References & Notes for:
The Gene-Environment Roots of Hierarchy & Socioeconomic Inequality
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. Richter, D., Grün, R., Joannes-Boyau, R., Steele, T. E., Amani, F., Rué, M., Fernandes, P., Raynal, J.-P., Geraads, D., Ben-Ncer, A., Hublin, J.-J., & McPherron, S. P. (2017). The age of the hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the origins of the Middle Stone Age. Nature, 546(7657), 293–296.
Hublin, J.-J., Ben-Ncer, A., Bailey, S. E., Freidline, S. E., Neubauer, S., Skinner, M. M., Bergmann, I., Le Cabec, A., Benazzi, S., Harvati, K., & Gunz, P. (2017). New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens. Nature, 546(7657), 289–292.
Scerri, E. M. L., Thomas, M. G., Manica, A., Gunz, P., Stock, J. T., Stringer, C., … Chikhi, L. (2018). Did our species evolve in subdivided populations across Africa, and why does it matter? Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 33(8), 582–594.
2. Pinker, S. (2010). The cognitive niche: Coevolution of intelligence, sociality, and language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(supplement_2), 8993-8999.
Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2003). The nature of human altruism. Nature, 425(6960), 785-791.
3. Nesse, R. M. (2004). Natural selection and the elusiveness of happiness. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 359(1449), 1333–1347
4. References for: The Paradox of the Right and the Good
The Paradox of the Right and the Good is a theoretical construct by the author.
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.
Mills, M. C., & Tropf, F. C. (2020). Sociology, genetics, and the coming of age of sociogenomics. Annual Review of Sociology, 46, 553-581.
Vukasović, T., & Bratko, D. (2015). Heritability of personality: A meta-analysis of behavior genetic studies. Psychological Bulletin, 141(4), 769–785.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Baumard, N., André, J. B., & Sperber, D. (2013). A mutualistic approach to morality: The evolution of fairness by partner choice. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(1), 59-78.
Twin and Genetic Studies of Morality and Prosociality
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.
5. 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.”
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.
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.
6. Laland, K. N., Odling-Smee, J., & Feldman, M. W. (2000). Niche construction, biological evolution, and cultural change. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23(1), 131–146.
Saltz, J. B., & Nuzhdin, S. V. (2014). Genetic variation in niche construction: Implications for development and evolutionary genetics. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 29(1), 8–14.
Laland, K. N., Uller, T., Feldman, M. W., Sterelny, K., Müller, G. B., Moczek, A., Jablonka, E., & Odling-Smee, J. (2015). The extended evolutionary synthesis: Its structure, assumptions and predictions. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 282(1813), 20151019.
Odling-Smee, J., Erwin, D. H., Palkovacs, E. P., Feldman, M. W., & Laland, K. N. (2013). Niche construction theory: A practical guide for ecologists. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 88(1), 3–28.
7. 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.”
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.
Avinun, R. (2020). The E is in the G: Gene-Environment-Trait Correlations and Findings from Genome-Wide Association Studies. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(1), 81-89.
8. Alexander, R. D. (1974). The evolution of social behavior. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 5(1), 325–383.
“When man developed his weapons, culture, and population sizes to levels that essentially erased the significance of predators of other species, he simultaneously created a new predator: groups and coalitions within his own species.”
Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2010). Groups in mind: The coalitional roots of war and morality. Human morality and sociality: Evolutionary and comparative perspectives (pp. 191-234).
Kurzban, R., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2001). Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(26), 15387-15392.
Pietraszewski, D. (2016). How the mind sees coalitional and group conflict: The evolutionary invariances of n-person conflict dynamics. Evolution and Human Behavior, 37(6), 470-480.
9. Sidanius, J., & Pratto, F. (2001). Social dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. Cambridge University Press.
10. Sidanius, J., & Pratto, F. (2001). See note 9.
Alexander, R. D. (1974). See note 8.
Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2010). See note 8.
11. Rawls, J. (1988). “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 17(4): 251–276.
Hart, H.L.A., (1961). The concept of law. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Alexander, L., & Moore, M. (2021). Deontological ethics. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy.
