer to the reality of our future

Last thoughts

 Read Judith Harris the Nurture Assumption

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