References & Notes for:
Four Fundamental Drivers of Social Hierarchy
Please note the following: In the context of the interplay of genes and environments–unless the article states otherwise–cultural, historical, political, economic, natural and biophysical factors are viewed as dynamic and interwoven environmental conditions and not as isolated variables.
In addition, the use of the word ‘interplay’ in the context of ‘gene-environment interplay’ and other similar sentences is defined according the following article: Allegrini, A. G., Karhunen, V., Coleman, J. R., Selzam, S., Rimfeld, K., von Stumm, S., … & Plomin, R. (2020). Multivariable GE interplay in the prediction of educational achievement. PLoS Genetics, 16(11), e1009153.
“Quantitative genetic theory distinguishes two types of interplay between genetic and environmental effects, genotype-environment correlation (rGE) and genotype-environment interaction (GxE).”
1. Rawls, J. (1988). “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 17(4): 251–276.
Sen, A. K. (1970). “The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal.” Journal of Political Economy 78(1): 152–157.
Baumard, N., André, J.-B. & Sperber, D. (2013). “A Mutualistic Approach to Morality: The Evolution of Fairness by Partner Choice.”
2. Alexander, L. & Moore, M. (2021/2023). “Deontological Ethics.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (refereed)
von Wright, G. H. (1963). The Varieties of Goodness. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (monograph; revisited in a 2025 peer-reviewed piece in the Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy)
Ross, W. D. (1930). The Right and the Good. Oxford: Clarendon Press. — the eponymous source of the distinction.
Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Harvard UP — separates “the concept of right” from “the concept of good” (“goodness as rationality”).
Moore, G. E. (1903). Principia Ethica — “good” as the fundamental evaluative concept.
L. A. Hart’s The Concept of Law (1961)
3. Briley, D. A., Livengood, J., & Derringer, J. (2018). Behaviour genetic frameworks of causal reasoning for personality psychology. European Journal of Personality, 32(3), 202-220.
“…individuals actively create or select environmental experiences aligned with their genetically influenced preferences and desires.”
von Stumm, S., & d’Apice, K. (2022). From genome-wide to environment-wide: Capturing the environome. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17(1), 30-40.
“People select themselves into, adapt to, and shape the environments that correspond to their genotypes.”
“…most of people’s differences in affect, behavior and cognition are influenced by both genetic and environmental factors…”
Beam, C. R., Turkheimer, E., Dickens, W. T., & Davis, D. W. (2015). Twin differentiation of cognitive ability through phenotype to environment transmission: The Louisville Twin Study. Behavior Genetics, 45, 622-634.
“People do not randomly select environments, but maneuver and position themselves into environments and milieus where they can thrive, as well as react to environments provided to them (e.g., by caregivers). That is, people select into certain environments (e.g., niches) to reinforce innate or learned abilities…”
Scarr, S., & McCartney, K. (1983). How people make their own environments: A theory of genotype → environment effects. Child Development, 54(2), 424-435.
Mann, F. D., et al. (2019). Social-relational exposures and well-being. Journal of Research in Personality, 83, 103880.
“…individuals are not randomly assigned to social-relational environments. Rather, individuals select into and evoke responses from environments based on their heritable characteristics.”
Avinun, R. (2020). The E is in the G. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(1), 81-89.
Kong, A., et al. (2018). The nature of nurture: Effects of parental genotypes. Science, 359(6374), 424-428.
4. References for: The Paradox of the Right and the Good
Gene-Environment Foundations, Evidence, and Neural Mechanisms
Foundations and the Gene-Environment Interplay
Plomin, R., DeFries, J. C., Knopik, V. S., & Neiderhiser, J. M. (2016). Behavioral genetics (7th ed.). New York: Worth Publishers.
Scarr, S., & McCartney, K. (1983). How people make their own environments: A theory of genotype → environment effects. Child Development, 54(2), 424-435.
Mills, M. C., & Tropf, F. C. (2020). Sociology, genetics, and the coming of age of sociogenomics. Annual Review of Sociology, 46, 553-581.