12. Ross, W. D. (1930). The Right and the Good. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Moore, G. E. (1903). Principia ethica. Cambridge University Press.
von Wright, G. H. (1963). The Varieties of Goodness. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Harvard UP.
13. van de Werfhorst, H. G. (2026). The sociogenomics of social stratification and general theories of inequality. The British Journal of Sociology, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.70138.
14. Tilly, C. (1998). Durable inequality. Univ of California Press.
15. 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). See note 5.
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
16. Abdellaoui, A., Martin, H. C., Kolk, M., Rutherford, A., Muthukrishna, M., Tropf, F. C., … & Visscher, P. M. (2025). Socio-economic status is a social construct with heritable components and genetic consequences. Nature human behaviour, 9(5), 864-876.
17. Belsky, D. W., Domingue, B. W., Wedow, R., Arseneault, L., Boardman, J. D., Caspi, A., … Moffitt, T. E. (2018). Genetic analysis of social-class mobility in five longitudinal studies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(31), E7275–E7284.
18. System-justified harms are a theoretical construct by the author.
The construct concerns institutional and ideological legitimation by dominant groups. It should be distinguished from the status–legitimacy hypothesis derived from system justification theory, which holds that low-status individuals legitimize the system more than high-status individuals do; the evidence at note 92 does not support that hypothesis. The legitimation at issue here is aimed chiefly at those who enforce, administer and benefit from the order (see note 91). What distinguishes system-justified harms from moralistic punishment in general is concentration (see text). On the production and enforcement of legitimating ideologies by dominant groups, see:
Sidanius, J., & Pratto, F. (2001). See note 9.
Jost, J. T., Banaji, M. R., & Nosek, B. A. (2004). A decade of system justification theory: Accumulated evidence of conscious and unconscious bolstering of the status quo. Political Psychology, 25(6), 881–919.
On the legitimation of harm as a moral good, see:
Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, peace, and peace research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167–191.
Galtung, J. (1990). Cultural violence. Journal of Peace Research, 27(3), 291–305.
Fiske, A. P., & Rai, T. S. (2014). Virtuous violence: Hurting and killing to create, sustain, end, and honor social relationships. Cambridge University Press.
19. 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.
“No states existed anywhere in the world before 4000 BCE.”
“Cities, then, first appeared in the same periods and regions as states. Like cities, states can only exist in symbiosis with agriculture that produces enough to support significant non-agricultural populations. Cities differ from strictly agricultural settlements, furthermore, by virtue of substantial populations, differentiated and specialized activities, and location as nodes in far-reaching networks of trade and political coordination. Cities and states maintain ambivalent relations: urban merchants and intellectuals seek the protection that states can provide, but resist the extraction and control that states’ rulers impose on them. Rulers of states, on their side, commonly try to combat urbanites’ independence, but also seek to benefit from concentrations of resources in cities as well as from the relative defensibility of compact cities as compared with scattered rural populations.”
“What of the state? A state is a structure of power involving four distinctive elements: 1) major concentrated means of coercion, especially an army, 2) organization that is at least partly independent of kinship and religious relations, 3) a defined area of jurisdiction, and 4) priority in some regards over all other organizations operating within that area. Although the four elements had existed separately for some time, no one put all four of them together before the Middle East’s creation of both cities and states. No states existed anywhere in the world before 4000 BCE. By the era of Gilgamesh’s Uruk, however, full-fledged cities and states were flourishing across significant parts of the Middle East, and possibly forming in other parts of Eurasia as well.”
Turchin, P. (2016). Ultrasociety: How 10,000 years of war made humans the greatest cooperators on earth.
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.
20. Behavioral Genetics & Gene-Environment (GxE) Interplay
Erola, J., Lehti, H., Baier, T., & Karhula, A. (2022). Socioeconomic background and gene–environment interplay in social stratification across the early life course. European Sociological Review, 38(1), 1-17.
Plomin, R., Gidziela, A., Malanchini, M., & von Stumm, S. (2022). Gene–environment interaction using polygenic scores: Do polygenic scores for psychopathology moderate predictions from environmental risk to behavior problems? Development and Psychopathology, 1-11.
