Abstract
Genetic ancestry testing is a billion-dollar industry, with more than 26 million tests sold by 2018, which raises concerns over how it might influence test-takers' understandings of race. While social scientists argue that genetic ancestry tests may promote an essentialist view of race as fixed and determining innate abilities, others suggest it could reduce essentialist views by reinforcing a view of race as socially constructed. Essentialist views are a concern because of their association with racism, particularly in its most extreme forms. Here we report the first randomized controlled trial of genetic ancestry testing conducted to examine potential causal relationships between taking the tests and essentialist views of race. Native-born White Americans were randomly assigned to receive Admixture and mtDNA tests or no tests. While we find no significant average effect of genetic ancestry testing on essentialism, secondary analyses reveal that the impact of these tests on racial essentialism varies by type of genetic knowledge. Within the treatment arm, essentialist beliefs significantly declined after testing among individuals with high genetic knowledge, but increased among those with the least genetic knowledge. Additional secondary analysis show that essentialist beliefs do not change based on the specific ancestries reported in test-takers' results. These results indicate that individuals' interpretations of genetic ancestry testing results, and the links between genes and race, may depend on their understanding of genetics.
Highlights
Since the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) genetic ancestry tests (GATs) have become a billion-dollar industry [1] with at least 74 companies selling tests online [2]
Using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, we developed Genetic Essentialism Scale for Race (GESR) as a second-order construct that incorporates several first-order factors comprising subsets of belief in genetic essentialism [15]
This study analyzed whether taking GATs increases or decreases genetic essentialist beliefs about race, and whether changes in essentialism differ by baseline genetic knowledge
Summary
Since the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) genetic ancestry tests (GATs) have become a billion-dollar industry [1] with at least 74 companies selling tests online [2]. An individual submits a genetic sample from a cheek swab or saliva by mail and receives charts linking a particular family line to specific ancestry groups or regions and/or estimating what proportion of their ancestry is purportedly European, sub-Saharan African, Native American, or Asian–categories that map onto popular. Do genetic ancestry tests increase racial essentialism?
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