How Genes Shape Your Risk Taking & Morals | Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden

Quick Overview

Genes significantly shape an individual's life trajectory, influencing everything from the timing of puberty and susceptibility to mental health issues like addiction and aggression, to moral judgments, as evidenced by the overlap in genetic risks for seemingly distinct behaviors like substance use and impulsive aggression.

Key Points: The timing of puberty, particularly early onset in girls, predicts increased risk for mental health problems, physical health issues, earlier menopause, and a shorter lifespan. For boys, the pace of pubertal change, or 'pubertal tempo,' affects emotional development more significantly than the timing of onset, as rapid physical change outpaces cognitive maturation. The genetic risks for behaviors often categorized as 'sins'—substance use disorders, impulsive aggression (conduct disorder), and risky sexual behavior—show significant genetic overlap, suggesting a common polygenic underpinning. Genes associated with these overlapping risky behaviors are most expressed during neurodevelopment in utero, specifically affecting the balance between the inhibitory GABA system and the excitatory glutamate system. Polygenic scores for complex traits like alcohol use disorder currently offer low confidence for predicting an individual's outcome, functioning more like general population correlations than specific prognostic tools. People exhibit a desire for 'deliberate ignorance' regarding genetic information, and receiving low-risk status might paradoxically license risky behavior, complicating the ethics of genetic disclosure. Observing the presence or absence of a biological father is correlated with earlier puberty in girls, though this environmental cue interacts complexly with maternal genetic predispositions for early puberty.

Context: This is an interview on the Huberman Lab podcast between host Andrew Huberman, a neurobiology professor, and Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden, a psychologist and geneticist from UT Austin, focusing on how genetics interact with life events, especially during adolescence, to shape life outcomes like addiction, criminality, and moral behavior. The discussion centers on Dr. Harden's research into nature versus nurture, using adolescence as a critical period where individual differences emerge, and touches upon her forthcoming book, "Original Sin: On the Genetics of Vice, the Problems with Blame and the Future of Forgiveness."