“GxE is important because it recognizes that one size does not fit all and offers the possibility of personalized tailoring of children’s environments based on their genetic propensities. Moreover, weak environmental effects in the population could have strong effects on children with particular genetic proclivities. GxE is the genetic extension of phenotypic research on differential reactivity to the environment.”
“GxE is distinct conceptually from gene-environment correlation, which denotes experiences that are correlated with genetic propensities, that is, genetic exposure to environmental effects and genetic mediation of associations between environmental factors and psychopathology.”
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.
Sauce, Bruno, and Louis D. Matzel. “The paradox of intelligence: Heritability and malleability coexist in hidden gene-environment interplay.” Psychological bulletin 144.1 (2018): 26.
Turkheimer, E. (2000). Three laws of behavioral genetics and what they mean. Current directions in psychological science, 9(5), 160-164.
von Stumm, S., & d’Apice, K. (2022). See note 5.
Epigenetics, Biology, & Developmental Models
Belsky, J. (2024). The nature of nurture: Darwinian and mendelian perspectives. Development and Psychopathology (2024): 1-10.
Gene-Culture Coevolution & Cultural Evolution
Henrich, J. (2016). The secret of our success: How culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smarter. Princeton University Press.
Laland, K. N. (2017). Darwin’s unfinished symphony: How culture made the human mind. Princeton University Press.
Laland, K. N., Odling-Smee, J., & Myles, S. (2010). How culture shaped the human genome: bringing genetics and the human sciences together. Nature Reviews Genetics, 11(2), 137-148.
Mesoudi, A. (2011). Cultural evolution: How Darwinian theory can explain human culture and synthesize the social sciences. University of Chicago Press.
Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2008). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. University of Chicago press.
21. Visscher, P. M., Hill, W. G., & Wray, N. R. (2008). Heritability in the genomics era — concepts and misconceptions. Nature Reviews Genetics, 9(4), 255–266.
22. Boyce, W. T., Sokolowski, M. B., & Robinson, G. E. (2020). Genes and environments, development and time. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(38), 23235–23241.
Hunter, N. (2015). Meiotic recombination: The essence of heredity. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology, 7(12), a016618. https://doi.org/10.1101/cshperspect.a016618
23. van de Werfhorst, H. G. (2026). See note 13.
Barcellos, S. H., Carvalho, L. S., & Turley, P. (2018). Education can reduce health differences related to genetic risk of obesity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(42), E9765–E9772. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1802909115
Wedow, R., Zacher, M., Huibregtse, B. M., Harris, K. M., Domingue, B. W., & Boardman, J. D. (2018). Education, smoking, and cohort change: Forwarding a multidimensional theory of the environmental moderation of genetic effects. American Sociological Review, 83(4), 802–832. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418785368
Trejo, S., Belsky, D. W., Boardman, J. D., Freese, J., Harris, K. M., Herd, P., Sicinski, K., & Domingue, B. W. (2018). Schools as moderators of genetic associations with life course attainments: Evidence from the WLS and Add Health. Sociological Science, 5, 513–540. https://doi.org/10.15195/v5.a22
Pekkarinen, T., Uusitalo, R., & Kerr, S. (2009). School tracking and intergenerational income mobility: Evidence from the Finnish comprehensive school reform. Journal of Public Economics, 93(7–8), 965–973. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2009.04.006
24. Genetic determinism by default is a theoretical construct developed by the author. It names a two-part process rather than the proportion of trait variance attributable to genes. Its institutional component is low reversibility: institutions make outcomes strongly predictable from social positions, environments, or placements assigned early in life. Its interpretive component arises when that persistence is treated, without adequate examination of institutional alternatives, as evidence of inherent genetic limits. Institutional persistence creates the conditions for this inference, but the construct is fully instantiated only where genetic misattribution can also be demonstrated in scientific, political, or public discourse.
