ArticleThe Hastings Center report2019
Laypeople Are Strategic Essentialists, Not Genetic Essentialists.
Article in The Hastings Center report, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed.
- Schoolhouse risk: Can we mitigate the polygenic Pygmalion effect?Acta psychologica · 2024Trial
- Asymmetrical genetic attributions for the presence and absence of health problems.Psychology & health · 2024Trial
- Transforming our future by unlocking the power of DNA: the representation of health-related genomic testing in UK news items.European journal of human genetics : EJHG · 2026Article
- Examining relationships between multifactorial health beliefs and beliefs about the social implications of genetics.Journal of health psychology · 2026Article
- No Argument with Biology? The Effects of Genetic Explanations for Socioeconomic Outcomes on American and Swedish Citizens' Attitudes Towards Government Intervention.Behavior genetics · 2026Article
- Genetic exceptionalism and genomic contextualism among Asian Americans: a qualitative study.Journal of community genetics · 2025Article
- Social and Behavioral Genomics: On the Ethics of the Research and Its Downstream Applications.Annual review of genomics and human genetics · 2025Review
- Beliefs About the Causes of Alzheimer's Disease Among Latinos in New York City.Journal of community health · 2025Article
- Scientific clickbait: Examining media coverage and readability in genome-wide association research.PloS one · 2024Article
- Persuasive Appeals in Genetic Biobank Recruitment Campaigns: Social and Ethical Implications.Journal of empirical research on human research ethics : JERHRE · 2023Article
- Wrestling with Social and Behavioral Genomics: Risks, Potential Benefits, and Ethical Responsibility.The Hastings Center report · 2023Article
- Mendelian or Multifactorial? Current Undergraduate Genetics Assessments Focus on Genes and Rarely Include the Environment.Journal of microbiology & biology education · 2022Article
- Mental models about heredity among immigrant Latinx adults with limited education from Mexico and Central America.Journal of genetic counseling · 2022Article
- The New Precision Stewards?Journal of personalized medicine · 2022Article
- Interactive Beliefs about Genes and Behavior Predict Improved Sun Protection Following Melanoma Genetic Counseling.Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine · 2022Article
- Comprehension of skin cancer genetic risk feedback in primary care patients.Journal of community genetics · 2022Article
- The double helix at school: Behavioral genetics, disability, and precision education.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2021Article
- The Psychiatric Genetic Data of Children in Proceedings to Terminate Parental Rights.The journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law · 2021Article
- The role of causal knowledge in stigma considerations in African genomics research: Views of South African Xhosa people.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2021Article
- Structural Racism in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Moving Forward.The American journal of bioethics : AJOB · 2021Article
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Abstract
In the last third of the twentieth century, humanists and social scientists argued that attention to genetics would heighten already-existing genetic determinism, which in turn would intensify negative social outcomes, especially sexism, racism, ableism, and harshness to criminals. They assumed that laypeople are at risk of becoming genetic essentialists. I will call this the "laypeople are genetic essentialists model." This model has not accurately predicted psychosocial impacts of findings from genetics research. I will be arguing that the failure of the model can be traced to its inability to recognize the complexity of laypeople's attitudes; its incorrect theory of how beliefs, attitudes, and discourse function; and its blindness to how academics' own interests can override the available evidence. More specifically, I suggest that the substantial data about laypeople's deployment of genetics supports what I will call the "laypeople are strategic essentialists model" better than the "laypeople are genetic essentialists model." The strategic essentialists model holds that people tend to store multiple categories, including multiple causal forces, that they deploy "strategically" to serve context-dependent goals. It will be difficult for academics to reorient ourselves to model laypeople as sophisticated strategic essentialists rather than as naïve genetic essentialists. Perhaps a little shift, however, will be of value.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.