Briley, D. A., Livengood, J., & Derringer, J. (2018). Behaviour genetic frameworks of causal reasoning for personality psychology. European Journal of Personality, 32(3), 202-220.
“…individuals actively create or select environmental experiences aligned with their genetically influenced preferences and desires.”
Vukasović, T., & Bratko, D. (2015). Heritability of personality: A meta-analysis of behavior genetic studies. Psychological Bulletin, 141(4), 769–785.
von Stumm, S., & d’Apice, K. (2022). From genome-wide to environment-wide: Capturing the environome. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17(1), 30-40.
“People select themselves into, adapt to, and shape the environments that correspond to their genotypes.”
“There is broad consensus that people’s differences in affect, behavior, and cognition result from the interplay between genetic propensities and environmental conditions.”
Measuring the Mechanism: Polygenic Scores
Plomin, R., & von Stumm, S. (2022). Polygenic scores: Prediction versus explanation. Molecular Psychiatry, 27(1), 49-52.
Belsky, D. W., & Harden, K. P. (2019). Phenotypic Annotation: Using Polygenic Scores to Translate Discoveries from Genome-Wide Association Studies from the Laboratory to the Population. Developmental Psychopathology, 31(4), 1309–1319.
Specific Examples of Gene-Environment Interaction
Tucker-Drob, E. M., & Bates, T. C. (2016). Large cross-national differences in gene × socioeconomic status interaction on intelligence. Psychological Science, 27(2), 138-149.
Beaver, K. M., & Belsky, J. (2012). Gene–environment interaction and the intergenerational transmission of parenting: Testing the differential susceptibility hypothesis. Psychiatric Quarterly, 83(1), 29–40.
Shewark EA, Vazquez AY, Pearson AL, Klump KL, Burt SA. (2024). Neighborhood features moderate genetic and environmental influences on children’s social information processing. Dev Psychol. Apr;60(4):610-623. doi: 10.1037/dev0001690. Epub 2024 Feb 29. PMID: 38421787.
Domingue, B. W., & Boardman, J. D. (2014). Genetic and educational assortative mating among US adults. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(22), 7996-8000.
The Neural Architecture of “The Right and The Good”
Hsu, M., Anen, C., & Quartz, S. R. (2008). The right and the good: Distributive justice and neural encoding of equity and efficiency. Science, 320(5879), 1092-1095.
Graham, J., Nosek, B. A., Haidt, J., Iyer, R., Koleva, S., & Ditto, P. H. (2011). Mapping the moral domain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(2), 366-385.
Greene, J. D., Nystrom, L. E., Engell, A. D., Darley, J. M., & Cohen, J. D. (2004). The neural bases of cognitive conflict and control in moral judgment. Neuron, 44(2), 389-400.
Li, Y., Zhang, T., Li, W., et al. (2020). Linking brain structure and activation in anterior insula cortex to explain the trait empathy for pain. Human Brain Mapping, 41, 1030–1042.
Costa, C., Scarpazza, C., & Filippini, N. (2025). The anterior insula engages in feature- and context-level predictive coding processes for recognition judgments. The Journal of Neuroscience, 45(5).
Moral Pluralism—Why People Disagree About Right and Good:
Graham, J., Nosek, B. A., Haidt, J., Iyer, R., Koleva, S., & Ditto, P. H. (2011). Mapping the moral domain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(2), 366-385.
Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. Pantheon Books.
Graham, J., Haidt, J., Koleva, S., Motyl, M., Iyer, R., Wojcik, S. P., & Ditto, P. H. (2013). Moral foundations theory: The pragmatic validity of moral pluralism. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 55-130.
Shweder, R. A., Much, N. C., Mahapatra, M., & Park, L. (1997). The “big three” of morality (autonomy, community, divinity) and the “big three” explanations of suffering. In A. M. Brandt & P. Rozin (Eds.), Morality and health (pp. 119-169). Routledge.
Twin and Genetic Studies of Morality and Prosociality
Zakharin, M., & Bates, T. C. (2023). Testing heritability of moral foundations: Common pathway models support strong heritability for the five moral foundations. European Journal of Personality, 37(4), 485-497.