Low reversibility can arise through two routes. In lock-in, institutions sort people early and repeatedly on phenotypic differences, some of which are partly heritable, thereby amplifying or stabilizing associations between genetic propensity and attainment. In closure, institutions constrain social position regardless of individual traits or capacities, potentially suppressing such associations by preventing differences from being expressed. These mechanisms do not produce uniquely opposite genetic signatures. Stronger genetic associations may result either from the removal of arbitrary barriers or from more intensive sorting on partly heritable phenotypes; weaker associations may reflect closure or other restrictions on expression. Heritability and genetic association therefore cannot, by themselves, identify the institutional mechanism or establish genetic necessity.
The construct builds on Jencks’s demonstration that genetic effects operating through social rules are as contingent as those rules; Rawls’s argument that the natural distribution is neither just nor unjust, whereas institutional responses to it may be (1971, §17; note 12); Harden’s critique of gene blindness (note 25); and van de Werfhorst’s observation that sociogenomic methods cannot avoid assumptions about the nature of genetic differences (note 13). Although genetic and social endowments are conceptually distinguishable mechanisms of status allocation (Isungset et al.), they are correlated in practice because parents transmit both genes and socially structured environments. Against interpretations of high heritability as evidence of equal opportunity (e.g., Nielsen), the construct locates injustice in low reversibility and in the stakes attached to sorting, not in heritability itself.
Because Mendelian segregation generates approximately random differences in inherited alleles among full siblings, within-family designs can estimate whether early placement statistically mediates or amplifies associations between genetic propensity and adult outcomes. Combined with quasi-experimental evidence from institutional reforms, such designs can assess whether delaying or softening sorting changes those associations (notes 23, 34, and 79). They cannot independently establish genetic misattribution, which requires separate evidence concerning how persistent inequality is interpreted.
Jencks, C. (1972). Inequality: A reassessment of the effect of family and schooling in America. Basic Books.
Jencks, C. (1980). Heredity, environment, and public policy reconsidered. American Sociological Review, 45(5), 723–736. https://doi.org/10.2307/2094892
Isungset, M. A., Conley, D., Zachrisson, H. D., Ystrom, E., Havdahl, A., Njølstad, P. R., & Lyngstad, T. H. (2022). Social and genetic endowments have similar effects on educational attainment, but operate through different mechanisms. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(36), e2201853119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2201853119
Nielsen, F. (2006). Achievement and ascription in educational attainment: Genetic and environmental influences on adolescent schooling. Social Forces, 85(1), 193–216. https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.2006.0138
25. The Scarr-Rowe Effect (Gene × SES Interaction)
Turkheimer, E., Haley, A., Waldron, M., D’Onofrio, B., & Gottesman, I. I. (2003). Socioeconomic status modifies heritability of IQ in young children. Psychological Science, 14(6), 623–628.
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. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615612727
Figlio, D. N., Freese, J., Karbownik, K., & Roth, J. (2017). Socioeconomic status and genetic influences on cognitive development. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(51), 13441–13446. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1708491114
Ghirardi, G., Gil-Hernández, C. J., Bernardi, F., van Bergen, E., & Demange, P. (2024). Interaction of family SES with children’s genetic propensity for cognitive and noncognitive skills: No evidence of the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis for educational outcomes. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 92, 100960. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2024.100960
Mechanism & Intergenerational Persistence
Tucker-Drob, E. M., Briley, D. A., & Harden, K. P. (2013). Genetic and environmental influences on cognition across development and context. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(5), 349–355. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413485087
Engzell, P., & Tropf, F. C. (2019). Heritability of education rises with intergenerational mobility. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(51), 25386–25388. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1912998116
But see Morris, D. (2020). Too early to declare a general law of social mobility and heritability for education. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(46), 28564–28565. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2011334117
Institutional Moderation of Genetic Influence
Adkins, D. E., & Vaisey, S. (2009). Toward a unified stratification theory: Structure, genome, and status across human societies. Sociological Theory, 27(2), 99–121. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9558.2009.01339.x
Heath, A. C., Berg, K., Eaves, L. J., Solaas, M. H., Corey, L. A., Sundet, J., Magnus, P., & Nance, W. E. (1985). Education policy and the heritability of educational attainment. Nature, 314(6013), 734–736. https://doi.org/10.1038/314734a0
Herd, P., Freese, J., Sicinski, K., Domingue, B. W., Harris, K. M., Wei, C., & Hauser, R. M. (2019). Genes, gender inequality, and educational attainment. American Sociological Review, 84(6), 1069–1098. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122419886550
Knigge, A., Maas, I., Stienstra, K., de Zeeuw, E. L., & Boomsma, D. I. (2022). Delayed tracking and inequality of opportunity: Gene-environment interactions in educational attainment. npj Science of Learning, 7, 6. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-022-00122-1
Theoretical Framing & Remediation
Harden, K. P. (2021). The genetic lottery: Why DNA matters for social equality. Princeton University Press.
