THE SOCIAL GENOME

Belief in the superiority of people like you can be deeply satisfying. Nazism gave that a bad reputation, but it revived with the 1994 bestseller The Bell Curve, whose authors maintained that people achieve if they inherit abilities that nonachievers and minorities lack. Princeton University professor Conley, author of You May Ask Yourself: An Introduction to Thinking Like a Sociologist, delivers a compelling update on the steady stream of books that have disproved The Bell Curve’s science, although its thesis remains popular. Philosophers for millennia have maintained that humans are born a blank slate—devoid of knowledge—so everything we know comes from experience: nurture. Charles Darwin complicated matters by contending that natural selection fixed many traits at birth. It’s complicated; readers must pay attention as the author, a “biosociologist” who measures people’s genes as well as their environment, explains concepts such as a polygenic index and passive gene-environmental correlation, but the rewards are substantial. “Today,” Conley writes, “we can predict a US child’s (or embryo’s) adult height, how far he or she will go in school, and whether that child will be overweight as an adult—all from a cheek swab, finger prick, or vial of saliva.” As usual, common sense is wrong. Few doubt that parents exert the dominant influence on how children turn out. Genetic analysis reduces this to 10% or less. Bachelor’s degree holders, over a lifetime, earn $1.5 million more than high school graduates and live 6 to 10 years longer. But they also come from wealthier families with more two-parent households and more educated parents. “Blank-slaters won’t like the fact that even the effects of the environment are partly driven by genes. Hereditarians, on the other hand, won’t appreciate that genes aren’t deterministic but part of a messy social process.” Your environment affects how your genes play out.

Mar 18, 2025 - 07:35

Belief in the superiority of people like you can be deeply satisfying. Nazism gave that a bad reputation, but it revived with the 1994 bestseller The Bell Curve, whose authors maintained that people achieve if they inherit abilities that nonachievers and minorities lack. Princeton University professor Conley, author of You May Ask Yourself: An Introduction to Thinking Like a Sociologist, delivers a compelling update on the steady stream of books that have disproved The Bell Curve’s science, although its thesis remains popular. Philosophers for millennia have maintained that humans are born a blank slate—devoid of knowledge—so everything we know comes from experience: nurture. Charles Darwin complicated matters by contending that natural selection fixed many traits at birth. It’s complicated; readers must pay attention as the author, a “biosociologist” who measures people’s genes as well as their environment, explains concepts such as a polygenic index and passive gene-environmental correlation, but the rewards are substantial. “Today,” Conley writes, “we can predict a US child’s (or embryo’s) adult height, how far he or she will go in school, and whether that child will be overweight as an adult—all from a cheek swab, finger prick, or vial of saliva.” As usual, common sense is wrong. Few doubt that parents exert the dominant influence on how children turn out. Genetic analysis reduces this to 10% or less. Bachelor’s degree holders, over a lifetime, earn $1.5 million more than high school graduates and live 6 to 10 years longer. But they also come from wealthier families with more two-parent households and more educated parents. “Blank-slaters won’t like the fact that even the effects of the environment are partly driven by genes. Hereditarians, on the other hand, won’t appreciate that genes aren’t deterministic but part of a messy social process.” Your environment affects how your genes play out.