Knafo, A., & Plomin, R. (2006). Prosocial behavior from early to middle childhood: Genetic and environmental influences on stability and change. Developmental Psychology, 42(5), 771–786.
Limone, P., & Toto, G. A. (2022). Origin and development of moral sense: A systematic review. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 887537.
Israel, S., Hasenfratz, L., & Knafo-Noam, A. (2015). The genetics of morality and prosociality. Current Opinion in Psychology, 6, 55-59.
Tielbeek, J. J., et al. (2022). Uncovering the genetic architecture of broad antisocial behavior through a genome-wide association study meta-analysis. Nature Human Behaviour, 6, 1711–1721.
Economic Preferences and Altruism
Cesarini, D., Dawes, C. T., Johannesson, M., Lichtenstein, P., & Wallace, B. (2009). Genetic variation in preferences for giving and risk taking. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 124(2), 809-842.
5. van de Werfhorst, H. G. (2026). “The Sociogenomics of Social Stratification and General Theories of Inequality.” The British journal of sociology.
6. Tilly, C. (1998). Durable inequality. Univ of California Press.
7. Cesarini, D., Dawes, C. T., Johannesson, M., Lichtenstein, P., & Wallace, B. (2009). Genetic variation in preferences for giving and risk taking. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 124(2), 809-842.
Zakharin, M., & Bates, T. C. (2023). Testing heritability of moral foundations: Common pathway models support strong heritability for the five moral foundations. European Journal of Personality, 37(4), 485-497.
Hufer, A., Kornadt, A. E., Kandler, C., & Riemann, R. (2020). Genetic and environmental variation in political orientation in adolescence and early adulthood: A nuclear twin family analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 118(4), 762–776. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000258
8. Tilly, C. (2011). Cities, states, and trust networks: chapter 1 of Cities and States in World History. In Contention and trust in cities and states (pp. 1-16). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.
9. Pinker, S. (2012). The better angels of our nature: Why violence has declined. Penguin Books. Kindle version.
This citation is used to reinforce the point the first ‘true states’ and ‘civilizations’ emerged some 5000 years ago.
According to Pinker: “Archaeologists tell us that humans live in a state of anarchy until the emergence of civilization some five thousand years ago…” …location 1062
“It took around five thousand years after the origin of agriculture for true states to appear on the scene”26 …location 1206
The following are references from Pinker’s book concerning cities and states–Pinker’s Reference 26: First states: Diamond, 1977; Gat 2006; Kurthz, 2001; Otterbein, 2004.
10. Scheidel, W. (2017). The Great Leveler: Violence and the history of inequality from the stone age to the twenty-first century. Princeton University Press. P558 Kindle edition
11. McDade, T. W., Ryan, C. P., Jones, M. J., Hoke, M. K., Borja, J., Miller, G. E., Kuzawa, C. W., & Kobor, M. S. (2019). Genome-wide analysis of DNA methylation in relation to socioeconomic status during development and early adulthood. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 169(1), 3–11.
Zhou, A., & Ryan, J. (2023). Biological embedding of early-life adversity and a scoping review of the evidence for intergenerational epigenetic transmission of stress and trauma in humans. Genes, 14(8), 1639.
Ruiz-Narváez, E. A., Cozier, Y., Zirpoli, G., Rosenberg, L., & Palmer, J. R. (2024). Perceived experiences of racism in relation to genome-wide DNA methylation and epigenetic aging in the Black Women’s Health Study. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, 12(2), 754–763.
Spann, M. N., Alleyne, K., Holland, C. M., Davids, A., Pierre-Louis, A., Bang, C., Oyeneye, V., Kiflom, R., Shea, E., Cheng, B., Peterson, B. S., Monk, C., & Scheinost, D. (2024). The effects of experience of discrimination and acculturation during pregnancy on the developing offspring brain. Neuropsychopharmacology, 49(2), 476–485.
Elbasheir, A., Katrinli, S., Kearney, M., Lanius, R. A., Harnett, N. G., Ely, T. D., Gillespie, C. F., Stevens, J. S., Lori, A., van Rooij, S. J. H., Powers, A., Bradley, B., Jovanovic, T., Smith, A. K., & Fani, N. (2024). Racial discrimination, neural connectivity, and epigenetic aging among Black women. JAMA Network Open, 7(6), e2416588.
