ArticleThe Journal of social psychology2021
Genetic attributions and perceptions of naturalness are shaped by evaluative valence.
Article in The Journal of social psychology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Asymmetrical genetic attributions for the presence and absence of health problems.Psychology & health · 2024Trial
- Created, Not Engineered: Analyzing Human Gene Editing from a Catholic Anthropological and Moral Perspective.Journal of religion and health · 2026Article
- Geneticists' Understandings of Genetic Causation.Behavior genetics · 2026Article
- Asymmetric genetic attributions for one's own prosocial versus antisocial behavior.The Journal of social psychology · 2024Article
- Asymmetric Causal Attributions to Environmental Influences for Prosocial Versus Antisocial Behavior.Social cognition · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Genetic influences on human behavior are increasingly well understood, but laypeople may endorse genetic attributions selectively; e.g., they appear to make stronger genetic attributions for prosocial than for antisocial behavior. We explored whether this could be accounted for by the relationship of genetic attributions to perceptions of naturalness. Participants read about positively or negatively valenced traits or behaviors and rated naturalness and genetic causation. Positively valenced phenotypes were rated significantly more natural and significantly more genetically influenced than negatively valenced phenotypes, and the former asymmetry significantly mediated the latter (Experiments 1 and 2). Participants' interpretation of what "natural" meant was not synonymous with valence or genetic attributions (Experiment 3). People ascribe differing degrees of genetic influence to the same phenotype depending on whether it is expressed in socially favored or disfavored ways, potentially representing a significant threat to public understanding of genetics.
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Registered trials
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