The Genetics of Vice
Genetic insights can powerfully reshape people's intuitions about whether a behavior is a matter of right or wrong. From body weight to autism, sexual orientation to substance use, scientific results about how genes influence human phenotypes have been used to combat stigma and blame. But moral intuitions don't just respond to science; they can also shape what science gets done. In this talk, I describe how ancient ideas about the relationship between nature and morality still influence which human psychological differences are prioritized in genetic research. Using externalizing spectrum disorders, including ADHD, substance use disorders, and antisocial personality disorder, as illustrative examples, I show how transcending the false binary between "moral" and "biological" phenotypes might open up new opportunities for scientific discovery and psychological treatment.
Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Paige is a graduate of Furman University and the University of Virginia. She has been profiled in The New Yorker, has spoken at MIT, Princeton, the Max Planck Institute, the Royal Institution, and SXSW, and has published over 150 scientific papers on the nature and nurture of human behavior. Her books have been translated into 10 languages and her research and writing have been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Economist, Science, and more. Her most recent book is Original Sin: On the Genetics of Vice, the Problem of Blame, and the Future of Forgiveness, which has been praised as “an extraordinary book, the very best of science writing."