Mulligan, C. J., Quinn, E. B., Hamadmad, D., Dutton, C. L., Nevell, L., Binder, A. M., Panter-Brick, C., & Dajani, R. (2025). Epigenetic signatures of intergenerational exposure to violence in three generations of Syrian refugees. Scientific Reports, 15(1), 5945.
Oren, G., Shoshani, A., Samra, N.N. et al. From trauma to resilience: psychological and epigenetic adaptations in the third generation of holocaust survivors. Sci Rep, 15, 26193.
12. The ‘Jack-in-the-Box’ Pattern: Development and Influences
The following sources provide a range of historical, structural, and socio-genetic context for the concept…demonstrating the many dimensions of Jack.
I. Core Historical & Cyclical Influences
These works establish the recurring nature of hierarchical reset through violent “leveling” events and elite-driven disintegration cycles.
Scheidel, W. (2017). The Great Leveler: Violence and the history of inequality from the Stone Age to the twenty-first century. Princeton University Press.
Turchin, P., & Nefedov, S. A. (2009). Secular cycles. Princeton University Press.
Turchin, P. (2023). End times: Elites, counter-elites, and the path of political disintegration. Penguin Press.
Wallerstein, I. (1974-1989). The Modern World-System (Vols. 1-3). Academic Press.
II. Structural Mechanisms of Systemic Failure
These sources identify the mechanical “tension” and specific vulnerabilities that lead to a failure or a reset of the hierarchy.
Scheidel, W. (2024). Beyond technology and wages: Power and the history of inequality. Oxford Open Economics, 3 (Supplement_1), 1212–1216.
Turchin, P., Currie, T. E., Whitehouse, H., François, P., Feeney, K., Mullins, D., … & Spencer, C. (2018). Quantitative historical analysis uncovers a single dimension of complexity that structures global variation in human social organization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(2), E144-E151.
Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century (A. Goldhammer, Trans.). Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Tainter, J. A. (1988). The collapse of complex societies. Cambridge University Press.
Kennedy, P. (1987). The rise and fall of the great powers: Economic change and military conflict from 1500 to 2000. Random House.
III. The “Jack-in-the-Box” Replacement Dynamics
Khaldun, I. (2015). The Muqaddimah: An introduction to history (N. J. Dawood, Ed.; F. Rosenthal, Trans.). Princeton University Press.
Describes Asabiyyah (social cohesion) as the social force that allows a new group to replace a failing elite.
IV. Socio-Genetic & Genomic Evidence
These references provide evidence in the archaeological record of large-scale population change and the hereditary transmission of status.
Theory & Mechanism:
Plomin, R., & von Stumm, S. (2018). The new genetics of intelligence. Nature Reviews Genetics, 19(3), 148–159.
Polderman, Tinca JC, et al. “Meta-analysis of the heritability of human traits based on fifty years of twin studies.” Nature genetics 47.7 (2015): 702-709.
Causadias, J. M., & Korous, K. M. (2017). How are genes related to culture? An introduction to the field of cultural genomics. The handbook of culture and biology, 151-177.
Boyce, W. T., Sokolowski, M. B., & Robinson, G. E. (2020). Genes and environments, development and time. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 117(38), 23235–23241.
Population Turnover & Heritable Status:
Žegarac, A., Winkelbach, L., Blöcher, J., Diekmann, Y., Krečković Gavrilović, M., Porčić, M., … & Burger, J. (2021). Ancient genomes provide insights into family structure and the heredity of social status in the early Bronze Age of southeastern Europe. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 10072.
Allentoft, M.E., Sikora, M., Refoyo-Martínez, A. et al. Population genomics of post-glacial western Eurasia. Nature 625, 301–311 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06865-0
Gretzinger, J., et al. (2022). The Anglo-Saxon migration and the formation of the early English gene pool. Nature, 610, 112–119.
13. Turchin, P. (2023). End times: Elites, counter-elites, and the path of political disintegration. Penguin Press.