Abstract
People are regularly exposed to discussions about the role of genes in their lives, despite often having limited understanding about how they operate. The tendency to oversimplify genetic causes, and ascribe them with undue influence is termed genetic essentialism. Two studies revealed that genetic essentialism is associated with support for eugenic policies and social attitudes based in social inequality, and less acceptance of genetically modified foods. These views about eugenics and genetically-modified foods were especially evident among people who had less knowledge about genes, potentially highlighting the value of education in genetics.
Highlights
There is much consensus that the eugenics movement of the early 20th century was one of the most problematic applications of scientific theorizing towards political ends [e.g., 1–3]
In Study 1 we explored the relations between genetic essentialism and support for eugenics
We found that people’s attitudes towards eugenics were significantly predicted by both measures of genetic essentialist biases, rs = .27 and .39, p < .001, for Beliefs in Genetic Determinism and Genetic Essentialist Tendencies, respectively
Summary
There is much consensus that the eugenics movement of the early 20th century was one of the most problematic applications of scientific theorizing towards political ends [e.g., 1–3]. It is notable that more than half of all academic biologists were members of the Nazi party, the largest representation of any professional group [3] These parallels suggest that while many have critiqued the arguments for genetic causes put forth by eugenicists as overly simplistic and deterministic [e.g., 2, 9], in the early days of genetics research such views were not uncommon [for a review, see 17]. As is the case with essences, people view genes as being the ultimate explanation for the origin of an organism, and, like essences, one’s genes are present at the moment of conception, and are largely unchanged across one’s life This tendency to understand genes by way of our intuitions regarding essences, has been termed genetic essentialism [32, 33]. Given that simplistic views of genetic causes influence the ways that people think about so many phenomena, how might genetic essentialism relate to people’s support for eugenics? In Study 2 we investigated how knowledge about genetics related to people’s support for eugenics and GMOs
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