END NOTES
The Scarr-Rowe effect does not threaten this argument, because genetic determinism by default concerns the fixity of social position, not the share of trait variance attributable to genes. In U.S. twin studies, the heritability of children’s cognitive ability is lower in the most deprived families (Turkheimer et al., 2003). Meta-analysis finds a moderate effect in U.S. samples but a zero or reversed one in Western Europe and Australia (Tucker-Drob & Bates, 2016); not every U.S. sample shows it (Figlio et al., 2017), and polygenic-score studies have largely not reproduced it, some finding the compensatory reverse (e.g., Ghirardi et al., 2024). The argument therefore treats the pattern as context-bound and does not rest on it. Where the effect holds, it sharpens the argument: low-SES outcomes cannot be read as an inherited floor, because genetic influence on cognition accumulates through the environments children evoke and select, and deprivation restricts those environments (Tucker-Drob et al., 2013). Where the compensatory reverse holds, it points the same way by another route: advantaged families shield their children with low genetic propensities from its consequences, so propensity binds most tightly on the poor. Tucker-Drob and Bates attribute the cross-national contrast to more uniform access to education and health care, which is consistent with institutional context moderating how far inherited differences translate into outcomes. The argument’s evidential weight rests instead on cross-national and policy evidence. Across societies, genetic variance in educational attainment is roughly constant while shared-environmental variance shrinks where intergenerational mobility is higher, so heritability rises with mobility (Engzell & Tropf, 2019; but see Morris, 2020). Within single societies, reforms move the same quantities: the heritability of educational attainment rose among Norwegian men educated after the postwar reforms (Heath et al., 1985), and delaying tracking in the Netherlands is associated with larger genetic and smaller shared-environmental influence on track placement (Knigge et al., 2022).
26. EQEXs are a theoretical construct by the author.
EQEXs are a trait-based form of social closure (Weber) or exclusion (Parkin), and of opportunity hoarding (Tilly; see note 14). On closure, see:
Weber, M. (1978). Economy and society (G. Roth & C. Wittich, Eds.). University of California Press.
Parkin, F. (1979). Marxism and class theory: A bourgeois critique. Tavistock.
On penalties that reach heritable variation through phenotypes (discrimination by genetic proxy), see:
Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008, Pub. L. No. 110-233, 122 Stat. 881.
Elks, C. E., den Hoed, M., Zhao, J. H., Sharp, S. J., Wareham, N. J., Loos, R. J. F., & Ong, K. K. (2012). Variability in the heritability of body mass index: A systematic review and meta-regression. Frontiers in Endocrinology, 3, 29. https://doi.org/10.3389/fendo.2012.00029
For the algorithmic examples, see:
O’Neil, C. (2016). Weapons of math destruction: How big data increases inequality and threatens democracy. Crown.
Prince, A. E. R., & Schwarcz, D. (2020). Proxy discrimination in the age of artificial intelligence and big data. Iowa Law Review, 105(3), 1257–1318.
Roberts, J. L. (2013). Healthism and the law of employment discrimination. Iowa Law Review, 99(2), 571–635.
27. The ‘Jack-in-the-Box’ Pattern: Development and Influences
The ‘Jack-in-the-Box’ Pattern is a theoretical construct by the author.
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.
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